Indholdsfortegnelse for May 1983 i MotorTrend

The Alfa Romeo GTV-6 is not one of those country club performance cars you master in a matter of miles. It is, instead, a car you’ll want to keep on driving. Because no matter how much you drive this car, it will keep on challenging you more. Every aspect of this Alfa was conceived to help you do just that. From an aluminum alloy SOHC V-6 that delivers more than 1 hp for every cubic inch of displacement. To a de Dion racing-type rear suspension system that maximizes the transfer of all that power to the road. From the moment you experience this Alfa’s extraordinary balance of power and control, you’ll know you’ll never outdrive it. But with such a heightened sense of self and road, you’ll never want to…

GM’S LATEST BROUGHT TO YOU BY TOYOTA The normally bullet-proof veil of GM’s corporate security recently parted just enough to give us a peek at the successor to the already creaky Chevette. The new subcompact, to debut in 1985 with both Chevrolet and Pontiac badges, will be fitted with a transverse OHC L4 driving the front wheels through a 5-speed manual gearbox. Options will include air conditioning, up-level interior trim, aluminum wheels, instrument package, GM’s THM 125C 3-speed automatic, and power steering. The new model is the first product to come from the GM-Toyota tie-up. The subcompact is an Americanized version of the next-generation Toyota Sprinter, a companion car to the Japanese firm’s ultra-popular Corolla. The car — to be assembled by Toyota at GM’s Fremont, California, facility-will be sold…

GI DUNE BUGGIES “They are not dune buggies,” insists the sergeant in the front office. “They may look like dune buggies, run like dune buggies, and sound like dune buggies but they are Fast Attack Vehicles. FAVs. Get that straight.” The FAV is a slightly modified version of a civilian competition/recreation machine made by Chenowth Racing Products Inc. of El Cajon, California. The units are designed to go streaking across the countryside with the use of a road being optional. Civilians, not bound by military nomenclature, still call them dune buggies. One big difference between the military buggy and the civilian version is that the FAV—without even a cannon or machine gun mount, never mind a radio or heater—costs $20,000-25,000, depending on who’s talking. Military-specification construction primarily accounts for the…

When many companies design a new car, the pressures to get that car out into the marketplace are often so intense, the car gets churned out overnight. And all too frequently car buyers pay the price. They can end up with cars that are totally unimaginative, or poorly thought out, or inadequately tested. In designing the new Volvo 760 GLE, one thing we gave ourselves plenty of was time. Ten long years. Time to challenge accepted notions about building automobiles. Time to try off-the-wall ideas. Time to make mistakes, then correct them. And above all, time to test, test, test. What emerged from this process is a car that’s remarkable indeed. The Volvo 760 GLE is more aerodynamic than a Porsche 928, yet holds five adults. It has traveled through…

The first American production sports car hit the streets in 1953. And the legend immediately took charge, stirring the souls of driving enthusiasts from Woodward Avenue to Van Nuys Boulevard. The name “Vette” embodied all the freedom and romance of the ‘50s and ‘60s, typifying the American life-style-fast, young and sexy. But there’s a new Corvette on the scene. And it’s the most comprehend sively packaged automobile of all time. One with advanced styling, innovative engineering, high technology, quality and comfort. This is the story behind the new Corvette. And that is what it takes to be the best production sports car in the world. The culmination of 30 years of evolutionary engineering dedicated to the one true American sports car. The pride of Chevrolet is its people. This dedicated…

Callaway breathes a little fire into the Mercedes 240D For these men the 240 conversion was pure child’s play Throw a leg over the bolster and slip into the Recaro’s palm. Feel the soft glove leather and fondle, please, the buttons for the contour bladders. Then lock your hands on the 3-spoke wheel, using the leverage to snuggle your buttocks to the seat. Pull the shoulder belt across your lap and hook it home. Twist the ignition and watch the gauges snap to attention. The lights burn as steadily as coals through the dash panel and the machine steals a few seconds to ready itself for business. Time is measured by the pumping in your chest and the wait seems much too long… Okay, okay, stop twitching. You weren’t waiting…

Over the last decade, German engineers have been tasked with building cars that are both fuel efficient and room efficient.* Vehicles that are highly reliable and easily affordable. But what happens when you tell them to forget all that, and build something just for the fun of it? You get the Scirocco. The automotive equivalent of an airplane. Why is the Scirocco so much fun to drive? Well, to start with, you sit so you’re closer to the grooves and grains of the pavement, where all the action is. Then there’s the Scirocco’s linear response. Now the tactile feel of the tires and the suspension comes right through the steering wheel, making an ordinary turn an extraordinary experience in your fingertips. You’ll find yourself dashing around corners and blasting down…

Even on my 19-in. (diagonal measurement) Sears black-and-white, Cale Yarborough slingshotting past the new T-Birds of Buddy Baker and Elliott, Ruttman bouncing his Monte Carlo off Baker—four cars finishing 500 miles, many of them in excess of 190 mph, a mere blink apart—had me stopped, my eyes stopped, my heart stopped. Stock car racing is like that. Win on Sunday, sell on Monday. Stock car racing is like that, too. Stock car racing has a way of reaching out and turning a distracted mob into a fiercely partisan crowd. Once, for a very short time, all racing was done by stock cars (if one allows a broad definition of “stock car”). As soon as it was realized that winning bred sales, sales bred race cars to do more winning, and…

Someday, somewhere, you are probably going to want to see an Indianapolis 500 race, in person. While there’s a lot to be said for staying home and listening to the race on the international radio network, and watching ABC-TV’s delayed broadcast, there is absolutely nothing else on earth like being there to witness the race unfolding, from Mary Hulman’s command, “Gentlemen, start your engines,” to the Victory Circle ceremonies. When it comes to pomp, pageantry, and pure, heart-pounding excitement, no other race on the planet can compare to the American classic. It has grown from humble beginnings in 1911 to become the largest single-day sports event in the world, with more than 300,000 people watching 33 megabuck teams compete for the biggest prize purse in motor racing. The closeness of…

BUICK TO ADD ANOTHER T-TYPE When the all-new downsized ’84 Buick Electra debuts this fall, there will be an extra model in the lineup, the Electra T-type. To make the new C-car fit into the established T-type mold, it will have a minimum of chrome trim, monochrome paint scheme, sport suspension, aluminum wheels with oversize tires, a 4-speed automatic transmission, and the high-tech 3.8-liter normally aspirated V-6 engine featuring sequential digital fuel injection and a distributorless ignition system. Like the Cadillac and Oldsmobile C-cars for ’84, the Electra will be front-drive, with transverse engine mounting and a new semi-trailing arm independent rear suspension system with electronic level control. FREEDOM OF TOO MUCH CHOICE MT’s resident statistician recently totted up all the various models being produced for 1983 model year by…

“Uncannily quiet,” observes Road & Track magazine. “The ride is marvelous” and you eventually do reach the point where you almost ignore potholes, ruts, and dips of whatever size. “The [leather] seats, in historic Peugeot style, are virtual armchairs … and were acclaimed exuberantly by all who sat upon them.” The credit for such a high degree of comfort must go to the Peugeot shock absorbers, which contain four times as many valves as normal shock absorbers. And to seats which contain not one single jouncy, bouncy spring. The Peugeot brochure is crammed with 350 facts like these. Call 1-800’447’2882 toll free anywhere in the continental U.S. for a free copy (and name of your nearest Peugeot dealer). And read why many observers think the Peugeot may well be undervalued…

This roomy new front-drive sedan wants to beat the competition at its own game Launching a new car line is never an easy task. When it involves entering an unfamiliar and highly competitive market segment, the proposition becomes even more difficult. Toyota has dealt itself into just such a high-risk game with the new Camry. By replacing its aging Corona line here in Arperica with a space-efficient front-drive, Japan’s largest auto maker hopes to capture a substantially larger portion of the huge U.S. family sedan market. As one might expect, they’ve come well prepared to wage the battle of the buyers. Although the Camry is being sold worldwide, it was created to have its strongest appeal to Americans, especially those who are preparing to step down from a full-sized car.…

Common heritage produces uncommon combatants One difficulty with car comparisons is that apples don’t taste much like spinach. The ranges of general similarities and detail dissimilarities can be so wide that what one buyer perceives as his two likeliest alternatives can be an absurdly illogical choice to another; it all depends on what they want. Yet, sometimes ideal matches are easy. For instance, Ford’s latest update on the Escort GT and Mazda’s GLC Sport—two of the world’s most similar cars from the world’s two most staunchly competing industries. If there were ever a chance to compare American and Japanese approaches to exactly the same problem, this is it. Different plantings, different nurturing, but apples to apples, just the same. The Escort and GLC were engineered at the same time and…

Now that’s quick thinking. But the new Corvette’s twin computers can handle it. Processing more than 300,000 instructions each operating second, these electronic wizards are designed to execute specific, individually programmed workloads. The primary computer, Computer Command Control, has an Electronic Control Module which controls vital functions such as spark timing, idle speed, fuel delivery and automatic transmission converter clutch. Corvette’s second computer functions as a monitor, calculator and transmitter of vital data to the driver with astounding speed and precision. For example, speedometer and tachometer bar graphs are updated every 65 milliseconds. The computer simultaneously handles computations like average fuel consumption and mileage range in less than 3 milliseconds. And to display a total of 14 instrument readouts in 9 display areas, the microcomputer scans each piece of data…

Front-wheel drive and enough trick stuff to make you think it’s Japanese Well, dear readers, it looks like Chrysler Corporation has done it yet again. After having recorded a number of significant U.S. auto industry “firsts,” including the first U.S. front-drive small car (1978), the first front-drive 6-passenger car (1981), and the first front-drive convertibles (1982), the company recently showed the press its first family of front-drive, garage-able van/wagons, the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager, known up to now as the T-115 project or T-wagon. Although production isn’t scheduled to start until early October, and public introduction won’t be until after the football bowl games in the winter of 1984, Lido and company want us all to see what they’ve got coming. They’re really proud of this one, and justifiably…

Ironically, this experimental performance car uses a standard Motorcraft spark plug dedicated to fuel efficiency. But to remain frugal, these plugs must survive surges that could reach twice the voltage normally produced by conventional engines — including yours. Plugs capable of surviving surges to 38,000 volts: Motorcraft Extended Tip. As you drive, Motorcraft Extended Tip plugs relentlessly burn away power-blocking carbon deposits from their electrodes. Thus allowing a cleaner path for the spark to ignite precious fuel mixtures. That means less wasted gasoline in any properly tuned normally driven automobile—no matter how advanced. Motorcraft Extended Tip Spark Plugs. Engineered to eliminate fuel-thieving sooty carbon, without eliminating themselves in the process. Motorcraft. Quality parts for all makes of cars. Get it together — buckle up.…

Objective: Construct an advanced, race-proven radial that attains high-speed handling and road-holding quahties. Solution: The Radial T/A™ The bold Raised White Letters on every Radial T/A™ tire show that you demand race-winning radials. Because the tires you buy are the same ones our racers win with at worldwide events like Daytona and Nurburgring. (Tires may be shaved to ½ tread depth for racing.) So you get that same race-proven performance. This unique combination of advanced materials and technology gives the Radial T/A its race-winning characteristics: A. Wraparound tread design. B. Deep tread depth, five, six, and seven ribs wide. C. Dual compound tread. D. Four-ply DuroGard® folded belt system. E. Two radial plies. BFGoodrich makes the only complete line of advanced T/A® High Tech ™ Radials. Radials that are respected…

Maybe Darrell Waltrip pinned down the essential contradiction. It was noon, maybe one, and Waltrip, with the easy look of a man who hasn’t worked since the night before, was feeling expansive. Waltrip allowed as how “my racing” — NASCAR Stockers, of course, in their natural habitat, the banks of Daytona—was the only long-distance racing where there was really any racing. The sort of thing he really had in mind was the finish, a couple of weeks later, of the Daytona 500 with the first four finishers an eyeblink apart. But Waltrip, who had, improbably enough, teamed with Foyt in a Nimrod (wait … A.J.—Supertex hisself — driving a car with a sissy name like Nimrod?) seemed to have enjoyed himself thoroughly. He suggested that he and Foyt might be…

Tuning up the Trans-Am The SCCA’s Trans-Am Championship has endured some pretty rocky times during its 18-year lifespan. But over the past three seasons, North America’s longest-running road race series has enjoyed a renaissance that compares favorably with its halcyon days in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Restructured as a single class competition in 1980, and bolstered by an infusion of CRC Chemicals sponsorship money, the Trans-Am has come on strong, stealing much of the limelight once reserved for the Can-Am. The 1982 Trans-Am season was the most successful in history. As a record 154,000 fans watched 10 races, Elliott Forbes-Robinson emerged as the dominant force in notching his first T-A title. Starting from the pole on five different occasions, EFR won four events in his Mecham-Huffaker Racing Firebird,…

There is a small but dedicated group whose passion for driving is fervent even when measured by the standards of most automotive purists. Drivers whose appetite for extraordinary performance far exceeds the ability of most cars to satisfy it. For these drivers, BMW announces a new car designed not only to fulfill their expectations, but to elevate them. The BMW 533i: the fastest production sedan in America. THE TECHNOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF FUN. The 533iis a $29,000* luxury sedan engineered for a single purpose: to refine raw power into unadulterated fun. The power is generated by 3.2 liters of fuel-injected ‘smoothness and ferocity’ (Car and Driver). An engine directly descended from the six-cylinder BMW racing engines weaned on the Nurburgring, Hockenheim, and other great racecourses of Europe. The engine is assisted…

The new Honda Prelude began as a clean piece of paper. Honda engineers sketched a superior aerodynamic shape. A low wedge with a wide stance and increased overall length. Once the design was conceived, they set about perfecting it. They made the windshield and door handles flush with the body. New retractable halogen headlights raise in such a way to cause less turbulence. Underneath is a new front suspension. It’s a unique double wishbone, low-profile concept inherited from Honda Formula racing car experience. Independent MacPherson stmts support the rear wheels. A low center of gravity contributes to handling and stability. A new engine improves performance. It has 12 main valves, 2 intake and 1 exhaust for each cylinders main combustion chamber. For better breathing and efficiency. Dual carburetors make highway…

U.S. Highway 101 bisects the fertile Salinas valley from San Jose south toward Los Angeles. South of Monterey it is flanked on the east by the Diablo Mountains and protected from the Pacific Ocean, on the west, by the Santa Lucias. On a beautiful February morning, with the sun eating away the early mist, we were heading south along this stretch in the four fastest cars available in America. Leading the way was the ’84 Chevrolet Corvette—cruise control locked on 59 mph, radar detector humming quietly. Following at discreet intervals were the impeccably engineered ’83 Porsche 928S, the fiery-red Ferrari 308GTSi, and the velvety-smooth Jaguar XJ-S. The Motor Trend staff was en route from Laguna Seca Raceway to Barstow, California, orchestrating some head-to-head confrontations in the areas of true top…

Panteramerica upstages the G-24 Steve Hitter and Barry Gale have some kind of act going. A bit like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they finish one another’s sentences, contradict one another, give rhetorical answers to rhetorical questions. All very amusing. The two met about 20 years ago as members of a car club. The T-Timers, it was called. In fact they claim to have founded the West Hollywood branch, which just about survived their membership. Just a couple of car-nutty California kids growing up in paradise. The growing up got done, but the car-nuttiness never went away, which is how these two guys came to be the prime movers behind Steve Hitter & Associates and Panteramerica, the first, an advertising agency, the second, the importer of De Tomaso autos and parts. Hitter…

For the first time ever, tires built for the street beat tires built for racing to grab a major pro class win at the 24 Hours of Daytona. Talk about making history fast. Fresh out of the chute, in its American debut and first race ever, Firestone’s European designed and produced S-660 radial did what no other street tire has ever done before. Grab the checkered flag in a major pro class at the 24 Hours of Daytona. The toughest Daytona ever, as torrential rains red flagged the race for the first time in its 21 years, and as over 60% of the field packed it in along the way. But wet or dry, the S-660, modified only by shaving performance to racing depth, ran like a champ all the…

America, take to the roads! Hey look! It’s spring already. Stick-and-ball games are back on TV, the weather has turned amenable, and in not too many weeks, the Great American Migration will begin. That’s when families in every corner of the continent respond to primordial, instinctive drives by piling in the car and heading off for someone else’s corner of the continent. Social anthropologists (and everyone else, too) refer to this phenomenon as Summer Vacation. The ritual has enormous psychological importance. It’s intended to relieve a year’s worth of stress and strain, built up in the course of the workaday routine at the office, store, plant, or farm. Or around the house, for that matter. Arriving home after motoring about the countryside, if all has gone well, we should feel…

You thought Neiman-Marcus had exotica? Check this Selling cars through mail-order catalogues isn’t exactly a new idea; Sears, Roebuck and Co. was able to peddle over 3500 high-wheeler motor buggies between 1906 and 1911. But the idea of offering a house-priced Mercedes-Benz exclusively by mail lies somewhere on the far side of unprecedented. Tova Internationale is a Los Angeles-based specialty merchandise company with a heavy emphasis on quality stuff—quality stuff that commands the proverbial top dollar. The company is named for its president and founder, Tova Borgnine. Ms. Borgnine was looking for items to round out the latest catalogue not too long ago, and she found Frederick Duchatelet in Luik, Belgium. Duchatelet is no newcomer to the high-lux auto field; his firm has been giving Mercs the super luxury treatment…

PONTIAC TRANS AM The turbines start to moan like a medieval dragon stirring from its sleep. The air speed climbs until it practically blows the buttons off your shirt. Then the force pushes you farther and farther back, as the wind rages by at 150 miles per hour. The race is on in GM’s wind tunnel. And Pontiac’s ’83 Trans Am is way out in front. In the race to build the sleekest car on the road, Trans Am crosses the finish line with a drag coefficient of .31. We put it up against cars like Porsche 944 and Mazda RX-7. Trans Am wins d hands down. This victory means a lot to us at Pontiac. And a lot more to you on the road. Through our research in the…

What this country needs? Does the world really need another high-tech, high-mpg mini-box? More to the point, does the world really want one? Regardless of which of these questions you prioritize, Fiat thinks the answer is yes, and is willing to stake the entire store—or at least the future of the store—on that assumption. The multi-billion lira chip Fiat has chosen to plunk down in this high stakes game is the car you see displayed herewith—the all-new Uno. To be fair, Fiat’s decision to hang so much responsibility on such a small car is not without some logical foundation. Ever since the Topolino, Fiat has been a perennial leader in the micro- and mini-car market segments dominating its domestic market and knocking down a significant chunk of the total European…

Unquestionably, one of the most desirable luxury cars today is a German-engineered turbo diesel. It offers a rare blend of turbo power, diesel efficiency, and German craftsmanship. The Audi 5000: the best value in a luxury German turbo diesel. Yet, there is a question of price. You can spend more than $30,000 for the least expensive Mercedes turbo diesel.* Or, if you have a keen eye for value, you can invest $17,780 in an Audi 5000 Turbo Diesel.* Because you spend less doesn’t mean you get less. Our Bavarian engineers have built imaginative and expensive technology into this luxury Audi. Innovative engineering at a price you can live with. To wit: the E-mode automatic transmission. It conserves fuel and reduces engine wear. To increase engine life even more: sodium filled…

After two decades, the Pininfarina design studio in Turin, Italy, has once again taken on a project for Cadillac division of General Motors, the last one being the ’59-’60 Eldorado Brougham sedans. The new project, which we’re calling the Cadillac Italia for now, will mark a major step for GM’s luxury car division by its very nature. The thrust of the Italia project is simply to have Pininfarina create a high-technology 4-seater coupe that will compete effectively with the prestige leaders from Europe—the Mercedes-Benz 380SEC and 380SL, the Ferrari Mondial, the coming Jaguar XJ40, and some of the Maserati range—cars for which the leading American luxury manufacturer currently has no competitive model. It’s expected that, whatever it is named finally, the Pininfarina car will sell at a price in excess…