Indholdsfortegnelse for July 1962 i MotorTrend

ANSWER: Chrysler Corporation (who else?)…

Take a tip from these performance experts—and thousands of others the world over — and always insist on new silvery-plated Champion spark plugs! CHAMPION SPARK PLUG COMPANY • TOLEDO 1, OHIO…

IT’ IS OBVIOUSLY IMPOSSIBLE to build an automobile that will satisfy everyone, but from the way in which Chevrolet is selling Impalas, this car would seem to come close to fitting the definition, for its numbers prove that it satisfies a large number of people. What makes it so universally acceptable? li is spacious, easy to handle, handsomely appointed, sturdy, reasonably economical, reliable and should have a lengthy service life. When we sought a test car representative of Chevrolet’s most popular model, we learned something that should have been obvious — the public is scurrying to buy luxury at all price levels. And luxury, in this case, is the top-of-the-line Impala. The result was a two-door sport coupe, with the standard 283-inch, 170-hp V-8, power steering and brakes, Power-glide transmission,…

WITH THE CURRENT TREND to closed, multi-purpose racing circuits and high-pressure super-speed racing growing in popularity, the San Francisco Region of the Sports Car Club of America decided to try something different. Something so old it is new: Road racing on real roads. The site, only a short drive from the San Francisco Bay Area, was the Port of Stockton. A 12-turn, 1.9 mile course was laid out using the public roads in and around the Port area, only a mile-and-a-half from the heart of the city. A record turnout of entrants, over 250 cars, had to be pared down to 200, owing to the tightness of the road-course and only the more experienced drivers competed as the officials felt trees, buildings, utility poles and fireplugs were enough to dodge,…

DOUBLE CLUTCH I have a competition coupe weighing 1700 pounds complete with a Pontiac engine rated at 750 hp. Which is best — an in-out box or a transmission for this coupe for the best elapsed time and handling? Also, in the in-out box which is the best — the double clutch or the direct crankshaft drive? Al Lacy Liberty, Tex. My preference would be a transmission with a double-disc clutch. With that much horsepower you should be able to get it off the line in high gear with that clutch, slipping it enough to keep the rpm’s and the hp up. With the gearbox you can always try it with two gears, 2nd and high, and compare elapsed times. Besides, it has another advantage — that of being able…

Legislation or common sense? WE HAVE just thought of a way to keep the automotive anti-performance antieverything factions happy. At least temporarily. First, we set an absolute horsepower maximum, quite low of course, and regardless of the power options that the customer desires. Then we seal the entire engine and make it a penitentiary offense to break any one of the seals. None of these cars are ever sold, only rented to the customers, who turn them back to the factory either to be rebuilt for further rental or crushed into scrap metal. There would be no sales or service departments, no used car lots, no research, no improvements, and no wrecking yards. This is the Utopia some of our uninformed and self-styled “spokesman” groups would like to see. Of…

CHEVROLET SPEED EXPERT Don Nicholson takes the latest 409-cubic inch high-performance job, does a little “tuning” here and there, then takes it out on the drag strip — and immediately starts turning elapsed times of 12.9 secs. and 110-112 mph trap speed. I borrow a similar model from the factory, in standard production trim with factory-recommended tuning, and turned 14.9 and 98 mph. What's the difference? Very simple: Expert tuning and set-“Up, Nicholson gets the full potential out of the 409 Chevy. The performance I got is closer to what you can expect from a similar model you order through a dealer, and get delivered direct from the factory production line. This difference of two seconds on et. and 12 mph in trap speed represents what can be done with…

MEN OF THE AMERICAN ROAD, beware! You can’t trust even a Falcon at those stoplight Grand Prix dashes any more. A refined breed of Ford’s super-selling little compact car is being turned out by the Holman and Moody stock car racing speed shop in Charlotte, N.C., that threatens the security of all but the very hottest Detroit and European machinery in any test from a quarter-mile drag to a whirl around the toughest sports car courses. Thus far, three versions of hopped-up Falcon have been conceived and executed by John Holman, Ralph Moody and their team of performance specialists. They are referred to as “Challenger I, II and III.” “Challenger I’ already owns a combat medal from the Sebring 12-hour Grand Prix of Endurance. In order to enter a new…

High Performance School Perhaps you would like to buy a fast car with a sporting performance, but, being cautious, you recognize that you have not yet got sufficient experience to use its performance safely. How can you learn the niceties of fast driving on a powerful car without danger to yourself and other road users? In England where the use of fast cars is particularly difficult because the country’s winding roads are the most overcrowded in the world, the British School of Motoring, largest driving school in the world with 140 branches and more than 1,000 vehicles, has found a solution — a course of fast driving in 15 lessons, one hour lessons, for experienced drivers. First of all three hours on a racing circuit (Brands Hatch is the first…

Rates and Requirements are: 90 cents per word (minimum 10 words; no maximum). If a photo is to be run with ad, the additional fee is $25. No ads will be accepted if payment is not included. The number of ads to appear each month depends upon space limitations and ads will be inserted on a first come, first served basis. The editors reserve the right to refuse acceptance and to edit where necessary. SELL ’38 Horch conv. True classic, shown in London auto show. Chrome engine; rt.-hand drive. Needs paint. $1600 or best offer. James H. Southard, Box 570, Marshfield, Wis. ’46 LINCOLN 4-dr. sed. Completely reconditioned V-12 engine, o.d., r & h, ww’s. Perf. mech. Fenders rusted. Many spare body & mech. parts. Best offer. Fred Isenor, Lantz,…

COMMENTS FROM “DOWN UNDER” As distinct from the American scene, Australia prefers cars of Falcon size. These take up between 50 to 60 percent of the market. The price of the big imported American car is about $5,000. I myself drive a 60 VW which I plan to trade for a ’62 model. It seems to me that in the U.S., with all the types of engines, transmissions and cars, the buyer would be confused and consequently oftentimes buy a car he didn’t want or settle for second-best because he failed to see what was the best for him. The Corvette has a lock-to-lock of 314 turns. I regard this as very sloppy for a high-speed car — it would require much whirring of the wheel on a hill climb…

AVANTI, freely translated from Italian means... forward!, which is just where Studebaker’s president Sherwood Egbert hopes to lead his company with an exciting new 1963 automobile. From “doodle-to-drawing-board-to-prototype” in less than a year is quite an accomplishment for any automobile maker who is designing a production car, but Studebaker was able to push this program and still incorporate into the Avanti several major “firsts” for the industry. Egbert knew what he wanted and “doodled” some styling concepts which were used as a guide for stylist Raymond Lowey, who once before had put Studebaker back in sales competition with his “which way are they going’ designs of 1953. This was in March of 1961 and by February 1962, the Molded Fiber Glass Body Co., of Ashtabula, Ohio, was ready to deliver…

NINETY PERCENT of the decisions you make in driving depend upon your eyesight and the chances are that you wear corrective spectacles or sunglasses to do it. But the odds that you have exactly the right pair of glasses are heavily against you. Not only that, they may even make your seeing worse, blocking out vital side vision with a heavy frame or blurring sight with a substandard lens. Visual demands for driving are far different than for most anything else you do. On the road, eyes must see in a variety of weather, day and night, in all kinds of traffic—and they must do it with speed and precision. This is not news. Yet how many motorists have glasses made especially for driving? Sunglasses are the biggest offenders. Glare…

CHEVROLET’S LITTLE CORVAIR compact is no longer a “utility American passenger car.” It’s a sports car—pure and simple. The radical engineering features never seemed to catch on with John Q. But the “enthusiast”-type buyer liked it. When the Chevy sales people switched their pitch to appeal to this more discriminating buyer they opened up a lucrative new market for what could have been a real flop. The new Spyder performance package, with the exhaust turbo-supercharger, is a beautiful finishing touch to the sports theme. It gives very adequate acceleration, it’s very responsive, smooth and quiet; it’s beautiful to look at, both outside and inside the engine compartment; the heavy-duty suspension and brakes that are part of the package give terrific handling on the road —and the optional price of $421.95…

Recalling the Old Electrics BACK IN THE OLD DAYS electric cars were a popular and satisfactory mode of transportation. Because they have been gone from the motoring scene for such a long period of time, few enthusiasts know anything about them. If the electric car had been developed with the same amount of time, money and energy as the internal combustion engine, we would have no smog problems today. The first electric car appeared on the motoring scene in 1896-97. By 1898 many companies manufactured them as production machines and, while it is not generally known, one of the largest companies was still building them in the early ’30’s. Initially they were nothing more than buggies with an electric motor operated by low voltage thereby reducing the number of batteries.…