Indholdsfortegnelse for August 1963 i MotorTrend

ASTRO is a new line of all-steel chrome custom wheels, with distinctive modern design. Copper base makes chrome durable, gives lustrous blue tint. Available for all U.S. cars and imports, even for boat trailers. Astro Enterprises, 16224 S. Main St., Gardena, Calif. MICKEY MOUSE safety belt, designed specially for children, should help the seat belt crusade. Belts come in standard 91-inch length and are good for pressure loads of over 5000 pounds. Write Davis Aircraft Products, Inc., Northport, Long Island, N. Y. KIDDE KOMPACT II is a new, dry chemical fire extinguisher, effective on flammable liquids, LP gas, or electrical equipment. It weighs only five pounds fully loaded, has operating pressure of 175 psi, with range of 10-12 feet. $13.95; Walter Kidde & Co., Inc., Belleville, N. J. NON-GLARE LAMP,…

BIGGEST ATTENTION-GETTER we’ve tested so far this year – that’s the Avanti. It should be, though, because it’s one of the most original cars of 1963. Avanti styling hasn’t borrowed from anything else, and regardless of whether you like it or not, it’s certainly different. We think the Loewy design represents one of the freshest concepts in a long time. Much of the interest Avanti arouses in people is due to the fact that not too many of them have been seen on the streets. Although the car’s been out close to a year, the number produced and sold falls somewhere between 700 and 1000. This figure could (and should) be much higher, because Studebaker isn’t having any trouble selling them. Producing them has been something else. Originally it was…

AT 7:50 AM last October 4, Fleet Engineer Paul R. Craven pumped the brakes of his Ford Falcon and rolled to a stop on Route 93 outside Tewksbury, Massachusetts. In front of him, a thick bank of pea-soup fog obliterated the highway. Moments later, a tractor-trailer driver, who’d spotted the flashing tail lights, braked his 50-foot rig to a bumper-to-bumper stop behind the Falcon. When a window finally appeared in the fog, Craven didn’t believe his eyes. A few feet ahead of his car, 12 smashed automobiles were strewn across the three lanes. Suddenly, with a brake-squealing crash, a second truck smashed into the tractor-trailer and boosted it into the Falcon. The sledgehammer jolt threw Craven toward the dashboard and catapulted his car into a nearby Oldsmobile. The engineer, however,…

WHEN SIX PEOPLE can climb out of an automobile after an all-day drive through stop-and-go traffic and crowded freeways without one complaint, it speaks well for the comfort of that automobile. Designed as luxurious, comfortable transportation for six, the Imperial for 1963 does its job very well indeed. Our passengers ranged from a petite five-foot-three to well over six feet, yet all had plenty of head and leg room and got out of the car as fresh and relaxed as they got in. Although it was a hot, muggy day in Southern California, our Imperial’s adequate air-conditioning system kept everyone cool and comfortable throughout the day. Comfort and luxury are the Imperial’s biggest selling points. It isn’t the fastest or the most economical automobile on the road, and it hasn’t…

DAIMLER, one of the world’s oldest and consistently most expensive cars, unveiled the $11,600 chauffeur-driven limousine at the New York International Auto Show this year. Among the limo’s little extras: a step that comes out when the door’s opened, a glass partition between driver and rear passengers, polished walnut instrument panel and door moldings, jump seats, and four-wheel disc brakes. Power comes from a 4.5-liter V-8, and top speed is 110 mph. Daimler was taken over in 1960 by Jaguar Cars, Ltd. ROOTES MOTORS, with American tourists in mind, has announced a repurchasing plan that could let tentative Hillman owners drive around the Continent for less than $5 a day. By fixing an arbitrary depreciation amount at $295 for three months, you can buy a new Hillman Super Minx in…

EARLY IN MAY, the motoring public was treated to pictures and stories of Chrysler’s turbine car. Just about one year before, a similar announcement was made by the same corporation. Plans were announced to build a limited quantity of these cars for tests by selected private individuals – a sort of shakedown before mass production “in the near future.” The May press releases indicated a similar program, the major difference being that these cars would be corporation projects rather than Dodge or Plymouth cars. As in previous announcements, this project and car got a lot of radio, television, newspaper, and magazine space – little of it very informative. Phrases which the public accepted with great enthusiasm (“…runs on anything that will flow through a pipe and ignite with air,” “…uses…

THE EDITORS have been gathering rumors and information on Detroit’s 1964 models for several months now. Ordinarily, MOTOR TREND waits with its next-year’s predictions until the September issue, but this time the editors feel certain enough about its sources to publish general trends in August. MT will again devote several pages in the September issue to the 1964 offerings, so for firmer and more specific commitments, add what’s printed here to what you’ll find next month and you should be pretty well set. Chrysler’s IMPERIAL, long overdue for styling changes, will be all new for 1964. Indications are that it’ll combine extended fender line (a la Continental), double grille inserts (a la Pontiac), rear fin treatment similar to Oldsmobile, rear deck spare tire sculpturing more like the Continental Mark II.…

WE HAD OUR FIRST RIDE in a new Comet V-8 a few months ago at Ford’s Pico Rivera, California, assembly plant, when we attended a preview of Mercury’s 1963½ offerings along with most other automotive writers from Southern California. So popular was it that we had to stand in line to take the S-22 Comet hardtop out on Ford’s banked test track (although there were 18 big Mercs and Lincolns on hand for testing). The combination of the 260-cubic-inch V-8 and four-speed box gives this car a vast improvement in performance over the six-cylinder Comet we tested last year, so we asked for a similar model for our road test. Our test S-22 turned out to be a bright red hardtop, with every extra except air conditioning and power brakes.…

ALL ROADS DON’T LEAD to Rome any more, but when all roads did, there wasn’t any need to say so. Nowadays, telling where a road leads has become the business of map makers, gasoline companies, sign painters, traffic engineers, and a few million confused motorists – all fighting thousands of different maps, signs, and highways. Part of this confusion comes simply from the differences in road signs, and committees have been working for years to standardize them. In 1961, one national joint committee* finally succeeded (after trying some 37 years) in pushing through some legislation about road signs – not only on signs telling which way to what town, but most of the rest, too. That year they brought out their Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and…

ONE OF THE MOST colorful eras in the history of championship auto racing came to a quiet end in 1938, when the familiar but unheralded riding mechanic was forced to give up his passenger seat to the progress of smaller, lighter race cars. Not too much has been set down in the annals of automotive history about those men who lived (and sometimes died) pursuing this strange profession. All too often their contributions, like their names, were lost to the more notable deeds of the drivers they sat next to and depended upon for life itself. This is understandable, considering it was the driver who had to have the skill and knowledge to win races. But the riding mechanic was equally important in his day, and it took a special…

THE WORLD 600, longest and richest of stock-car races, also appeared the easiest to predict this May, when NASCAR’s late-model circuit rolled into Charlotte, North Carolina, for the annual 600-mile assault on Charlotte Motor Speedway. A prophet with faith in the form chart had merely to review the season’s previous major stock-car classics – Riverside, Daytona, Atlanta, and Darlington – and it seemed obvious that the “427” Chevrolets would blast all qualifying records to bits, lead the early stages of the race, and then fall by the wayside; that Plymouth and Pontiac would challenge valiantly and that one of an awesome fleet of Ford chauffeurs would wind up with the $30,000 first prize. But the combination of Charlotte’s 1½-mile high-banked track and 600 miles has produced some of the most…

AIR-CONDITIONED CONVERTIBLE In your June issue. Bruce F. Workman of Canada made the statement that air conditioning in a convertible is a sequel to selling refrigerators to Eskimos. This gentleman hasn’t been in a convertible in the southern part of the United States, especially southern Florida. It’s very uncomfortable to drive a convertible with the top down all the time here – the sun is very hot. There are times when it’s too hot even with the top up. so air conditioning’s great in a convertible. At night, it’s cool enough to drive with the top down. About 40 per cent of the soft-tops here have much-needed air conditioning. M. N. ANTOPOLSKYCoral Gables, Fla. ESKIMOS OWN REFRIGERATORS I think our neighbor in Canada’s being narrow-minded. An air-conditioned convertible (though costly)…

IT’S RARE that we devote a road test to a European car not currently being imported to the U.S., but in the case of the VW 1500. there seems good reason to make an exception. The fact is that the cars now available in Canada and Mexico, and significant numbers have been brought in from Europe by servicemen and tourists, so you’re likely to see the 1500 with fair regularity in larger cities. Some VW dealers have a limited supply of 1500s for sale – cars gotten through unofficial channels abroad and sold here as used vehicles for a premium. Volkswagen of America, the head organization in this country, isn’t talking about official import plans, but it seems likely that the 1500 will be brought in before long as a…

A TRUCK CAMPER is said to be nothing more than a travel trailer without chassis, wheels or tires, plunked down on a truck bed. This is. of course, a gross simplification. Camper coaches are designed to be hauled, not towed, and their effect on the carrier vehicle is apt to be far different from when the same vehicle’s used to tow trailers. For example, consider the cooling system. A truck that hauls a 1700-pound camper around town isn’t really suffering any pain. But load the same truck with a full selection of canned foods, camping gear, water, and passengers, and take that truck through hot deserts and up steep grades, and the result is apt to be very unsteady driving. The engine may overheat on steep grades but run cool…

SMOKY CORVAIR I own a 1961. 98-hp Corvair. Recently, I was in a parking lot with the engine idling, and smoke started pouring out the exhaust. I shut it off and left the car about a half-hour, then returned and everything was normal. Then about two weeks later, the same thing happened. It smoked about two minutes and then stopped. I have 22,000 miles on this car, and it doesn’t burn a drop of oil (changed every 2000 miles). What causes the smoke? GERALD LASSOWBrooklyn, N. Y. You didn’t mention whether the smoke was blue (indicating oil) or whether it was black (over-rich fuel mixture). Since you do say the car doesn’t burn oil, we’d assume that your carb idle mixture is off. This could be caused by dirt, worn…