Indholdsfortegnelse for May 1975 i MotorTrend

LTD MARK IV? Well, now there is a Continental grille for Ford’s LTD. It is triple plated and can be installed in minutes without drilling, welding or any other major fuss. It just bolts on. Now what we really need is a replacement Continental Mark IV grille that will fit the Continental Mark IV. From Uni-Sun, 360 Stewart, Addison, IL 60101. RECOVERY PERIOD If you ever have your car (or any property) stolen, you will make your life a lot easier if the police can readily identify it. Automark Etching Transfers are a patented anti-theft etching that transfers to any smooth surface. Put it on your windshield and you’d have to replace the glass to get rid of it. The best number to use is your drivers license number, since…

It sounded like a good idea at the time. Why not go through our Gas Mileage Almanac, and the EPA Mileage Report, picking out the five cars with the best gas mileage, and then run those cars on level ground at a constant speed using a few simple tricks to discover the maximum mileage the average driver could expect from his ’75 car without modifying the car itself? We even had a great cover blurb for it—“Five Cars that Get Over 40 Miles Per Gallon!” Well, if you’ve looked at the cover, you know that’s not quite the way it worked out. The Honda CVCC Civic was a logical choice; the EPA gave it 39 mpg on the open highway, and we had pushed one to 37.4 mpg on our…

There’s a whole range of small imported cars for sale today that might best be characterized as Walter Mitty machines—small, basic economy coupes that try to look like sport coupes. None of them make any pretense of actually offering sport coupe performance; they’re all for show, not for go. While there are a number of cars in this category—the Dodge Colt GT, Austin Marina GT, and Subaru GL, for example—two stand out as class leaders by virtue of sheer popularity: the Datsun B210 and the Toyota Corolla E-5. If looks could kill, you’d think the B210 would be long dead by now. The B210 is one of the most overstyled cars to come along in a long time, especially with its 1969 Sunbeam Alpine roofline. With luck, this sort of…

LOSING THE NUMBERS GAME-1974 The U.S. and Germany were the heaviest losers in private car production and sales last year. The U.S. led output with 8 million cars (-20 percent), ahead of Japan with 3.9 million (-12 percent). France with 3 million (-5 percent), West Germany with 2.8 million (-22 percent), Italy with 1.6 million (-8 percent) and Great Britain with 1.5 million (-12 percent). Big loser was Germany, which dropped from third to fourth place, behind France. The Gallic car’s success was generally credited to their functional, practical and economical nature, along with the high value of the Deutschmark. For example, over the last six years, labor costs in Germany climbed by 70 percent and raw materials by 30 percent, while the sales of cars increased by only 23…

The van craze and the miniaturization movement have both been with us for some time now, and it’s been obvious that sooner or later the two would meet in the creation of the mini-van. Chevrolet is the first Detroit automaker to enter the field, with a new range of mini-vans and a mini-pickup to be introduced in the spring of 1976. The new minis won’t replace the standard-sized Chevy and GMC vans, they’ll just be new additions to the line. The new range will include the usual window and windowless vans, a wagon, and an El Camino-type pickup. Originally designed around GM’s now-tabled Wankel, the mini-vans will now feature more conventional sources of power. There were some space problems involved in finding the right replacement engine, as the vans are…

The Daytona 500. There isn’t anything like it anywhere in the world. The all-time, A-number one, first class, knock-down, drag out, greatest spectacle in racing. The Big One. The one everybody wants to win. The one they put first in their list of racing credits. The one Richard Petty has won five times and no other driver has won twice. The one NASCAR’s all-time super speedway king dog, David Pearson, has never won. This isn’t the granddaddy of racing whose trophy is reverently cradled by an awe-stricken pilgrim, humbly grateful to tread the golden dais. Daytona is the 19-year-old, lump-shirted, tight-butted, hipswingin’, fire-breathin’, yaller-haired honey you don’t ever want to bring home to Daddy. This 500 is the race men would cheat their preacher, slingshot their brother or sell the…

THE GLASS WAR Since the beginning in 1953 when the Corvette had a six-cylinder engine, a two-speed slush box transmission and came only in white, challengers nave been many, but conquerors none. The two-seater T-Bird gave up and went fancy, the iron riding British sports cars never had a chance, even the vaunted Shelby Cobra lacked the staying power to maintain the challenge. Just as it seemed there would be an end to this meddling combat, along comes the Bricklin. You mention Bricklin and Corvette in the same breath and you get an instant denial from both camps. Tony Kopp, West Coast front man for the Bricklin Vehicle Corporation instantly poo-poos the suggestion that they would dare take cudgel against the undisputed champion. However, there’s only one other two-seater, plastic…

GOLDEN WHEELS AWARDS How can the five couples selected for the Golden Wheels Consumer Panel represent me when I’m not a couple? Doug Little Detroit, Michigan I am very disappointed in you. I didn’t hear about your Car of the Year through MOTOR TREND, but through a commercial. Not too sharp. Randall Mendiola Longview, Washington She was not a beautiful gal and was limited in ability, but the banker’s daughter was given the award… C.W. McCall Sequim, Washington I am writing to compliment you on your choice of Car of the Year. Although I own a Honda Civic, I thought the Monza 2+2 was a good choice. Wait ’till next year, Honda fans. Lynn Bellingrath Elizabeth, New Jersey …the Mercedes would have been a much better selection. David Fillis Mission…

This is the car that Cadillac’s elite customers insisted upon. By “elite” we mean, of course, the people who can always afford a luxury car, good times or bad. It was created as the answer to the question: “Why doesn’t GM make a fine, expensive, smaller car?” In the last five or six years Cadillac owners have been traveling more and more, points out division Chief Engineer Bob Templin, and they’ve been seeing in Europe that luxury cars could be smaller. They’d come back to their Cadillac dealer driving a Jaguar or Mercedes-Benz asking—says Marketing Director Gordon Horsburgh — “Where’s your car like this one?” Now he has an answer: Cadillac’s Seville. The Seville was tailored to its market. Reflects Chief GM Designer Bill Mitchell, “The only other car that…

We’ve been attempting to locate a Bricklin owner for some months now, and shortly before we acquired our own test vehicle, Mitchell Schwartz of Sherman Oaks, California, telephoned us up—he owned a Bricklin. He bought his 1974 Bricklin in late December for $7685, and has spent considerable time examining the machine to, “see how it was all put together.” After racking up 7300 miles on his car, Schwartz knows the Bricklin very well indeed. What does it mean to be a Bricklin owner? Well, first of all it means 22 people a day asking, “What is it?” And, after telling them, it means 19 of them saying, “What in the hell is that?” Secondly, it means having a car where the thoughts behind it were building a sleekly styled, sexy…

GMC’s New Gentleman Jim: A Bit of Snob Appeal GMO introduced the first in a series of three, limited edition half-ton trucks in January. These jazzy trucks are designed to Serve as traffic builders for dealers and add prestige to the GMC truck line. They are aimed at both the pleasure car owner who prefers a pickup as a second car but doesn’t want any old run-of-the-mill truck, and at the person who has never owned a truck before because he considered them high, uncomfortable workhorses that ride like lumberwagons. Not so these luxury trucks. Gentleman Jim, first in the series, features a black and gold exterior, special trim stripes, Rally wheels with self-locking lug nuts, and carries B.F. Goodrich 60-aspect ratio TransAm radials. Mounted on the front bumper are…