Indholdsfortegnelse for November 1979 i MotorTrend

THE 1982 CORVETTE We all know how much fun it is to talk about future Vettes and what they will look like. Well, I can tell you one thing: the 1985 Corvette will have a triple rotor motor mounted in the middle… then again, it could have turbine power…and of course it won't look anything like it does now. Nobody fools with success, least of all multi-billion-dollar corporations, so you can bet practically everything you've got that the '82 Corvette won’t look very different from the 1980 Corvette. Most important is to retain the Corvette’s familiar silhouette, just as the Camaro/Firebird shape has remained unchanged for the past 10 years. It’s easily identifiable, it alludes to all manner of minutiae and, above all, it is sexy. We can say that…

Every new car introduced to our energy-conscious world is naturally billed as the answer to all our automotive needs, and Opel’s brand-new Kadett is no different. Despite denials, the Kadett should be the replacement for the Chevette in the U.S. and Brazil, and for the Gemini from Australia to the Arctic Isles. In short, Opel’s new offering shapes up to be GM’s worldwide attack on small cars. In order to go head to head with the best-engineered cars in the world, German GM built a small automobile that shares no parts with the five million Kadetts that came before it. The new design has front-wheel drive, transverse engine, two-box styling and a model spread that few of its competitors can match. This 1980 T-car is clearly the shape of things…

Like time, performance is a relative quality. It had one very distinct meaning back in the halcyon days of musclecars, when you could stroll on down to your local dealer and drive out in a hemi-’Cuda or L-88 Vette. Today, its taken on quite another connotation. But in this era of substantially lowered expectations and massive downsizing programs one thing hasn’t changed much: Americans still have an appetite for cars that respond to the call of a heavy right foot. In the mid- to late-Sixties, we experienced a period of admitted overkill. Detroit gave us the baddest of the bad—a truly nasty group of 400-plus-horsepower street panzers whose straight-line acceleration bordered on the absolutely brutal. Its a new ballgame now. Hard-line anti-pollution laws, increasingly stringent CAFE requirements, and 29-cent-a-liter gasoline…

Everyone in my family, from wife to teen-ager, best described the Saab Turbo as a "rocket ship." Noting that this term reflected their reaction to the Saab's exciting performance, it was also aimed at the attention paid to passenger comfort and convenience-especially over the long-haul trip and particularly because of the versatility of extra cargo space for the recreational junket. My introduction to the Saab Turbo, however, was not without incident. In other words, there were some problems. Within the first 1200 miles that I drove this brand-new vehicle, an annoying thump developed in the rear end, which proved to be shock absorbers. The problem was that the supply of Bilsteins included a batch with faulty mounting bushings, which under warranty took only a day to fix. Next, we encountered…

And I tell you a ship so brilliantly conceivedWas never meant to float.I tell you softly the Titanic sank. -John Quinn There is a good deal of weirdness around Highland Park, Michigan, these days what with life rafts being thrown over the sides of the Walter P. Chrysler building, Joe Garagiola barking about rebates like a rabid blue tick hound, and The Dodge Boys tricked out as Salvation Army look-alikes playing "Nearer My God to Thee" for the benefit of former Lt. J.E. Carter, U.S.N. Which is not to say the indentured servants in Chrysler Corp's R&D bunkers would have any hints about the imminence of catastrophe. Like the black gang on the Unsinkable Ship, these poor devils are slaving away at salvation unaware about temporal matters like icebergs or…

This has been quite a year for Renault. Although J.P. Jabouille’s stunning victory with the twin-turbo RS10 in the French GP has been responsible for the lion’s share of the corporate limelight, there is a less publicized but equally intriguing factory effort taking place in IMSA’s Champion Spark Plug Racing Sedan Challenge. The RS series pits sedan against sedan, with the major restriction being that all cars must run on IMSA-approved street radial tires. For Patrick Jacquemart, 33-year-old head of Renault’s U.S. competition department and driver of the firm’s RS RS, affectionately dubbed Le Race Car, it’s become a personal challenge of major proportions. Although RS rules allow for engines up to 3.8 liters in displacement, Le Race Car’s tiny 1.4-liter powerplant is the smallest engine currently being run in…

RIGHT OF WAY AND THE FRENCH WAY Bostonians and New Yorkers have earned reputations for being outrageously aggressive drivers, but the French make them look like children putting around on Big Wheels. This shot taken from the famed Arc de Triomphe in Paris clearly reveals the rule of the road to be "every man for himself." Making your way around this central spinoff for all of Paris can be a harrowing experience for out of towners, as the local drivers, especially the cabbies, never back off. The entire trip around the Arc is one long near miss, yet accidents are few. THE "S" STANDS FOR SHORT END IN AMERICA Porsche chose the recent Frankfurt Auto Show to introduce its "S" version of the 928, which brings both good news and…

To complement the new 200SX, Datsun has introduced an engine/emissions package built around their new Z20E powerplant and the Nissan Anti-Pollution System. The engine is based on Datsun's veteran L20B, but in order to comply with the more stringent 1980 U.S. emissions requirements, it has undergone a series of internal and external changes that rival the 200SX's. Starting from square one, the block has been slanted 10 degrees in the opposite direction of the L20B, and the water jacket redesigned. A new aluminum cross-flow hemi head has replaced the old single--sided wedge unit, and the SOHC design now uses a rocker shaft in place of a pivot-type actuator mechanism. The camshaft has been reprofiled, the valves and springs modified and pistons and rods shortened and lengthened, respectively. The Z20E relies…

Parnelli Jones is a man who has figured prominently in the lives of two generations of Granatellis. Looking only slightly older now, twelve years after his near-historic run in Andy Granatelli's STP turbine car, his trim physique, maintained by five-mile runs at sunrise, he has a justifiably self-assured attitude and a subtle something that says he is every bit the man he was. He still looks as though he can take any machine to its limits and give as good as he gets, and then some, in any battleground, be it boardroom or race track. As a part of the pre-race pageantry before the 10th annual running of the California 500 at Ontario Motor Speedway, Jones was the driver of Vince Granatelli's turbine-powered Corvette for a 5-mph parade lap, then…

To bring those of you who have been asleep since 1967 up to date, we are embarking on the decade of the turbocharger. We may be embarking on the century of the turbocharger, but since very few automotive people are willing to second-guess federal regulations, OPEC or Secretary-designate of Transportation Neil Goldschmidt, much less Jeanne Dixon’s astrological charts, let’s leave it at a modest 10 years. The reasons are simple: with a turbocharger, the car owner in a fuel-short age gets the best of about four worlds. ● He is able to buy a car with a small, relatively inexpensive engine. ● That engine, operating in a normally aspirated mode, returns optimum mileage. ● But when the boost kicks in, the small, flaccid motor turns into an Amazing Hulk—a fact…

Before we actually get into available aftermarket hardware, there are a number of points that need to be Clarified. The chief benefit of any well-oalanced turbocharger installation is power on demand. Exhaust-generated boost rises and falls with engine rom, but there is no boost when the engine is at low rpm or on lightly loaded throttle. It sounds deceptively simple, but it isn’t. Turbocharging means complete rearrangement of engine intake and exhaust systems, re-tuning, and calibration—often accompanied by a long period of adjustment following the installation, And turbocharging is relatively expensive. The high temperatures involved demand costly metals in the turbocharger itself, as well as in plumbing, connectors and control systems. There’s a maze of individual components in every system, and it’s extremely important that every single part is made…

The Deck Has Been Shuffled, but the Cards Have Yet to be Dealt He did not want to take orders from Hamilton Jordan; he refused to fire two trusted aides; he thought the White House was going soft on the 1981-84 CAFE schedule, and he was not convinced that the administration shared his enthusiasm for his "re-invent the car" program, so Brock Adams quit his post as secretary of transportation. Although an unknown quantity to the auto industry when he took the reigns of DOT three years ago, Adams had become Detroit's public enemy number one for his tough, uncompromising stands on mandatory safety and fuel economy rules and for his Utopian push for a "quantum leap forward" in auto technology. Together with sidekick Joan Claybrook, who, despite rumors to…

IT ISN'T JUST A FIELD GAME ANYMORE Now, LaCrosse is a car, a 132-inch-wheelbase luxury roadster to be built by Automobili Intermeccanica (2421 Susan Street, Santa Ana, CA 92704), the purveyors of the Porsche Speedster replicars. The 210-inch-long droptop is 77 inches wide and only 52 inches high, with a curb weight of 4200 pounds. The LaCrosse will use a Ford 351cid V-8 engine and automatic transmission in a modified Ford frame. Standard features include Connolly leather trim, Recaro bucket seats, Wilton carpeting, air conditioning, power steering, power disc/drum brakes, cruise control, power windows, quartz clock, air horns, fog lamps, AM/FM stereo cassette system, and a combination of burled walnut and mahogany trim. All gauges are VDO, and tires are Michelin P225 / SOR 15. Suggested retail price has not…

A funny thing happened on the way to the 1980 model year. Back in April, Chevrolet General Manager Bob Lund told the attendees at his Citation X-car preview that his new car was the first small family car for the Eighties and would prove to be the kind of transportation value Americans recognize. A couple of months later, Gar Laux, Chrysler executive vice president for sales and marketing, told us that the Plymouth Horizon and its sister car, Dodge Omni. were the first American small front-drive cars of the modern era and that they presented the buyer with outstanding value. Then. a couple of weeks later. Bill Bourke, Ford executive vice president for North American automotive operations, allowed as how-new front-drives notwithstanding-the Fairmont/Zephyr was the best value around in family…

Daimler-Benz is not a company that rushes into things. This time around they’ve allowed themselves seven fat years to develop their new S-car, which shows the engineering care that goes into Mercedes workmanship. At one point in the S-car’s development, its body was only to be updated (never to be mistakingly referred to as downsized), but sound judgment prevailed and a totally new shell—Bruno Sacco’s first—emerged. And, to his everlasting credit, Sacco has retained the classic Mercedes look while maintaining a contemporary flair. Since full-size Mercedes sedans annually cover nearly twice the average mileage of a typical German car, there was no question that designers would not make sacrifices in comfort. Yet, there had to be some reduction in what some would call conspicuous consumption, without a loss of power…

The Indianapolis 500 is the premier automotive spectacle. It is seen by more people and involves more money than any automobile race in the world. It symbolizes the essence of Americana, and because it does, the people, organizations and products associated with the race acquire an instant credibility in the eyes of millions. For an automobile manufacturer with something new to offer, the pace car is the perfect rolling advertisment. This year, Pontiac chose to spotlight its turbocharged Trans Am. They admit to toying with the idea for the past couple of years but decided to wait for the obvious identification associated with turbocharged race cars and America’s first mass-produced turbocharged high-performance V-8 passenger car. It is an unspoken but obvious consideration that the first such engine in a passenger…

Being tied to your mother’s apron strings is generally a pretty lousy way to go through life. But when “mom” happens -to be the No. | best-selling car in the world, it puts things in an entirely different light. The case in point is Toyota’s all-new Corolla Tercel. The Tercel is Toyota’s first-ever front-wheel-drive model. Rather than trying to establish a separate identity for the car, Toyota decided to simply make it part of their tremendously successful Corolla line. Apart from common nomenclature and the ability to go a long way on a gallon of gasoline, the Tercel shares precious little else with its maternal relative. Still, by incorporating it into the Corolla lineup, Toyota has maximized the Tercel’s chances for rapid and widespread market acceptance. The Tercel is powered…