Indholdsfortegnelse for September 1986 i MotorTrend

New XJ40 Jag—at Last Jaguar’s much-delayed XJ40 luxury sedan is at last set to make its debut. This crucial replacement for the 17-year-old XJ-6 design is now expected to appear at Britain’s Motor Show, in Birmingham, in mid-October. The XJ40 existed in raw concept stage more than a decade ago, while Jaguar was still a division of beleaguered British Leyland. The new model has been undergoing tests worldwide, in disguise, for more than two years. Jaguar claims the car has “had a development and proving program which we don’t think anyone in the British motor Industry has ever undertaken before.” By the time it goes on sale, the XJ40 will have covered more than 5 million test miles, many in the Arizona heat. This compares with just 25,000 pre-production miles…

There is no reason for mysteries of the past to remain so. And with the 626 GT Turbo Sport Coupe, Mazda engineers searched out solutions to an old mystery: How to give a sport coupe stunning performance in objective terms—and polished refinement in those subtle, subjective shadings. The answers to that mystery, they knew, would give driving excellence. Proof of their solutions is found searching out other old mysteries of another, older past. Deep in Mississippi’s woods, the old Natchez Trace winds its way through soft hills and a nation’s history. So, too, will go the 626 GT Turbo, along that old river, through old haunts, chasing old ghosts. But with new solutions from Mazda’s engineers. One is under the hood. The overhead cam engine delivers the razorsharp response and…

The first time I drove a Merkur, it was actually a Sierra XR4i—no T. That was in England in August 1983, and I decided it was an eminently likeable car, albeit a bit thirsty at high speeds—19 miles per imperial gallon driven briskly—with great seats, utility, visibility, refinement, handling, performance, and ride. The first few swerves were a bit unnerving—the car had unexpected body roll—but it tracked surely. I hit one of those roundabouts preceded by a “slow down now” sign, and ignored it, as years of exposure to mollycoddling Yank signs had trained me to do. This left me heeled over hard to the left, frantically trying to turn right and slow down at the same time. And the car just did it all: slowed, turned, and left me…

When the folks in heartland America think of Hollywood, I bet they figure it’s a little more glamorous than this. Where we are is somewhere out in the boondocks of Pima County, Arizona. Tucson sits ‘way over that far range of mountains. According to the highway sign, we’re at the corner of Sandario Road and San Joaquin Road. According to all the other signs, people around here must not have anything better to do than shoot guns at signs a lot. Except now, there’s a movie being made. It’s called “The Wraith.” The dictionary defines wraith as a kind of ghost. The plot had been described to me as a cross between “American Graffiti” and “High Plains Drifter.” With cars. This just might be my kind of movie. The story…

Rahal charged into the lead on lap 199 and held on to edge Cogan by 1.44 sec Winning the Indianapolis 500 always marks a coming of age for a driver. For 1986 victor Bobby Rahal, it was far more than just the process of adding his face to those privileged few who’ve earned the right to look out in perpetuity from the Borg-Warner Trophy. The 33-year-old Rahal used head and heart to take his first Indy win for TrueSports Racing, dedicating it to his close friend and team owner Jim Trueman. For Trueman, his greatest racing conquest also proved to be his last. Late in the final stages of a losing battle with colon cancer, the dynamic head of one of CART’s most powerful and successful racing organizations made what…

Poppet valve internal combustion engine technology is so firmly entrenched in our society, it’s virtually impossible to visualize any serious contenders for its dominant position, at least for the next few decades. The mechanical methodology found in current engines dates back to the beginning of this century and can hardly be considered the paragon of efficiency or engineering excellence—by today’s standards. Most modern-day gains in performance, efficiency, and reliability have come as a result of better material sciences, rather than any significant design changes. The mechanical concepts remain basically unchanged. Perhaps the most archaic single element is the crankshaft connecting rod system, which converts the linear motion of the piston to rotary motion at the crankshaft. Basic problems exist relative to the kinematics of the crank-rod system. At top dead…

Will Chevrolet lose its divisional hammerlock on America’s icon sports car, the Corvette? Yes, says an informed source, in an exclusive to Detroit Report. The car reportedly is being taken away from Chevrolet altogether in the 1988-89 season, and Chevy personnel are understandably outraged. The reason? GM brass are reaffirming Chevy’s place as the corporation’s cost-effective “entry-level” division, and Corvette’s high-content, high-priced nature is no longer compatible with that philosophy. The source says plans call for the high-image Corvette to become its own controlled “stand alone” badge, able to be picked up and sold by any of GM’s divisions’ dealers. Evidently, any except Chevrolet. Buick is said to be a prime contender under the plan. —Daniel Charles Ross Breathing Easier: Relief from Drunk Drivers Although many steps have been taken…

What goes around comes around. Be it the flu, clothing styles, or automotive fashions, what has come before sets the stage for what is to follow. So it is with the new Allanté and the V-16 Speedster you see pictured here. The Allanté is the result of the cold, hard realities of today’s marketplace. Cadillac needs a new, prestigious car, and the design house of Pininfarina is the most cost-effective means to that end. But taking a look through rose-colored glasses at yesterday, cost/benefit analysis wasn’t the only way cars were built. The V-16 Speedster must have been one of the first two or three projects to be completed by Giovanbattista “Pinin” Farina in his own Carrozzeria Pinin Farina, after he quit working for his brother in 1930. The client…

In an age of conspicuous consumption, where something more expensive is necessarily better than anything less expensive, there is no better purchase than the Ferrari 328GTS. First of all, there is the price—$62,500—which is high enough to keep out the riff-raff (unless the riff-raff happen to traffic in contraband pharmaceuticals). Even better, the price includes a $1500 “gas guzzler” tax levied by the federal government. Talk about conspicuous consumption. The tax means the well-heeled buyer is ponying up a grand and a half for the privilege of paying for more gas than everyone else. While all this may seem quite negative to those ecologists out there in the audience with Save the Whales stickers plastered to the bumXpers of their Saabs, let me assure you that, in the Right Circles,…

Just four years ago, the subcompact market was as dull as dishwater. Today, however, it’s home for some of the hottest automotive hardware being produced. If you’re currently shopping for a subcompact, you already know of the market’s vast selection and its need for clearer definition. What was once just a market niche is now the broad base of all retail car sales. Yesterday’s econobox subcompact car segment is today’s full-line product gamut. From little luxos, trendy transports, family fliers, and rocket racers to any number of the above combinations, these are today’s subcompacts. If your car-buying dollars require that you extract as much practicality as performance from your new investment, your shopping list just grew to include Toyota’s newest family member, the Corolla FX16 GT-S. Add this to the…

Detroit—The way things get accomplished here is by means of attrition. There are planeloads of car company product planners on the corporate dole, men and women whose jobs are to dream up the new vehicles we buy. Or don’t buy, in some cases. These idea people are besieged by entrepreneurs of various caliber, capability, and level of financial solvency, who offer to supply trim packages, conversions, and special vehicle projects that we buy as if from the factory. The cacophony at times must be terrific, but can you imagine a better job for car people? They are actually paid money to create ideas for automobiles. The dark side of that creative process is tinged in the eerily reflected green of dollars, unfortunately. Changing even the bracket that supports a proposed…

Roush/Protofab Split Doubles Trans-Am Excitement Over the course of the past two years, the Roush/Protofab organization reigned as the dominant power in the SCCA Bendix TransAm. In 1985, its awesome Capri contingent romped to 12 wins in 15 starts, and Wally Dallenbach Jr. emerged as the series champion after a season-long struggle with runningmate Willy T. Ribbs. But a series of off-season shakeups has given the Trans-Am a whole new character for 1986. The split between owner Jack Roush and the Protofab forces headed by team manager Charlie Selix and chief fabricator Gary Pratt effectively rebalanced the competitive equation. New cars, new drivers, and new corporate loyalties have set the stage for a FoMoCo versus GM confrontation of the first magnitude, a suspicion confirmed by the results of the opening…

Spied! ’89 Riviera Buick will restyle its version of GM’s E-car for 1989 to further differentiate it from the Cadillac Eldorado and Oldsmobile Toronado. Changes will include a new grille and redesigned pillars. Briefly noted Just Between Friends: Chrysler Chairman Lee lacocca announced the corporation would sell its entire 12.5% interest in Peugeot for an estimated $275 million. In an apparently unrelated move, Chrysler agreed with Maserati S.p.A. to acquire up to 51% of the Italian car maker by 1996 … Call It Miss SVO: A Ford spokesperson said the company will begin selling 2.3 and 7.5-liter engine blocks to Outboard Marine Corporation (OMC) for use in marine engines … A Lira-Cai Deal: Maserati and Chrysler will produce at least two more joint-venture cars, a sedan and a high-performance V-6,…

All new-car projects are exciting, even if for only a short while. From concept clay model to prototype validation stages through management final approval, the prospect of brand-new hardware, new machinery, sometimes makes car people happily suspend their belief in the axiom that if anything can go wrong, it probably will. And it’s now, when General Motors is in the grip of massive reorganization and that axiom is in full operational force, that some exciting automotive concepts are being created. Exciting for their audacity, for their break from hide-bound tradition, for their hardware. Cadillac Motor division is a machine being transmuted by the GM corporate reorganization. According to reliable lights at Cadillac’s Clark Street HQ and elsewhere, Cadillac has laid its long-range crosshairs squarely upon the manicured ground now trod…

While the device you see here is not precisely the family crest of capitaine de marine Le Sieur Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, and while the people who live in the village he founded in 1701 don’t know how to pronounce its name or what it means, it is nonetheless true that this is the only coat-of-arms affixed to a motorcar that actually belonged to a real family. After 30 years of honorable service to the French monarch in the New World, Antoine returned to France and died in 1730. More than a century and a half passed during which his name slipped deeper and deeper into obscurity before another man, driven by ambition and the search for excellence, would resurrect it and choose it for the automobile that became…

Giorgetto Giugiaro is today’s undisputed leader of the world’s auto styling houses, but his star exhibit at Turin in April was something few expected. On the main turntable was the Ital Design Oldsmobile Quad 4 Incas, sleek and bronzed, an American car for the future. Oldsmobile Chief Engineer Ted Louckes could not conceal his delight at the stir created by the showpiece, one of the few genuine secrets that didn’t leak. “We have been cooperating with Giugiaro on this and other projects for nearly two years,” he said. “We’re now in the world-car era, it’s no longer America, Japan, and Europe, and maybe we could even come up one day with something America could export!” Ital Design’s other eye-catching exhibits were both Volkswagen-derived, the Orbit 4wd wagon based on the…

There is a building on the grounds of Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters that contains one of the most advanced research and development teams in the business of building automobiles. The spotless, computer-filled rooms and galleries are full of intriguing projects, many of which are shown to the public with promises of future production. However, VW has been slow to bring its high-tech developments to market, both because of its requirement that everything issued from Wolfsburg be put through a remarkably rigorous and lengthy test schedule, and because VW has had some trouble convincing the buying public that the firm is more than just an economy car maker. As the consumer is an impatient beast, VW tended to fall behind its German and Japanese peers in reputation, the rather plain nature of…

That Mitsubishi chose the idyllic isle of Kauai on which to debut its 1987 line of mini-trucks might have struck the cynical as a tad suspicious: Wherefore art objectivity from the journalist in paradise? Well, be at rest, ye of little faith, for Mitsubishi also chose to make our time in Hawaii very truck-intensive. When we weren’t tooling around Kauai in a new Mitsubishi truck or being debriefed in the politely gentle hands of Mitsubishi product planners, marketers, and engineers, we were usually talking trucks. We don’t mean to mislead the value of a Hawaiian press introduction. There was a higher-than-usual intake of tropical beverages; there was the zillion-dollar view from the Sheraton Princeville Hotel of Hanalei Bay and the beaches of “South Pacific”; there was a breathtaking helicopter tour…

The beach in front of the Hotel Carlton has an abandoned out-of-season look to it, as in a French Impressionist painting. A few tilting umbrellas. A short row of empty lounge chairs. That’s all. No practically naked boudoir actresses. No tanning-oil-slippery gigolos. Not in February, I say to myself, pulling the trenchcoat collar tighter around my neck. No, Cannes in the winter is certainly not like Cannes in the summer. It’s a pleasant discovery, although a bit chilly. Yesterday was Friday. I had spent all morning with François Ortelli talking cars. Afterward, we had eaten mussels at his villa, which hung precariously high up on the hillside. The view was a postcard of the Riviera. I mailed it to myself. I had spent the afternoon photographing his racing-blue Peugeot. The…

Rearview mirrors have given offense ever since Ray Harroun tried one at the first Indianapolis 500, where it vibrated so much that his eyes couldn’t resolve any images. Undistracted, he drove on to victory. Since then, automobiles have acquired superstructures and the diabolical outside rearview mirror has evolved. Designers have been most insensitive to the problem, neglect that has led to the ugly, stuck-on afterthoughts that blight many current production cars. The Jaguar XJ-S is a particularly distressing example. Not only is its elegant shape burdened with a matched pair of conspicuously unattractive mirrors, apparently picked from the XJ-6 (where they at least do less aesthetic mischief to the basic shape), but also the off-the-peg hardware has gained a flat-black rim, a garish addition to the bright-chrome eyesore previously specified.…