Innehållsförteckning för March 1977 från MotorTrend

FALL INTRO FOR ’78 CELICA Like it or not, the Toyota Celica will be completely redesigned for the 1978 model year. The new Celica will be introduced in Japan early this summer, with American introduction due in the fall. Reportedly, only one Celica body style will be offered—a hatchback (whoops, liftback) coupe. A large percentage of the preliminary design work was done by Calty Industrial Design, Toyota’s U.S.-based design studio. While the Celica has shed its Mustang-esque styling, it is still identifiable as a Celica. One welcome change is the added visibility made possible by a huge increase in the car’s glass area. Rear % vision, specifically, is greatly improved. Among the more important developments, it is rumored that an independent rear suspension will be used on the Celica GT…

On a warm, sunny, winter day in Southern California, while most of the rest of the nation was in the grip of a cold snap, a group of nine import cars was gathered at Riverside International Raceway. This particular group of cars was the result of months of winnowing and sifting on the part of the Motor Trend test staff among the offerings the importers are bringing to this country in the year 1977. The object: to select the Motor Trend 1977 Import Car of the'Year. The nine cars were now at Riverside Raceway to begin the hard, by-the-numbers, test series that would, eventually? provide the basis for selecting the overall winner. The measured test numbers the cars displayed at the test track, together with the scores gathered in a…

It may have been Riverside in October 1962, February 1963 at Daytona, or then again it could have been a month later at Sebring, where the Sunbeam Alpine team placed 31st and 36th. It doesn't really matter which, because the result was the same. Ian Garrad, then West Coast manager for Rootes Motors, Inc., had seen Carroll Shelby’s Cobras run, and the idea which had been bouncing around in his head for some years began to come to a point of focus. Garrad and other Rootes types in the United States had been looking at what was happening to the sales charts of Chevrolet’s Corvette, Jaguar’s E Type and the Healey 3000, then comparing it with their own Sunbeam Alpine… with unfavorable results. The Alpine had been around since 1959…

Very few people really believed that cars would ever race through the streets of downtown Long Beach, California. Even after the shakedown event, a Formula 5000 race in late 1975, there were skeptics who doubted that a full-fledged Grand Prix would ever transpire. And, when that race ran with hardly a hitch, there were still those who proclaimed it the first and last Long Beach Grand Prix. For a while, it appeared they might be right. The race organizers were in debt, and the city government came in for some scathing scrutiny from the Los Angeles Times. There were charges of influence peddling and political bossism, along with reports of mismanagement of city funds. The running of the Grand Prix was but a small portion of the controversial Times coverage,…

CHRYSLER: Small Chrysler Corp, is wrestling about what to do with its big cars over the next two years. The firm will have its 1979 “R-Body” cars ready for introduction in the fall of 1978. These will be new “family-size” Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler cars, built off 116-in.-wheelbase bodies—or about the same size as new GM regular-size cars, and slightly bigger than the downsize regular cars planned by Ford for its 1979-81 introduction. The problem for Chrysler is what to do before the competition’s cars are introduced. Its main big-car plant in Belvidere, Illinois, now building full-size (C-Body) Chryslers, Plymouths and Dodges, will be changed next summer to production of new Plymouth and Dodge subcompact L-Body cars, including a 5-door vehicle similar to the French Simca 1308. Plymouth and Dodge…

Now that the 1977 and 1977½ new car introductions are over, it's time to see what Detroit has in store for 1978 and, more specifically, what GM has up its corporate sleeve. The General's programme of size and weight reduction across the board continues in 1978 with a new series of mid-sized cars in the Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick ranges. The new intermediates, or A-body cars as they are called within GM, will all be built on a uniform 108-in. wheelbase, as opposed to the 112- and 116-in. wheelbases now used. This size reduction will make things at, say, a Pontiac dealer even more confusing than they are now. This year, a Le Mans 2-door coupe is on a wheelbase 4 in. shorter than a larger, more expensive Bonneville…

The test and scoring procedure that eventually shakes a Motor Trend Car of the Year, domestic or imported, out of a group of candidates is arduous but fair. It is a distillation of our standard road test method combined with some of the evaluation elements developed by Motor Trend that are so objective that they are used by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department in police car selection. Consisting of three parts, it takes a week in the doing and results in a series of raw scores which are fed into a computer, from which comes the final score that determines the top award winner. The first part of the test is the performance phase, conducted at Riverside Raceway. Though it is a distillation of the regular road test, the procedure…

David Pearson seems to get as big a kick from beating Bill Bro-drick out of $10 as he does when he wins a race. He’d bet the bearded Union Oil public relations man that the “super-trick” car Cotton Owens had been working on for so long in his Spartanburg, South Carolina, shop wouldn’t be ready by the time the American 500 rolled around in October. No, the wager didn’t concern a race car, though you might have thought so by the number of drivers and mechanics who asked Brodrick about it. It was just a little ol’ Vega wagon that Brodrick was having Cotton “warm up a little.” Bill Brodrick is as much a fixture on the NASCAR circuit as checkered flags and fried chicken. His Job is to see…

Occasionally, auto makers will build a show car, designed around an upcoming production model, to gauge public opinion. Ford did it with the Mustang II prototype back in 1944. AMC showed what was essentially a ’68 Javelin (in station wagon form) in 1967 as the AMX III. Now Pontiac is going to give us a preview of some of its 1978 intermediates, but not on a show car. On a production car. The Phoenix. Although the production Phoenix shares Ventura heritage and name with Pontiac’s plastic idea car of two years ago, there is little other common ground. The ’77½ Phoenix is sort of an up-market Ventura. A Pontiac Monarch, if you will. The Ventura range will continue as it is until the 1978 model year, when the Ventura SJ…

Two years—which equates with 24,000 miles in the minds of those engaged in the manufacture of automobiles—may not seem like a long time. But when you compress those two years into one, and use Los Angeles as your principal compressor, those miles can represent the distance between infancy and temperamental middle age in the life of a car. We are referring to one particular 24,000-mile car, the Pontiac Sunbird we introduced to you last May as our long-term test vehicle for 1976. Here we are in 1977, and the 24,000 miles are on the clock. The Sunbird passed this milepost peacefully somewhere in California’s Napa Valley one misty morning. But the total history has been a good deal more eventful: Irritating mechanical problems, a couple we regard as characteristic, another…

Remember the movie “Bullitt?” Well, the Charger vs. Mustang duel of the movie’s late frames took place between some pretty fair machines—and was only one of many swan songs for the muscle car era. In a battle of attrition, the big Mustang is now dead, while today’s Charger still hangs around; but the 1977 Charger SE (for Special Edition) is very happy to relax any clenched fist from days of yore under an elegant shape of Sunday-best style. The new Charger is long and low and is nearly unsurpassed as smooth body shapes go. Chrysler has cleaned up every line of its Charger design since the muscle car image struck briefly in the late ’60s and then faded with the anti-pollution sunset of the ’70s. But the 1977 Charger has…

You can’t buy this car in the U.S., at least not yet. The one pictured here belongs to Sweden’s ambassador and spends much of itc time tucked away in the garage of the Watergate, the famous office building which, among other things, houses the offices of the Swedish Embassy. Driving out of that garage, you immediately notice the car’s most un-limousine-like feature—it handles. Sitting far back behind the chauffeur, the passenger cringes while expecting a whole side to be scraped off as the car negotiates the winding passage to the street. But no, the Volvo 264 TE (Top Executive) whips through the chicane unscathed and blends nicely into the heavy Washington traffic. Unlike other limousines, this one behaves more like a normal-size car. And so it should, since it’s based…

Since its introduction for the 1975 model year, the Granada/Monarch series has skyrocketed to best-seller position in the marketplace. The Granada remains Ford Division's top seller, while the Monarch has been edged out of Lincoln-Mercury Division’s number-one position early in the 1977 model year by the new Thunderbirdish Cougar. While the basic character of the cars remains unchanged, a greater number of significant changes have been incorporated this year than at any time since they were new. The 302 V-8 engine, which both our test cars had, has extensive changes in the areas of the pistons, heads and intake manifold, intended mainly to help emissions, but there are beneficial side effects. The compression ratio has been upped to 8.4:1 from 8.0 for better combustion efficiency. Intake manifold passages have been…

Fourteen race drivers of the exalted Grand Prix rank have won World Championships during the past quarter century. Only one, Phil Hill in 1961, was American. Now, 16 seasons later, comes Mario Andretti. How Andretti does come. He just finished up 1976, which began for him about as badly as a season can, by winning the rain-splattered and deadly dangerous Japanese Grand Prix. A triumphant 6th in final Formula 1 standings, all year Andretti, at 36, equaled and frequently exceeded the skill, aggression and determination of world-rank drivers years younger. As of this moment, only new global titlist James Hunt of England and four others separate Andretti from the 1977 crown he seeks so desperately. Andretti will become the 15th world driving champion. Or maybe he won’t. But already there…

MAXI LOOK AT MINIS U.S. inroads have always been hard to come by for British Leyland Minis. Now, however, market demand around the rest of the world is at an all-time high—strongest in the Mini’s 18-year life. Why not celebrate—from one to another, with former Miss Great Britain, Sue Cuff. There is precious little on the national economic front for John Bull to cheer about, and the sight of the 4 millionth Mini has just got to soothe the tired automotive brow. But today’s Mini days are Maxi looks, because nearly 50% of the 4 million minis have been shipped abroad in some 13 model variations. A genuine success story! TRUCKIN’ GETS LIGHTER A new GMC light-duty cab and chassis model will be added in May to production operations of…