Innehållsförteckning för September 1981 från MotorTrend

ALFASUD HATCHBACK Alfisti have been clamoring for a hatchback version of the Alfasud almost since this sweet-handling mini was launched, and their impatience has finally been rewarded with this trim little cargo-swallower. Fold the rear seat flat and presto!, load capacity triples to an impressive 42.4 cubic feet. Alfa preserved body rigidity at the expense of liftover height, keeping the lower lip of the hatch well above the tops of the wheelwells. Extra bracing was also added around the hatch opening. The new 3-door coupe is available with all seven Alfasud engine options. SUZUKIS JUMPIN’ JIMNY Although Suzuki is known in the U.S. for its wide range of motorcycles, the company has been making microcars and 4-wheel-drive vehicles in Japan for years. The off-road entries belong to Suzuki’s Jimny series,…

You can feel it in the air and see it in the quickened pace of everyday business. Suddenly, the excitement, the energy, the pride are palpable. Even in the midst of severe economic problems, and after an absence of more than a decade, Ford Motor Company has decided to put itself back into racing and back into the high-performance production car business. It’s a part of Ford’s new marketing strategy. Public reaction to this return to big-league racing has been overwhelmingly positive; a whirlwind of mail has told the company to start building something that’s quick, fast and fun to drive, like the Miller Zakspeed Mustang. Ford has responded with a high-performance 5-liter (302cid) HO engine package, applicable to all 1982 Mustang and Capri models, but best blended with the…

Bob McClure chuckles as he points to his black and silver Ferrari 512 Berlinetta Boxer. “I wanted to build a sleeper,” he says. A sleeper, in car parlance, is like a ringer in horse racing, something that’s a lot faster than it looks. People have built them by dropping blown Chevys in Volkswagens or concocting other unlikely combinations of big engines wedged into innocuous cars, but how do you make a sleeper out of a 12-cylinder Ferrari, a car that says, “I’m fast. Come try me,” just with its looks? Well, it isn’t easy or cheap. Bob McClure did it by applying a technology he knows as well as, or better than, anyone in the world: turbocharging. McClure is the president and founder of BAE Turbo Systems. In its infancy,…

Somewhere in a West German cornfield toils the man Oettinger, considered by many to be the most “official” of the non-official Volkswagen technical cabal. In this preposterous setting, Oettinger has focused his ingenious mind on the entire range of Volkswagen powerplants, an engine family that will soon be the largest in the world. After an investment of four years, he is now starting to reap the harvest of a quarter-million dollars worth of tooling. It is a 16-valve, double-overhead-camshaft conversion for the 1.6-liter Volkswagen gasoline engine. Oettinger is accustomed to lengthy, complicated ventures, and his products have been appreciated by American racers for at least 15 years under the Okrasa logo (this includes cylinder heads, crankshafts and engine kits.) His current assemblage will convert 76 ponies into 150 high-compression fleetwing…

When you go to Charlotte Motor Speedway to strap yourself into a Grand National stock car for the first time, the chill of impending disaster strikes before you even get into the track. Portions of the high banking loom above as you drive through the gate, steeply tilted asphalt that takes on a threatening aspect it somehow lacks when you’re just on your way to watch. Knowing you are about to get into a kind of race car you’ve never driven is scary enough, but the sight of the high banking turns your stomach into a glob of cold oatmeal. Naturally you never let on. There’s enough macho in all of us to prevent that, and there’s always the chance that you will survive and maybe even look good in…

…in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting… — G.B. Shaw Pasadena isn’t famous for its automotive connections. Muscle-driven airplanes, maybe (Dr. Paul MacCready, winner of both Kremer Prizes for Human Powered Flight, lives here); earthquakes, perhaps (the Seismological Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology-Caltech-does fundamental research on quake prediction and the structure of the earth); space flight, even (here, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories monitor rocket-launched probes that will wander the galaxy forever); not to mention the familiar Rose Parade and classic Rose Bowl football game each Jan. 1. Heretofore, Pasadena’s sole claim to automotive fame has been as the home of the little old lady who previously owned this here used car that is being pressed on…

And now for today’s Civil Disobedience Quiz: What’s red and rambunctious and will eat your driver’s license faster than you can say, “How fast, officer?” No fair, you peeked. But the truth is, it’s hard to roll with a much higher profile than you get with a BAE/Pacific Turbo Mazda RX-7. Decked out in IMSA race-look fiberglass all around, this piece is almost ticketable when it’s sitting still; they’ll bust you for intent, and probably make it stick just by showing pictures to the local magistrate. “Why, that thing looks just like a race car! Clearly a sociopathic device! Guilty, guilty, guilty!” The hard fact of the matter is that hizzoner may just be right. Proceeding at a socially acceptable pace with this car tested the self-restraint of more than…

SHOW TUNING That’s a term that, in its English form, has recently entered the German vocabulary (though, Teutonic wordplay being what it is, they probably write it “showtuning”). It refers to the creation of one-off customs based on production models, a practice the German design houses have raised to an art. The ground rules call for innovative body work (without rendering the starting point unrecognizable), cost-no-object interior upgrading, and a dash of performance improvement. Take the Aliporta Turbo from Frank Rinder-knecht’s Rinspeed. The most obvious change to the VW Golf (Rabbit to us) is the gullwing door treatment, always a popular touch. The high-tech front end uses a Rinspeed grille—modified to take a third pair of rectangular lights—as well as a bumper/spoiler package off the Rinspeed accessory shelf. The spoiler…

Back in the 2% inflation days of the middle Sixties, when drag coefficient was just an obscure physics term and nobody knew or cared about EGR and NOX, Ford Motor Company singlehandedly started a revolution by introducing a lightweight, nimble, inexpensive car that could melt pavement with a stab of the right foot. The first Mustang. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, and remember… 1964½: The Mustang was shoved in front of the public with a huge media campaign. It worked: 22,000 were ordered over the introductory weekend. But, for the performance-oriented buyer, patience was in order. The 260cid V-8 was good for only 160 horsepower. 1965: The fastback was added, and with it the 289 V-8. In its hottest form, with mechanical lifters, 10.5:1 compression…

They were as unlike as goats and emeralds. They spoke with vividly different accents. They pretended to dramatically disparate social classes. They shared nothing but a stop at Ellis Island coming into the U.S. and a genus: automobile. Each in its way marked the first postwar stride on an evolutionary highway. Thanks to metamorphosis, the generalist survived. The specialist did not. Four years separate the final production of the MG TC and the initial production of the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing coupe—although they seemed a century apart in concept. Each defined the sports car for its time, albeit in differing idioms. The MG was the first emigre, following a path marked by its predecessors from the stiff-upper-lip islands. It made its way in the New World as had British convicts in…

There was a time when Renault had a bad reputation here in the States. Those were the days of the Dauphine, the humpy little rear-engined “Ren-Nawlt” that leaked equal amounts of noise and vital humor from its hindquarters. People couldn’t come to grips with the name much less the cramped habitat of the French “people’s car.” Even though the Dauphine was capable of excellent fuel mileage (this was at the peak of Detroit’s long-boat period), it impressed only those already familiar with French-made automobiles. Consequently, there were few converts to this class of motoring. In the years that followed, there were some well-received Renault cars, among them the 15 series, the 17 series (especially the sporty Gordini) and the present and most popular R5 Le Car. Le Car came to…

Turbo Saab vs. Turbo Volvo: Who’ll wear the crown? “Oh Lord, deliver us from the fury of the Norsemen.” That prayer was sent aloft all across western Europe a whole bunch of times during the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries. But in truth, the Vikings were usually just as busy fighting each other. Like many of the North American Indian tribes, they were divided into innumerable small bands, all armed to the teeth, all irascible. And, as often as not, this kept them from what seemed to be their true calling—boosting the ceremonial silver, chopping up monks and a variety of other misanthropic mischief. So, at first glance, what we seem to have here is a return to those merry days of Nordic fraternal warfare. The leanest, meanest and keenest…

For years, most automotive designers have come out of one school—The Art Center College of Design. Recently, though, the industry’s leading designers reversed that movement and went into Art Center. They were participating in two school-sponsored symposiums on the future of automotive design. The idea was to bring these leaders into close contact with one another (and the assembled alumni and students) and, through an informal discourse and subsequent question-and-answer period, try to divine where exactly we’re headed down the road. The first session, held last October, featured the school’s alumni discussing the international aspects of design for automobiles as they had experienced it. The second seminar, presented last May in concurrence with the opening of the Carrozzeria Italiana exhibit, drew upon the visiting Giorgetto Giugiaro and Sergio Pininfarina. In…

A BLACK DAY FOR CHRYSLER? At Chrysler’s 1981 annual meeting (held in Wilmington, Delaware, in early June), Chairman Lee Iacocca ventured that the company had “a good shot at reporting a profit” for the second quarter of 1981. While breaking into black ink would be nice, with $1.2 billion in government-guaranteed loans (plus interest) to repay and millions more owed to suppliers and banks, Chrysler isn’t out of the woods yet. But, speaking of woods, here’s a preview of the newest version of Chrysler’s classic “woody,” the Town & Country. As we said in July’s Detroit Report, it will arrive next spring, sharing the front end and interior appointments of the downsized, K-based LeBaron due out this fall. Following it, according to Iacocca, will be “…at least two new models…

Model year 1982 will mark a change in philosophy in Detroit. After decades of September-through-August model years and carefully orchestrated all-at-once announcements of domestic product lines for maximum impact and showroom traffic, the Big Four have had to change their ways. Today’s market conditions demand that cars be introduced as soon as each new model is ready for volume production, to keep cash flow as high as possible, keep dealer showroom traffic high, and speed up return on billion-dollar investments in new product. The coming model year will reflect the change, with generally later autumn introductions for most cars, midwinter for others, late spring for still others, as the Big Four scramble to introduce more than 15 brand-new cars and light trucks among them. Some of the late introductions can…

Although the changes aren’t easy to see on the surface, BMW will be presenting a substantially revised line of 500 series sedans to the world for 1982. Instead of throwing money at the sheet metal, BMW spent heavily under the skin, giving its bread-and-butter 4-doors a little more interior volume, a little less avoirdupois, across-the-board gains in fuel economy, new front suspension and a generous dollop of Star Wars gadgetry. The one exterior change that registers above the subliminal is the new trunk, which has expanded luggage volume. This was in part an aerodynamic consideration—the trunk now has a higher lip — and has the side benefit of making the car easier to park, since the decklid is now visible to the driver. BMW’s wind-tunnel team also experimented with new…

Sensational yet functional styling, a 135-horse-power 2-liter engine, and just enough room for four people inside—that sums up the new Isuzu Piazza, the least Japanese of Japanese cars. With Italian styling, suspension based on German design, and steering of Australian origin, the Piazza is clearly something else. Commissioned by Isuzu, the new front-engine/rear-drive began life as the Ace of Clubs prototype, designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro and introduced at Geneva in 1979. Remarkably, the production version emerged unscathed from this transition, although the wheelbase is slightly longer and the nose has been shortened a little. Isuzu is only a small company, making most of its money from trucks, and couldn’t afford the luxury of all-new components for the Piazza. So, the car was based on the Gemini platform, which of course…

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Downsized Dogfight Brewing in Winston Cup As the first half of the Winston Cup Grand National season drew to a close with the Warner W. Hodgdon 400, it was apparent that NASCAR’s new downsized Stockers were indeed living up to preseason predictions. The twisting 2.62-mile road course at Riverside International Raceway was the scene of some of the hottest wheel-to-wheel competition seen thus far, and after 248.9 miles of racing, the Winston Cup points chase turned into an even tighter contest. NASCAR’s running rule changes, coupled with the continued developmental efforts by the various teams, were primarily responsible for the strong competitive balance. A total of seven drivers rolled to victory in the first 15 races of the 31-event schedule, and 10 GN pole sitters qualified for the 1982 Busch…