Innehållsförteckning för September 1987 från MotorTrend

Despite what we want to believe, even the most modern, high-tech automobile needs routine maintenance to keep everything running smoothly and trouble free. Though sparkplugs last 30,000 miles due to a combination of unleaded fuel and high-energy ignition systems, and the fuel-injection system requires little maintenance other than overseeing that the system ingests only clean fuel and clean air, there are still many maintenance jobs that should not be overlooked. Obviously, you should follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for service at the very least, but what I am proposing is a plan to make your car—the one for which you spent all that time shopping and now depend on for daily transportation—last longer and deliver many more trouble-free miles for just a small investment of time and money. Oil change— Cut…

FAVORITE FERRARI TO BE REPLACED The best-selling model in Ferrari’s 40-year history, the 308/328, is about to be axed. These are the first photos of its undisguised replacement, the Ferrari 348 GTB, a mid-engined 2-seater expected to debut in Europe in 1988. As predicted by our earlier artist’s impression (March), the Pininfarina-styled 348 is indeed an attractive blend of the 328’s tidy proportions and the Testarossa’s rakishness, including the famous side scoops and horizontal strakes. This is the car spies first thought would have a 4.0-liter powerplant, and branded it as the 408. Details leaked from the Maranello factory indicate that the new car will, in fact, only receive a modest increase in engine displacement: It is believed the 90° “Dino” V-8 now has enlarged bore and stroke dimensions giving…

“ERRETT LOBBAN CORD, His Empire, His Motor Cars: Auburn-Cord-Duesen-berg,” by Griffith Borgeson. Published by Automobile Quarterly, Route 222 & Sharadin Rd., Kutztown, PA 195300348. Bound in top-grain leather, stamped in 22K gold, 11x17 in. Individually numbered and signed limited edition of 2500; 280 pages, 255 color photographs, 500 duotones. $395. The reviewer’s problem, when facing a book offered at $395, is how to avoid being awed by the price. In this case, there’s a simple solution: Be awed by the subject. The first sentence of F. Scott Bailey’s foreword says it well enough: “According to any measure, Errett Lobban Cord’s life was lived on a heroic scale.” And that go-for-the-jugular debunker of myths and creator of legends, Griff Borgeson, has got this titan’s life neatly compacted into these pages. But…

With a luxury motorhome strapped to your back, the opportunities for free-falling are many if you step off Highway 1. This is the road that twists and turns like a demented snake along the California coast, a towering wall of rock one side, thousands of feet of fresh air the other. If you put a foot wrong—and there are 34 feet to possibly put wrong between the nose and tail of a Vogue III such as ours—you could turn your back on the big, trucklike steering wheel, put the kettle on the stove, pop a snack in the microwave, watch your favorite video, settle down at the dining table, write your memoirs, take a hot shower, and still have time to tidy all your valuables away in the vehicle’s safe…

The automotive press has complained in recent years, sometimes bitterly, about the failure of imagination in Detroit design circles. The luster of new-car season had dimmed, it’s been said. There’s no definable “opening day” anymore, few vehicles are being built with any real character, and there are too many lookalike cars coming from Detroit auto makers. Since the dinosaur’s tail was bitten some time ago (first by the press, then by continuing poor sales), the danger signals are finally reaching the lumbering giant’s brain. The ’88 Detroit cars and trucks will display new vigor as a direct result. With assistance from a squad of confidential sources, here’s what to expect in showrooms very soon. American Motors/Jeep/Renault With the acquisition of American Motors’ assets by Chrysler; Motors due to be completedZ/T…

Where is it written in stone that if pedestrians purposely look away from us as they step into the street, we can’t hit them with our cars? You all know what I’m talking about. Opposing drivers do it as well. The unspoken attitude says if they don’t see us, we can’t hit them. Not that we want to in the first place, but this attitude promotes an air of invincibility witnessed only in DC comic books. “If I don’t look at you, you can’t hit me.” Does anyone know where this comes from? It’s an attitude that needs adjusting. I don’t advocate any enhanced pedestrian threat-level (I walk, too). No matter how stupid some individuals may act on foot, we shouldn’t be able to playfully tag them with the car…

Since 1953, there has been but one standard bearer of American pride in the ranks of the world’s sports cars. Its name, of course, Chevrolet Corvette. For nearly 35 years, it has continued to stave off invasions by the likes of Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Lotus, and Porsche for sports car supremacy here in the USA. Other domestic marques have dal-1 lied in the 2-seater field—Thunderbird, Cobra, AMX, Fiero—but none has captured the imagination of the aficionado in quite the same way as the fiberglass flyer from the bowtie boys. Sure, the going has not always been easy. In fact, the underpowered, automatic-equipped Corvette of 1953 got off to a stumbling start. Its mild performance did not stir the souls of many Eisenhower-era buyers, and the entire Corvette project was in…

Necessity, the mother of invention, has been at work again. America’s leading automobile engineers, stylists, and marketing moguls are being stirred into action. It doesn’t matter anymore if the stuff strutted by foreign manufacturers at international auto shows sometimes seems a tad theatrical, a tiny bit unrealistic, a little too easy to dismiss with an incredulous laugh. The adventurous styling exercises revealed in Turin and the exciting technical possibilities paraded in Tokyo have served as noisy warning bells—and, judging from the recent flurry of activity in Motown, the message has finally gotten through. The necessity, it seems, is for America’s auto makers—and America’s top auto shows—to catch up. Many of Detroit’s heavy hitters now admit they must not only become more daringly progressive, but must become perceived as being so.…

Jaguar is serious about selling cars in the U.S. In fact, more than 55% of its current production is sold on these shores, accounting for nearly 70% of the company’s income, so it better stay serious. No auto enthusiast has ever challenged the XJ6 sedan on its handling, performance, or beautiful coachwork and interior trim; most agree these aspects of the car have been and continue to be world class. Reliability and serviceability have always been the only questions when considering a Jaguar. Several years ago, Jaguar upgraded its problem electrics (switching from Lucas to Bosch) and offered a three-year/36,000-mile warranty. As soon as the word got out that this beautiful car was now also dependable, sales began to grow. In 1980, Jaguar sold 3023 cars in the U.S. By…

How much would you pay for a good-looking body? Before you answer, let’s say this: We like Chevrolet’s Celebrity Eurosport. At about $10,660 for the sedan version, we think the level of performance and value for the money is good. It says Chevrolet. Now that the A-body cars can be acquired with the Getrag 5-speed manual, the sporting flavor of Chevy’s 2.8-liter V-6 can be more fully explored in a car still perfectly suitable for commuting and grocery getting. So, back to our question. The beautiful bod is the Eurosport VR. Do you care enough to pay an extra $3500 for it? The Eurosport VR package seems to us a peculiar offering for an already nice car. “Obviously, we’re pleased with the [Celebrity Eurosport],” Chevrolet spokesman Ralph Kramer tells us,…

Many common misconceptions exist concerning how torque and horsepower influence vehicular performance. We get letters that indicate some real confusion about the role each plays in acceleration, top speed, etc. Torque is a twisting effort. It’s applied to a twist-off bottle cap, to a steering wheel to turn a corner, or to a doorknob. In the case of an automotive engine, torque is produced by the burning fuel pushing the piston down in the cylinder, turning the crankshaft, which, through various mechanical arrangements, twists the drive wheels. But-key point here—torque does not imply motion. Thinking back to the twist-off cap, it’s obvious you can twist (torque) that sucker forever, but it won’t move until it’s ready, and all the twisting done on the cap before it breaks loose is still…

Challengers to the Porsche dynasty We might as well tell you right now: If there’s a moral to this story, it is that of the Titanic. The apparently unsinkable can be sunk. And, according to contagious opinion, there’s an armada of Porsche GT Prototype racing cars out there heading for troubled waters. Yes, we know Porsche cars have won a remarkable 67% of all International Motor Sports Association’s Camel GT feature events in the past nine and a half years. And, yes, it is true that Porsches have, so far, won an almost identical (and impressive) proportion of the I MSA races this year. But there’s a spreading belief that, in IMSA racing at least, life for Porsche is going to get much more difficult. And soon. The wisecracks about…

A CAPRICE FOR THE ’90s The next-generation Chevrolet Caprice will be a strikingly contemporary and attractive frontengine rear-drive family car in sedan and station wagon models, according to a reliable General Motors source who described the car for Motor Trend in extraordinary detail. Additional sources helped fill in the product’s details under a condition of anonymity. Referred to as the GM300 (not its real name), the new, biggest Chevrolet will replace one of General Motors’ all-time favorite cars in 1991, according to reliable sources here. It continues as a front-engine rear-drive body-on-frame design. Up to now, the program was one of GM’s most secret operations, due in part to the comparatively radical redesign of one of Chevrolet’s most-recognizable heartbeats. The Duane Kuchar illustration, based upon an informant’s sketch, shows why.…

Contrary to the widely held conviction that mixing radial and bias-ply tires produces dangerous oversteer, tire researchers Floyd S. Conant and Richard L. Fuller recently shook up the tire industry with a startling new study that concluded: “No modern automobile can be made unstable by fitting it with any mixture of modern tires of equivalent size.” In a paper entitled “Effect of Tire Intermix on Automobile Handling” given at the annual meeting of the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society in Montreal, Canada, May 29, Conant and Fuller reported the results of a series of 17 handling tests designed to detect any evidence of oversteer by mixing radials and bias-ply tires on the same vehicle. The tests were conducted at the Transportation Research Center of Ohio, and they involved…

The Cougar’s handling suspension is virtually identical to the T-Bird Sport package Somehow, it seems hard to believe that Mercury’s Cougar has been out prowling the streets of America since 1967. During the past two decades, the platform has undergone no fewer than seven generational changes as it moved from pony-car to a full model line to its current 2-door specialty coupe status. The venerable Cougar nameplate has racked up over 1.7 million sales throughout its lifespan, earning a significant place of honor in the overall Lincoln-Mercury division sales picture. In 1986 alone, it was the second largest selling Mercury model, accounting for 114,300 units, almost 17% of all LM product sold, and 20.2% of its entire market segment. Despite these notable achievements, the Cougar has managed to end up…

If cars are sometimes worn like clothes, as a conscious extension of the owner’s personality, then the original Nissan Pulsar was something less than macho. One Nissan source noted that the Pulsar line “had one of the highest percentages of women buyers of any car in the industry”—65%, to be exact. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as the customer demographics really meant that women were particularly attracted to the car. But it seems Nissan had its own uneasy feelings about the figure. As Nissan insider Gerald Hirshberg admitted, “We all understood that it was time to give the Pulsar a fresh image.” Hirshberg is the kind of guy you listen to. Having joined General Motors’ design staff at age 25, he was chief of an advanced…

Control, comfort, speed, and image, the core of today’s sports cars, are all in the makeup of the RX-7 Turbo II, an outstanding, well-engineered automobile. It’s sleek, fast, and externally understated. No flash, no fluff, no fake. This is the sports car real sports car lovers drive. As a second-generation RX-7, the Turbo II is an evolutionary incarnation of the first RX design. Cleaner, smoother, and certainly more cur-rent-looking than its predecessor, the familiar RX-7 shape is still there, but the platform as a whole is greatly improved. Turbocharged and intercooled for the first time, the 13B twin-rotor engine produces 182 hp, for which its 15.49-sec quarter-mile time speaks quite highly. Performance, both in terms of speed and handling, is the foundation on which the RX-7 is built. Calm and…

Find a car that blends the upper levels of highway performance with a capability for race-track ferocity and it’s almost magic. Take it on roads with magic of their own, like those in the high mountains of Washington, and you’ll bring out the scientist, the artist, maybe even catch the twinkle in the eye that glimmers from any true sports car enthusiast. Mazda engineers mixed that blend and named it RX-7 Turbo. It’s for those with a certain glimmer in their eyes. Under its purposefully sleek exterior is the RX-7’s fully-independent suspension: MacPherson struts in front, the exclusive Dynamic Track ing Suspension System (DTSS) in the rear. The RX-7 Turbo’s springs, shocks and anti-roll bars are tuned for high-demand drivers. Brakes feature four-piston, aluminum calipers on the ventilated front discs.…

Neither give thou Aesop’s cock a gem, who would be better pleased and happier if he had a barley-corn—Francis Bacon You like stories about opportunity, hard work, success, and the American Dream? You like heart-rending tales of deprivation, mistreatment, neglect, exploitation, and the guts to rise above it all? You think Charles Dickens ever heard of Charlie Nash? Surely not. Else he would have written a novel about him. Indentured to labor on a farm at age six because his folks couldn’t get along, Charlie put in his time, got sweat in his eyes for six hard years, and finally blew town. After a couple spells as a hired hand where he actually got paid, Charlie had matured enough at farm work to approach the farmer’s daughter. She said, “Sure,…