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AutoNotes #9, 11/25/93 copr. 1993, Dave Williams
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BIX: 'dave2' CIS: 72571,3542 [email protected]
The Courts of Chaos BBS, (501)985-0059
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A friend just dropped a year or so's worth of Motor Trends on me.
I've been flipping through them when I have time.
MT seems to be goofy over show cars. One that shows up again and again is something called a Ford Focus, which they claim could enter production at any time. Ri-ight. This Focus thing is all lopsided, and looks like something you'd fish out of the water near a radiation leak. Just looking at the thing makes me queasy.
They also like Corvette show cars, including one article featuring ten renditions of possible Corvettes, by people who claim to actually be taking courses in automotive design, probably at the Zsa-Zsa Gabor School of Diesel Mechanics. Most of them are on 10-series tires, or possibly rubber-coated 20" wheels. No door handles, no mirrors, no bumpers, usually no headlights, and no provision for any of the above, either convertible with no top or brain-cooker bubble top, "organic" styling that looks like something you'd flush quickly, "neon" colors (back in the old days we called it "Da-Glo"), and proportions that don't allow a normal 6' male to fit without being doubled up like a pretzel. And every one of 'em is butt-ugly.
In order to sell a commercially-manufactured car in the USA, it has to have headlights between certain minimum and maximum heights off the ground, and a certain minimum distance between them. Same with the taillights, including the Diane Steed Idiot Light. You must have marker lights, bumpers rated for proper impact speed and minimum damage, and they must be between certain heights. The car must be equipped with DOT-certified tires, and I can tell you right now nobody makes a 10-series tire with DOT approvals. This is all very, very basic stuff, right out of the CFR, which is less than $20.
The people making these models and show cars are just pissing away time and money which could obviously be better spent on reading the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49. Styling studies are one thing, but if it could never legally roll down the highway, it's not relevant.
The cretinous editors also maligned the Maserati Biturbo, which is one of the very few cars I would be willing to take a loan out for.
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Hyundai's ads for their Elantra (stupid name) are out of focus, chop
off most of the back of the car (reminds me of the "videomercials" so
popular now) and show a cat sitting on the hood of the car. Hooooo....
my trigger finger gets itchy just looking at it. Damned neighborhood
vermin climb on our cars, and all of 'em have claw scratches right down
to the bare metal and vermin-prints on the rest.
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The December 1992 issue of Motor Trend had a Retrospect on the '68
Corvette L-88. The article is full of amazing bullshit. Did you know
the cowl induction hood shaved a full 7 seconds from the L-88's 0-140
time? And that the L-88 had 12.5:1 compression? Oh, and this 430-hp
monster was incredibly fast - 13.56@111. And it weighed a
"pachydermal" 3420 pounds. That's about a hundred pounds LESS than a
'93, which turns an equivalent ET on unleaded gas and full '93 smog
regalia.
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Toyota runs an ad inviting you to check the performance of an MR2 on
one of nine selected locations - one of them being Route 66, between
Shamrock and Amarillo, TX. That's I-40, which overlays most of what
used to be 66, and I've never seen a Route 66 sign there. I go through
there several times a year. Most of the signs were removed by the
various local highway departments when 40 was completed, the rest were
stolen as souvenirs. Now, what is interesting is there IS a Route 66
sign on the way into Washington DC, near Manassas VA. Weird.
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Most of you who've read my stuff for a while know I'm not an airbag
believer. I think the damned things are dangerous, and I've even gone
to far as to refuse to ride in airbag-equipped cars. Nowadays I'm a
little more laid back since I've been riding along with a friend who
drives a wrecker for the local Chevy dealer. We've worked wrecks where
the engine was pushed back into the passenger compartment, and had to
wait until the firemen could cut the bodies out of the wreckage. Not
one deployment. It appears there's a minor amount of intelligence in
Detroit - the designs seem to be stacked (at least in Chrysler and GM
products) for the airbag NOT to go off. Because if it does, you WILL
have a wreck.
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The ABS system I'm most familiar with is in a friend's Corvette, which
I run in the SCCA's Super Stock autocross class from time to time. The
ABS in the 'vette cycles at, oh, maybe 60Hz. It buzzes your foot
pretty good when you get into it. The one in the Nissan 300ZX doesn't
appear to do anything at all - the pedal just gets hard. The
Mitsubishi Galant VR4 is at the other extreme - it cycles at maybe
10Hz, and you can damned near hear the tires go "yipe-yipe-yipe!" And
the pedal feels *horrible*, like the wheel bearings just disintegrated
or something. The Mitsubishi's ruckus seems uncalled-for, while the
ZX's system doesn't give *enough* feedback. When you're driving at the
limit, you really need to know when the ABS is engaged - the ABS, you
see, can cause the car to turn a little sharper than you intended when
it's working.
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Ford's Mod 3 V6 will come out in the Mondeo early in '94. It's a 60
degree motor, not a cut down V8. The engine was developed with
assistance from Porsche (what happened to Ford's own engine designers,
anyway?) and has aluminum block and heads, iron liners instead of nasty
aluminum cylinder bores, four valves per cylinder with roller
followers, graphite coated pistons (a first as far as I know), chain
driven cams, "cracked" rods, and a sand cast upper intake manifold.
Sounds kinda weird when everyone else is going to plastic. Hell, why
not a die cast manifold? Maybe for looks?
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The old Buick V6 is finally gone for '94, R.I.P. It was superior in
every way to the Chevy V6, but evidently Buick lost out in the
corporate politics game. The Buick 3.3 V6 has been "completely
redesigned" with a structural oil pan, cross-bolt mains (looks like
everyone is going to those for some reason), and minor changes like
plastic valve covers and roller rockers. The engine also uses a weirdo
"built-up" camshaft. Most cams are castings with the lobes already on
them, they just need to be finished. The new Buick cam uses individual
lobes pressed onto a mild steel tube, swaged in place by running a
steel ball through the tube. GM says they're patenting the process.
They're welcome to it. It's hard to see where they'd save any money,
and I'll take a powerful lot of convincing before I'll believe it's as
strong or reliable as the old one piece cams. The supercharged
models now have Teflon-coated rotors. Best as I can tell there's
nothing that will interchange with the old 3.8.
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The new Mustang is here. Yawn. It's basically the same Fox layout
Ford has been building since, what, 1978? They fiddled with this and
that, restyled the body into the new turd look, and jacked the price
again. ABS is now an option (option?!), which it should have been
standard years ago anyway. Same-o same-o, except uglier. No 351, no
SOHC or DOHC V8, no six speed, nothing.
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The new Dodge pickups are out, and they're butt-ugly.
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Mazda's spin-off line Amati appears to have bitten the dust.
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The Lumina/Trans Sport/Silhouette vans' power sliding side door is
finally out, a year late. GM said they needed to put even more
interlocks on it. Gee whiz, maybe the need some interlocks on the
regular doors too? I mean, what's to stop some fool^H^H^H^H customer
from just up and opening the damned driver's door, anyway? And those
roof-mounted taillights are *still* illegal in many states, besides
being so high most drivers don't notice them anyway. The FAA, NASA,
and the military have done a lot of studies on "hot zone perception".
That's why the CFR specifies minimum and maximum taillight heights to
begin with. Too bad GM and the NHTSA can't read.
The new vans also have the Gen III heads-up displays. I got news for GM. It sucks. Of course, I'm the kind of guy who's a fanatic about having a clean windshield, doesn't have shit dangling from the rear view mirror, and doesn't put anything on the dashboard that might cause reflections, because anything other than a clear view out drives me nuts.
"But aircraft use HUDs a lot, don't they?" you might ask. Yep, they do. But the average pilot ain't looking out the windshield - not much to see at 40,000 feet anyway. You take off, fly, and land by the instruments, and the basically only reasons the windows are there are tradition and taxiing.
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The Corvette ZR-1 is still around for '94. Amazing. Maybe the Chevy
dealers can team up with the Cadillac dealers and offer a special
Allante and ZR-1 combo deal?
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Canada, Finland, Sweden, and a couple other countries have mandatory
headlight laws - you run with your headlights on all the time. They
claim this reduces traffic wrecks. I flat don't believe it. Anyone
who can't see an object the size of a car can't see it with the
headlights on either. This has been proven over and over with
motorcycles. People don't "see" because they're too stupid to LOOK.
You maybe have a feeling for how dumb the average driver is, right? Just think. About half of the feebs on the road are even dumber than that!
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