Ate Up With Motor

Introduced in 1976, Volkswagen's Golf GTI was not the first sporty family car, nor even the best, but it defined an entire genre of practical performance cars: the ever-popular hot hatch.



( The Volkswagen GTI. )

Even as the Ford Mustang was making its smashing debut in April 1964, Ford's Lincoln-Mercury division began work on its own "pony car," a stylish coupe that sought to bridge the gap between the Mustang and the Thunderbird.

This week, we look at the origins (and many incarnations) of the Mercury Cougar.



( The Mercury Cougar. )

Fast, luxurious, and stylish, with a thoroughly modern platform shared with Saab, Fiat, and Lancia, the Alfa Romeo 164 could have been the hit to resuscitate Alfa's flailing business -- and put the company on the map in the German-dominated executive car market. Unfortunately, it became one of the last cars developed before Alfa fell into the hands of Fiat, and it had the dubious distinction of being the last Alfa sold in the U.S.

This week, we look at the 164 and its "Type Four" siblings: the Fiat Croma, Lancia Thema, and Saab 9000.



( The 1988-1997 Alfa Romeo 164. )

If you read some popular automotive histories, you might be misled into thinking that the 1980 Audi Quattro was the world's first all-wheel-drive sports coupe. Not so -- the ur-Quattro was an important pioneer in the field of AWD performance cars, but it was not first. Almost 15 years before the Quattro, the tiny British automaker Jensen introduced a powerful GT car featuring full-time four-wheel drive and even anti-lock brakes.

Based on Jensen's Interceptor coupe, the Jensen FF was an unabashed mongrel, with a British chassis, Italian styling, and an American engine, but it was also one of the most advanced and remarkable cars of its era. This week, we look at how it came to be.



( The Jensen Interceptor and FF. )

One of our biggest challenges in writing these articles is that we sometimes become fascinated by something for reasons that aren't easy to articulate. Some of our subjects have obvious interest, like the Ford Skyliner or the Jaguar XK120, but others may be puzzling to the casual observer. That is certainly the case with this week's subjects, which are thoroughly unexceptional in engineering and design, and have styling that could charitably be described as ordinary. However, they were at the forefront of an emerging debate that is still going on: the question of exactly how big an American sedan ought to be.



( The 1960-65 Mercury Comet and 1962-1965 Ford Fairlane )

We're a little behind schedule this week, juggling multiple projects, so we thought we would take a few minutes to answer some questions we are frequently asked.



( Frequently asked questions. )

A condensed version of my recent article on the Ford Skyliner appeared today on Clear365:

http://www.clear365.com/newsStoryDetail.htm?providerContentId=-1336730810

It's shortened for a more general audience, naturally, but I could use the traffic...

When the Citroën DS debuted in 1955, it was indisputably the most advanced family sedan in the world. Naturally, the proud British auto industry was not about to take such a challenge lying down, but it took almost eight years to field a British contender: the remarkable Rover 2000. This week, we examine the history of the Rover P6, from its abortive turbine engine to the calamity of the British Leyland merger.



( The 1964-1977 Rover 2000, 2200, and 3500. )

For more than 50 years, the Corvette has been a curious paradox for General Motors. The product of GM's humblest division, it has frequently been among the corporation's most expensive cars. Designed and engineered largely outside of the normal GM system, it has often been hamstrung by corporate politics. Despite that, it remains the car that the company's stylists want to draw, its engineers want to design, and its workers take the most pride in building. It is a vision of GM as it could be.

The Corvette was born in 1953, but the model that would set the standard for all future generations appeared a decade later: the justly legendary Corvette Sting Ray.



( The 1963-1967 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray )

Advertised as "Nobody's Kid Brother," Chrysler's compact Valiant was originally intended to be its own marque. The story of how it became a Plymouth is a complicated one, going back to the origins of the Plymouth brand and its relationship with other Chrysler divisions.

This week, we look at the original Valiant, its little-known Dodge twin, the Lancer, and the long and contentious relationship between Plymouth and its sister divisions.



( Everybody's kid brother. )

As you may have noticed, Chrysler announced Thursday that it was filing for Chapter 11. Going along with this story, a condensed version of my series from December on the 1980 Chrysler bailout ran yesterday on Clearmedia, the news/entertainment channel of Clearwire.

http://www.clear365.com/newsStoryDetail.htm?providerContentId=-1671691921

As enjoyable as convertibles can be on beautiful, sunny summer days, they can be a terrible burden any other time -- drafty, noisy, and vulnerable. We suspect that anyone who's ever owned one has at least occasionally wished they could magically transform it into a regular coupe on days when the sun is too hot or the wind too cold. Fifty years ago, the Ford Motor Company offered a car that could do exactly that, creating a piece of mechanical showmanship that has only recently been surpassed: the Skyliner retractable hardtop.



( The 1957-1959 Ford Skyliner 'retrac' )

Since its debut in 1964, the Porsche 911 has come to define the Porsche brand. The company's periodic efforts to expand their market with new models, however worthy, have inevitably prompted grumbling from purists, who stubbornly refused to accept the arrivistes as real Porsches. That was the fate that befell the Porsche 928, the company's first V8-engine production car. Conceived as a successor for the 911, it never quite found its niche, dismissed by the faithful as a pricey German Corvette. Nonetheless, the 928 is a milestone car in its own right -- a formidable GT that foreshadowed the shape of the modern sports car.



( The 1978-1995 Porsche 928 )

Some cars are recognized as milestones only after the fact, dismissed and overlooked in their own times. Others, like this one, are standouts from the moment they first appear. This car stunned the world when it debuted at Earls Court Motor Show in October 1948 -- one of the fastest and loveliest cars offered by any manufacturer at any price, and a dramatic statement of what the British auto industry was capable of achieving.



( The Jaguar XK120 )

The intrawebs are certainly an odd place.

Periodically, I take a look at what the most popular articles on my website are. I am frequently surprised by the results.

In sheer hit count, the undisputed winner is "Do Not Feed After Midnight: The AMC Gremlin," whose pageviews exceed the next most popular article by nearly 15%.

The one that generates the most traffic, however, is "Disco Inferno: The Infamous Pontiac Trans Am Turbo," about the Smokey and the Bandit era Firebird Trans Am and its short-lived turbo version from 1980-81. That's the most popular landing site, and also the source of a frightening percentage of my search engine keyword traffic.

Inevitably, articles of which I'm most proud, Requiem for Misterl: The 1959 Cadillac and the Winter of Harley Earl" and "The Salesman and the Statistician: Robert McNamara, Lee Iacocca, and the Ford Falcon," don't even rate.

It is a wonder...

NOTE: We were originally a little dubious about writing this article -- the Reatta is not one of our favorite cars by any means -- but it became one of the most involved and interesting we've written for this site. It builds on what we've previously written on Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell, and connects their legacy to our era, with a lot that's relevant to the current state of General Motors.

The short-lived Buick Reatta may seem like the most innocuous of cars (indeed, that was part of its problem). Behind its placid exterior, however, lay a ferocious internal battle that also gave birth to the Cadillac Allanté, ended the four-decade dominance of the once-mighty GM Design Staff -- and set the stage for the decline of GM itself.



( The Cadillac Allanté, the Buick Reatta, and How GM Lost Its Styling Mojo )

Even drivers who don't consider themselves car nuts (or enthusiasts, if you will) often love the idea of driving a car that feels like a real race car, whether for the bragging rights, or just to pretend that the freeway ramp is really a turn at the Nürburgring. Of course, real race cars are usually rough, noisy, temperamental, and fussy in a way few would care to tolerate on a day-to-day basis, but many buyers happily lay out serious money to indulge their Walter Mitty fantasies.

By those standards, there are few cars more desirable than this one. Not only does it look like a track car, it's a hardcore "homologation special" whose track-bound brothers dominated touring car racing throughout the late eighties and early nineties. It's not the fastest of its kind, but there are still those who will swear to you that it is the best.



( The 1988-1991 BMW M3 )

I've been doing a lot of work lately on upcoming articles. Coming up soon are the BMW M3, the Porsche 928, the Jaguar XK120, and the Rover P6. I'm in the editing-and-captioning phase of an article on the Buick Reatta (which will also have a fair amount of information about the Cadillac Allanté), and I'm trying to schedule a time with the owner of a Checker Marathon to take some pictures of his car.

Beyond that, you can look for a McLaren F1 article at some point, possibly in May, and stories about the Jensen Interceptor and FF and the Alfa Romeo 164 will probably follow sometime after that.

Readership growth has leveled off a fair amount, and I wish I had the resources to do a little advertising; efforts to get a link back from The Truth About Cars have apparently fallen through. Right now, readership runs to about 100 uniques a day, give or take, only about a third of which are repeat visitors.

Web marketing people tell me that the best way to build readership is not tricks and gimmicks, but developing content people will be interested, a kind of "build it and they will come" approach. Well, build it, we have; come; they have not. (Mental note: get business cards or fliers made up and leave them under the windshield wipers of cars at car shows.)

I am debating adding some kind of PayPal donation system, if people felt so inclined. Doing these articles has gotten to be a lot of work -- each of them is around 3,500 words, and takes about two days of solid work to research, write, and assemble, a little more if I count photo editing. I have a pipe dream that I might one day have a budget for this stuff...

[cross-posted]

Since we've been talking more about European cars this year, we have been making frequent references to "DIN" power ratings. We wanted to be sure everybody is clear on what that means.

DIN is short for Deutsche Industrienorm (German industry standard), a standard issued by the German national institute for standardization. That institute, known between 1926 and 1975 as Deutsche Normenausschuss (DNA), is now called Deutsches Institut für Normung, also abbreviated DIN. Among other things, the agency sets standards for how the horsepower and torque of automobile engines should be measured -- Deutsche Industrienorm 70020.

As you might imagine, the standards of DIN 70020 are specific, and very strict. Unlike the SAE gross standards used in the U.S. and Great Britain for many years, it requires power to be measured with standard intake, exhaust, and accessory systems in place. DIN horsepower ratings, therefore, are comparable to the modern SAE net rating system, although they are usually reported in Pferdestärke (literally, "horse strength," but generally referring to metric horsepower), rather than mechanical horsepower. One mechanical horsepower is 746 watts, whereas one metric horsepower is 736 watts; therefore, 1 PS equals 0.986 horsepower. Because of that, and because DIN horsepower ratings are calculated with the engine in "as-installed" condition, they are always lower than gross ratings. (The peak engine speeds for DIN power and torque ratings are often lower, as well, reflecting the effects that mufflers, air cleaners, and accessories have on the engine's power curve.)

Until the early 1970s, it was not uncommon for cars sold worldwide to have two power ratings, one DIN, one gross, largely as a concession to the salespeople. A Porsche 356 Super 90 engine, for example, was rated 90 hp DIN, but 102 hp SAE. Adding to the fun was the fact that, as we've previously discussed, SAE gross numbers were often dictated more by the marketing staff than the engineering department, and sometimes bore little relationship to actual output. This did NOT mean that the U.S. or British engines were more powerful than their European counterparts, simply that their ratings were figured differently.

So, before you complain that we have maligned your favorite car by saying it had less power than advertised, please consider the source, and whether that source was quoting SAE gross, SAE net, or DIN figures.

Another term we have thrown around a lot that bears some explanation is Hotchkiss drive. This is a suspension layout very common on front-engine/rear-drive cars and trucks from the 1920s until the late 1970s, and still used on many pick-up trucks and SUVs.

Click here to read more about Hotchkiss drive suspensions