Saturn surprises even itself with 3-door coupe
If a third door on a pickup truck is a good idea, then why isn’t it also a good idea on a sports coupe?
That is a question that nobody in the car business has ever asked, apparently because the limited space and the smoothly styled lines of a coupe simply preclude the concept.
The folks at Saturn, however, not only asked the question, but also have provided a worthy answer.
For 1999, the Saturn not only comes in a 4-door sedan, a 4-door station wagon, and a coupe, but you can get the sleek, 2-door coupe with a third, rear-hinged door on the driver’s side.
The placement and operation is the same as with the pickup truck idea of recent years, which, of course, led to a fourth door in many cases, after the idea of the rearward opening third door to allow access to extended-cab pickups caught on and swept through the industry. Some of those front seats in pickups are hard to tilt and near impossible to reach behind, so the third door offers great and quick access to the extension of the extended cabs.
On the Saturn coupe, the rear seat has always had surprisingly good head and legroom. If you’re 6-feet or taller, you wouldn’t want to ride cross-country back there, but it’s definitely adequate or better for short hops, and great for kid-sized passengers.
Still, climbing into the rear seat for anyone has always been an agility project in all coupes. Open the door, wide, tilt the seat forward, then do a gymnastics-like tumble to wind up back there with all your extremities.
With the three-door Saturn coupe, you open the driver’s door, then work the hidden doorsill hand grip to pop the skinny little rearward door open. Without a pillar between the doors, the wide expanse seems even wider, and you not only have easy access for passengers, but it’s excellent for getting your hands on parcels or briefcases that you’ve stored in the rear seat.
Saturns come in the SL (4-door sedan) models and the SW-1 and SW-2 station wagon models, plus the SC-1 and SC-2 coupes — both of which are now offered as 3-doors.
SATURN’S BEGINNING
When General Motors allowed a handful of its rebellious engineers to embark on the Saturn project, which was launched in 1990, it was a bold and impressive step for the biggest, and most tradition-bound U.S. car manufacturer.
And that first Saturn was far ahead of its time, vaulting GM into true competition with the best Japanese compact cars. Since then, an assortment of things has kept the Saturn from leap-frogging forward. Other divisions have seemed envious, and politically have needed some help, all of which might have caused less development and polishing to be done to Saturn’s bold new branch.
The first car had several breakthrough features. For one, the 1.9-liter engine is made with a “lost-foam” technique, in which the engine block is made of styrofoam, then molten aluminum is poured onto the styrofoam, which causes it to evaporate, while the aluminum cools and forms to replace the foam perfectly.
The other main feature is the body panels, which are made from a polymer instead of steel, so they don’t get dings or dents, they just flex and reform.
Saturns originated because some rebels at GM wanted to build a car from the ground up that would compete directly with the best imports. The mainstream concept at GM was to buy smaller cars from the joint venture with Toyota (Nummi plant in California), such as the Prizm, or from Suzuki, for the Metro and Tracker. But when GM decided to let the rebels make their Saturn, the response was impressive.
The initial hype for Saturn was its no-dicker sticker prices. You get a price, and there is no diddling with the sales-person. That’s it. Options can be had a la carte, or in a couple of packages. Adding an automatic transmission costs about $850, adding air-conditioning (standard on the SC-2) costs $960 on the SC-1. But it’s still easy to stay around $17,000 and get your Saturn pretty well equipped.
The difference of the SC-1 and SC-2 (or any 1 or 2 designation Saturns) is the motor. All have a 1.9-liter, 4-cylinder, but the “1” has a single overhead camshaft and two valves per cylinder, while the “2” gets dual overhead-cams and four valves per cylinder. It’s the same with the SW-1 and SW-2. The DOHC version gives you a boost from an adequate 100 horsepower and 114 foot-pounds of torque up to 124 horses and 122 foot-pounds of torque.
The biggest problem, over the years, is that the engine has been noisy. If you run the revs up, it tends to vibrate, although Saturn engineers have worked hard, and annually, to cushion the engine mounts in rubber, or otherwise smooth out the vibration. This year, they have gone to a new engine cover, longer connecting rods, an eight counter-weight crankshaft, and a new, 8-mm. pitch timing chain.
OK, the engines are smoother and quieter. But I never minded the buzzy sound of performance of the old one as it revved toward the maximum. There’s nothing wrong with an audible tachometer, which can tell you when the revs are getting high.
COUPE DE GRACE
For 1999, however, Saturn seems to have surprised even itself with the new 3-door coupe. It didn’t even merit a mention in the notebook-full of 1999 Saturn information — as if, maybe, it was an afterthought that was hustled out after the initial launch of new model cars.
The early brochure lists the sticker price of the SC-1 at $11,945 and the SC-2 at $14,505; the revised sheet shows the SC-1 at $12,445 and the SC-2 at $15,005. That shows strictly the difference in cost with the third door.
I had a chance to test-drive two different Saturns, with one being the 3-door coupe that you’ve undoubtedly seen advertised on television, and the other being the station wagon.
Both zipped through their paces with ease. The wagon offers the versatility of throwing whatever we don’t want in the trunk.
The first Saturns looked good, but there was something about the lines that bothered me. Sort of a trendiness to show something like the angle of a ring around Saturn. The new car, having been extensively redesigned two years ago, looks good from every angle. In fact, it has something of a low, ground-hugging sports-racer.
I was particularly taken by the look one evening, when we had to move a couple of cars around, and as I drove, my wife drove the Saturn behind me. The headlights are quite close together, but are aimed well and shine well down the road. But the foglights — which are standard on the SC-2, optional on the SL-2 and SW-2, and not available on the other models — not only do a good job of illuminating the lower side extremities, but they are located on the outer corners of the car. So when a Saturn comes toward you at night, you have the horizontal headlights fairly close together, and the lower, outrigger foglights, providing a distinctive and neat look.
The instrument panel is well laid out, free and clear of the gimmicky ideas of the original Saturn. The switches for various controls are a little different than some cars, but you readily get accustomed to them.
With front-wheel drive and the optional traction-control, the Saturn coupe goes in all conditions as good as it looks. And its looks can be enhanced by the optional 15-inch alloy wheels (the SC-2 has special teardrop alloys as the only optional wheel). Typically, you can go off the deep end with audio upgrades as well, including cassette and CD player, some with equalizers.
MINI-WAGON
With minivans and sports-utility vehicles filling the roadways, the station wagon seems to be almost a forgotten entity. There are several good ones on the market, however, and the Saturn SW-2 wagon I drove was a worthy, and inexpensive, idea.
Priced under the sportiest SC-2 coupe but more than the loaded SL-2 sedan, the wagon had the usual utilitity of the 4-door sedan, with the added use of the large rear cargo area. It also has a cover to shield any stuff from outside view.
The wagon I drove had the stronger engine, which is not a racer but performs well, even with an automatic transmission. Tested times for acceleration show the single-cam at about 10.5 seconds 0-60, with the DOHC about a full second quicker. Fuel economy ranges from 27 city to 38 highway for the DOHC with a manual transmission or 24/34 with the 4-speed automatic; the single-cam version gets 29/40 with the stick and 27/37 with the automatic.
A new exhaust system with a larger muffler and altered ductwork has reduced noise considerably, and aided performance. When you drive the wagon, you don’t get any feeling that the boxier rear intrudes on your near-sports-car experience, because looking ahead from the driver’s seat you get the same view as the coupe.
You get the distinct feeling that the little 1.9-liter 4-cylinder could be a world beater with just a few years of constant refinement, which is what Honda does with the Civic, Toyota does with the Corolla, and Volkswagen does with the Golf/Jetta, and even Chrysler does with the Neon. Those are the cars the Saturn must deal with in the market place. And they are tough competition.
Auto option lists include phenomenal features
So you’re cruising down the freeway in your 1999 Pontiac Bonneville SSE sedan, and without ever removing your gaze from the road ahead, you know exactly how fast you’re going, and whether you have gotten seriously low on fuel.
How did you do that? Great peripheral vision? A phenomenal feel for your gas-pedal toe? Or are you on cruise-control?
None of the above. What you have is Pontiac’s “Heads-up” display. When you’re in the driver’s seat, you can switch on a device that beams a translucent, digital number onto the windshield, just below you’re line of vision, or, if you choose, directly in your line of vision. Doesn’t matter, because you can look right through the digital number, and after a few miles, you don’t even think of it as unusual, or as any kind of distraction. You can adjust the intensity of the whiteness of the numbers, and you can move it higher or lower, or you can simply turn it off. It is a sort-of subliminal way of staying totally tuned in on the road ahead, but also always being aware of your speed.
It’s not a new gimmick, either, but one that’s been around for a few years. Remarkably, everybody hasn’t rushed to copy it or come up with a similar version of their own. It’s something that you might anticipate having in a jet fighter, or maybe a Formula 1 race car. But in a Pontiac? On the road?
While test-driving the newest cars on the road, it is impossible to fail to notice the newest gimmicks and gadgets that are usually options on all vehicles. Some of them are simple, some are stupid. All of them are interesting, and a collection some of them make a pretty impressive list.
BEST WAY TO FIND YOUR WAY: Navigation systems are available from many manufacturers these days. I’ve tested them on Cadillacs, Chevrolets, Lincolns, BMWs, Acuras, Mercedes and various others. One of the simplest and most impressive is on the Acura 3.2 and 3.5 luxury sedans. A cassette installed in the trunk unit localizes your region, then you can punch in your destination, and it reads out on a small, TV-like screen on the center dash panel. You can summon up a map of the state of Minnesota, overlapping into Wisconsin, then you can increase or decrease the scale to change from 200 miles to 10 miles. A voice backs it up to direct you through the final intersections to your exact destination.
Still, with all the new ones on the market, it’s hard to beat General Motors’ OnStar system, which used to come in only Cadillacs, but now is spread through various divisions. With OnStar, you punch a button and connect by satellite with the OnStar staff, which has you pegged on a global positioning system. It’s like having an electronic slave at your fingertips, because at your request, the OnStar folks will tell you what sort of restaurants are ahead and even make a reservation for you! It also will make a fair attempt to pull off any reasonable request.
BEYOND CRUISE CONTROL: Obviously, having cruise control is a wonderful feature on a trip, but the new Mercedes S-Class has a cruise device that is guided by sonar, which throws a beam ahead to the car in front of you, and reads the bounce-back reflection. It then commands your cruise control to maintain your speed if possible, but also maintains the interval with the car ahead. It causes your car to adjust its speed accordingly, and if you get cut off it warns you that you may need to assist it by hitting the brakes.
BACK-UP BENEFIT: A device first seen in BMW’s $75,000 740-series sedan, and this year incorporated for a fraction of that by Ford on its Windstar van, is a warning beeper activated by sensors in your rear bumper. You’re parallel parking, and as you back in and start to straighten out, you wonder — particularly in a van — how close you are to caving in the grille of that car behind you. Suddenly you hear a beep, then another, then closer and closer as you keep getting closer, until finally you hear a steady “beeeee-eee-eeeeeeee-eeeep!” Then you know it’s time to stop, that your within 10 inches of your non-target. It also works if a pedestrian walks behind the vehicle, or if you’re backing up toward a wall or other obstacle.
HAPPY-TRIP INSURANCE: So you’re taking the little ones on a cross-country trip in the Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan, eh? Or maybe the not-so-little ones. It’s illegal to have a television working where the driver can see it in a vehicle in the U.S., so the Silhouette has an optional little TV screen that folds down out of the ceiling, where it can be seen by everyone in the second and third rows of seats. It is an option, and it comes with a VCR, so the kids can watch movies, or home-made tapes, or play video games, while Nebraska rolls by without a murmur of complaint. Brilliant.
PLEASANT HOT SEAT: Saab has had this for years, and Volvo, Lexus, and virtually all other luxury cars have finally followed with seat heaters. The best ones have at least two settings, and five are even better. It feels great on a sub-zero morning to climb into the car, fire it up, hit the switch, and have this wonderful warming effect spread over your body. It’s amazing at how much more pleasant those cold start-ups can be.
MANUAL AUTOMATICS: Porsche started it all, with the Tiptronic, then it let its cousin at Audi use it. Chrysler came out with a version next, and now BMW, Honda, Jaguar, Volvo and others all have caught on. The device takes care of all the drivers who would like to have a stick shift but are either too lazy or have other drivers in the family who haven’t mastered a stick. It is an automatic transmission, but it can be switched to a separate, spring-loaded gate, where you can upshift or downshift by bumping the lever to the plus side or minus side. It’s great for downshifting, or for holding revs into the power band on upshifts, or just for fun. Porsche’s is still the best, and you can get it on the steering wheel, where you can use your thumb to upshift or downshift without taking your hand off the wheel. Just like Formula 1 or Champ Car racers.
HANDS-FREE CELL PHONES: Cell phones might be as much hazard as helpful when drivers pay more attention to their dialing or holding their phone instead of signalling a turn. But I have tested cars fro Audi, Cadillac and Mercedes that have hands-free units — you speak into a tiny microphone that looks like a little vent up by the mirror. Usually, you don’t trust it can possibly work well enough — until the person you’ve called says: “Why are you yelling?”
SHIFTY VENTS: Mazda, on its 626 sedans, has put an optional device on its center vents for what must be 20 years that is positively brilliant. Instead of simply channeling heat or air-conditioned air through the vents in the direction you’ve aimed the vent, the center vent on the Mazda oscillates — it swings gracefully from side to side, spreading the air more than in a straight channel, and it seems to warm or cool the interior much more efficiently. Nobody else has caught on.
SOLAR COOLING: Mazda, again, started this, but now Audi has included a fantastic device on its A8 luxury flagship. When it’s hot out, the solar batteries can not only activate but power the ventilation system to keep the interior moderately comfortable.
TECHNICAL ADVANCES
There are some excellent physical and technical things that have become impressive add-ons to vehicles too, things like multiple-valve engines, and variable valve-timing which can make the engines more efficient in developing power without sheer displacement increases. There are more:
TABLE APPEARS, SEAT DISAPPEARS: Honda is masterful at using space creatively. On the Honda CR-V mini-SUV, the flat panel that hides belongings under the floor in the rear can be lifted out and converted to a unique picnic table. Next, Honda comes out with a new minivan, the Odyssey, and it has a third-row bench seat with a deep, sub-floor well for belongings behind it. That third bench can be rotated to face the rear, and, for those situations when you’d rather have storage room than a third seat, the whole rear seat can tumble into a somersault, fitting perfectly into that sub-floor well and disappearing, leaving a flat, carpeted area instead.
HEADLIGHT WASHERS: Especially in Up North foul-weather driving, whenever your windshield requires washing or wiping, imagine how glopped up your headlights must be. Cars like Saab and Volvo — both Swedish — both have tiny windshield wiper units on their headlights, and when you hit the windshield washer, your headlights also get washed and scrubbed. Audi, too, is among one of the first to have tiny little spouts that rise up and spray a high-pressure shot on the headlights to clean them.
THIRD DOORS, FOURTH DOORS: The concept of adding rearward-opening third doors on pickup trucks made sense, but left the way open to come up with such doors on both sides, thus four-door pickup trucks. That, of course, has led toward the newest trend, of extending the extended cabs and installing four full-size, normally opening doors. We should have seen it coming, but now Saturn has added a third rear-opening door to the driver’s side of its SC-2 coupe.
KEYLESS DOOR LOCKS: The idea of remote door switches is not new, but it has become more and more sophisticated. Now, with the best key fobs, you can lock or unlock just the driver’s door, using a second click to unlock the rest. On some cars, holding the lock switch after you’ve locked the doors also will close the windows and even the sunroof, which is really nice for those times when you get out and are all set to walk away when you remember somebody left a window down.
GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS
Not all the new magical devices are worthwhile. Some, in fact, are nuisances. This is pretty subjective, but two of my nonfavorites are showing up more and more.
AUTO-LOCKING DOORS: I hate door locks that automatically engage when you hit 9 miles per hour, or 18 mph. First, if it’s driver safety that is foremost, the above-mentioned method of clicking once to unlock the driver’s door, and twice for the rest of the doors, is far superior. But when you can lock or unlock all the doors with a touch of a button from the driver’s seat, all drivers should be responsible enough to push the button — if they want the doors locked. On some cars, thankfully, the doors unlock once you’ve stopped and shifted into park. However, that flies in the face of driver’s safety, because, in some situations, maybe you don’t want to instantly unlock all your doors.
AUTO ON HEAD LIGHTS: I also think drivers should be responsible enough to turn on their headlights, but some cars have either instant-on lights or daytime running lights. These work for added visibility in the daytime, but my findings are that when it’s dusk or dark, you can easily fail to turn on your normal headlights because when you start the car, the lights are already on. And when was the last time you noticed your lights were on, then reached to turn them on? I wrote about that once, and got a hostile note from someone who said the whole thing could be disconnected, or I could have pulled the fuse. My point is that if a gadget or gimmick is so questionable that you also need to learn how to defuse it, then we’re better off without it.
That includes safety devices, such as airbags, which remain questionable as strict safety devices because they seem to malfunction just enough to also be hazardous in some cases.
TT sports car gives heartbeat to Audi concept
For an automobile company, building a concept car for actual production can be therapeutic — an example of turning loose the designers to have a little fun and then dispatching the car-makers to execute a little corporate fun. And the result can be a corporate toy that makes everybody feel good. Especially if it sells.
If that’s all that German manufacturer Audi had in mind with the TT sports car, it would have to qualify as an A-plus success. However, the TT is far more than just a corporate toy. It is a new definition of the true underlying character of the corporation, which so far has spent its considerable energy and technical skills on producing extremely good, basic, substantial but somewhat conservative sedans.
I happened to be in Frankfurt, at the world’s most impressive auto show, four years ago, when Audi unveiled the TT as a concept car. Hundreds of automotive journalists from all over the globe gathered in a little studio arranged in one of the show’s 13 exposition halls to see a little lump of silver. Suddenly, and carefully choreographed to music, the silvery sheath was lifted, and out sprang a half-dozen silver-bodysuit-clad dancers, all leaping around this unusually styled little sports car.
It was neat, but a little strange, with a rounded-off front end, tight passenger compartment that resembled a chopped Porsche Speedster from the 1950s or early ’60s, and a sleek but rounded off rear end. Very unusual, but a striking blend of retro and futuristic.
Flash forward to 1999, and I had the opportunity to join another herd of automotive journalists in the 90-degree heat of central Texas for the first drive-time in the real production TT sports cars.
It was almost left to the imagination of how the metamorphosis must have occurred, from designer’s dream to consideration of production, and then to actually turning the concept car into reality.
Before we got the actual explanation of how it all came about, we were simply plunked into a group of TTs, which had been parked in semicircle inside a hangar at the airport in Austin, Texas. And we were off, running the willing little engines up through the gears with a precise-feeling 5-speed manual gearbox, dashing down freeway ramps and on out I35 — yes, the same I35 that runs from Up North in Minnesota all the way down deep through the heart of Texas, and on through the twisty hill country between Austin and San Antonio.
The car, which will be in Audi showrooms nationwide within the next month, indicates that underneath that stout, sturdy, proud, Teutonic exterior of Audi, there beats the heart of a sports-car enthusiast. For decades, Audi has let Porsche be the German sports-car builder, and Mercedes has been out there with luxurious sports cars as well. Volkswagen even had the Scirocco for years as a sporty coupe, and BMW finally got into the sports car end of things with the Z3 a couple years ago.
In those last couple of years, the new trend has been for a new breed of German sports cars, priced at just around $40,000, that includes the Porsche Boxster, the Mercedes retractable hardtop SLK, and the Z3. It is into that segment that Audi finally burst forth with the TT, which will begin at a base price of $30,000. And it will be highly competitive not only because of its amazingly reasonable price.
THE BEGINNING
Marc Trahan, who is in charge of product planning for Audi’s U.S. arm, and is one of those rare types who can not only answer any questions ranging from technical to marketing but can translate his own answers into understandable terms, explained the quick overview of the car.
“Freeman Thomas, a designer in our Sema Valley design studio, first designed the concept car,” Trahan said. “The idea was to be very pure, and to incorporate geometric shapes. The cylinder and the circle are the purest geometric forms, and you will notice they recur in various places on the car. When you see this car, it looks like the body has been stretched tight over that original 1994 drawing.
“It has Teutonic purity; every line and form must be justified. And it must all come together in an absolutely pure result.”
From Audi’s home-base factory in Ingolstadt, Germany, the TT is built in Gyor, Hungary, in a plant Audi has used since 1992 as the site to produce its extremely efficient engines. While producing over a million engines a year, the plant also has now been altered to ouse a new and efficient assembly plant. Ten trains make the run from Ingolstadt to Gyor every day, and body panels stamped out in Ingolstadt one day can be assembled into a new TT by the next morning.
The TT platform is the same one used for the A3, a blunt coupe that has had tremendous success in Europe and is slightly smaller than the world-class A4 sedan.
The name TT might seem logically to have sprung from Tradition and Technology, but, Trahan explained, it came from the term “Tourist Trophy,” which is what came to be known as the victor’s reward for racing at the Isle of Man, where all comers raced with either motorcycles or cars, from 1905 to 1922. The cars could be any touring cars, you raced whatever you could drive to the circuit. NSU motorcycles, which later would be taken over by Audi in 1969, were primary competitors in those races, making the TT name commemorative for the company as well.
In styling, Trahan went over the look of the TT. It looks like it has a chopped top because it has high door sills, which meet the “eyebrows” of the top of the wheelwells perfectly.
“The wheels and tires themselves are a prominent part of the design,” Trahan said. “The gap between the wheel-housing and the top of the wheel are considered very important, and the springs had to fit exact tolerances to maintain that spacing.”
Even the fuel filler has prominence. Most cars attempt to hide the door to the fuel-filler in the bodywork. Audi figured it’s an important item, and decided to show it off with a brushed aluminum circle and a pop-up cap on the flank.
Inside the cockpit, there are no woodgrain touches, either real or plastic. There is only the supplest of leathers and polished — but not too bright — aluminum. That aluminum recurs to circle the instruments, on the cupholders, the steering wheel horn ring, the shift knob and a panel that is hinged to fold down over the 80-watt audio system, and the silvery look also is on the perforated stainless steel facing of the pedals.
“The leather is Valcona leather, on the seats and door panels,” said Trahan. “It is a special Italian leather that is natural, with virtually no coating so that it gets better with age. We’re the first to use this particular type of leather in an automobile.”
THE DRIVING
To compete with such luminaries as the Z3, Boxster and SLK, to say nothing of world sports cars such as Corvette and various alternatives from Japan, the TT had to be more than a unique, attention-grabbing pretty face. It also had to perform.
For that, Audi uses its small but extremely potent 1.8-liter 4-cylinder engine, which, two years ago, was equipped with five valves per cylinder (three intake, two exhaust), run off dual overhead camshafts. Such a small engine might lack low-end torque, so Audi runs a low-pressure turbocharger on it.
For the TT, 180 horsepower peaking at 5,200 RPMs, but a strong 173 foot-pounds of torque as well. That torque number is good, for a small, light sports car, but the beauty of it is that its 173 peak is attained at only 1,900 RPMs, and — imagine this — it remains constant at that peak all the way to 4,700 RPMs.
The result is moderate acceleration from 0-20, then an uplifting surge that can carry 0-60 in only 7.4 seconds, and can go on through the gears to whatever speed you want, with an electronic shutoff at 130 mph. It also can deliver an estimated 22-31 miles per gallon, city or highway.
Aside from its design, the high-performing TT also breaks away from the tired old tradition that says to be a true sports car, a vehicle must have the engine in front and the drive wheels at the rear. Audi, for years, has proven that front-wheel drive designed properly can get you through the tightest curves swiftly and even more surely, because the front wheels pull and the rear wheels never try to pass up the front. And, of course, for over two decades Audi has been producing the incredible quattro — lower-case “q’ please — system of all-wheel drive, which is designed for performance around curves and just happens to be superb in all manner of foul weather besides.
We sped around curves, marveling at the TT’s ability to remain with a flat-based attitude no matter how sharply we hurled it, and the smooth comfort never was compromised, to say nothing of the absolute feeling of control. Nonetheless, somebody in the press gathering sort of moaned the traditional moan at the apparent compromise of front-wheel drive in the TT.
“Audi traditionally has believed in front-wheel drive, or all-wheel drive, as the two most tractable systems,” Trahan said, diplomatically. “We think, quite frankly, that those are the best two drivetrains.”
Then he explained the production plan. First, the front-wheel drive TT hits the showrooms. Then, by late summer, the quattro version of the 180-horsepower TT. The quattro system adds 250 pounds to the 2,655-pound lightweight, but 0-60 times remain the same because the all-wheel-drive system’s dispersal of power compensates for the weight addition by eliminating any wheelspin on hard acceleration.
A year from now, the TT will be available as a roadster, without a top, but with an easy to operate softtop and an available hard cover. And by then, a new version of the same 1.8 turbo engine will be offered with new cylinder blocks, a different turbo and throttle control, delivering 225 horsepower and with a 6-speed manual shifter.
That one will undoubtedly cost around $40,000. As it stands, the start-up TT for $30,500 — with standard leather interior — will be a certain sellout. And when you fling it around a tight series of curves on a twisty road with that new, quick-ratio steering, and find out that all you’re missing by not having rear drive is the lack of heart-in-your-throat feeling that you might spin out.
And when you nestle into that special leather on the seats, it makes you wonder how neat that leather will become with age and as it gets accustomed to holding your body. You wonder, and you can’t help wanting to find out.
TECHNICAL TOUCHES
Along with the ability to go, the TT can stop on the traditional dime, with oversized brakes and an antilock system. It also has airbags, with a shutoff switch for the passenger seat. And while the two jumpseats in back are small, they would work for little kids or for small adults on a short hop. But at least they’re back there, which gives the TT an edge on strict 2-seaters.
In the driver’s seat, you notice the ergonimic detail. Round knobs that can be twisted or tilted perform logical functions. Under the rear hatch, you have a surprising 14 cubic feet of cargo space, and it can be expanded to 23 cubic feet by folding down the rear seats.
With heated windshield washers and retractable headlight washers, the TT is ready for even Up North winters, which would otherwise be justified into ignoring sports cars or at least parking them from November to April.
The TT also comes with Audi’s traditional safety components. It has what Trahan described as 50-hertz bending frequency in its body structure, where rigidity of 25-30 is considered world-class for harmonic frequency of vibration. It also has a side impact bar that includes a rear element that transmists any side impact to the floor.
The body is made of fully galvanized steel with an aluminum hood and still gets a multiple-step anti-corrosion process. It carries Audi’s unique three-year warranty, with all service done free.
In dimensions, the TT is 159.1 inches long, 73.1 inches wide, and only 53 inches high. Its styling gives it the look of an athlete, crouched and about to spring into a 100-meter dash.
It all makes sense, because Audi has been a subtle, almost background performer with its excellent A4 sedan, its mid-luxury A6 sedan, and its all-out A8 luxury flagship, plus its new A4 and A6 Avant station wagons. Under all those conservative but classy outer skins, Audis always have been fun to drive, and satisfying to drive fast and hard, with responsiveness to go with their durability.
All that was missing was a bold statement to the world that an athlete’s heart and mind were working beneath that business-person’s demeanor. The TT delivers that statement.
Driving enthusiasts can say ‘Si’ to new Civic
[CUTLINE STUFF:
#1— The Si model injects a bargain-dose of sportiness to the economical Honda Civic.
#2— The $17,000 Civic Si is powered by a DOHC, VTEC 1.6-liter 4 that pumps out 160 horsepower.
#3— Honda’s Prelude SH meets all the demands of a high-tech, personal-luxury coupe. ]
Driving westbound along Grand Av. in Duluth, I pulled into a Spur station in the Honda Civic Si that I was test-driving. As I stopped, I noticed a really neat Honda motorcycle parked by the sidewalk. The young guy working inside said it was his, a 600-cc. CBR that looked like a cafe racer.
“What’s the redline on the tach?” I asked him.
“Thirteen thousand,” he said. “But I noticed your Civic, that’s got a VTEC, right?”
“Yes, it’s the ‘Si’ model, and it’s got a 1,600-cc. engine with a redline of 8,000.”
Honda drivers discuss such things. Drivers of other things don’t, simply because normal cars can boast of huge displacement numbers and impressive horsepower figures, but they run out of revs at about 5,000 or 6,000 RPMs, and attempts to go higher would require a magnet to pick up the shrapnel.
With Honda, the capability of high-revving screamers used to be confined to sporty motorcycles, which perform at RPM reaches incomprehensible to Harleys, which have now capitalized on their low-revving limitations by promoting their low-rumble sound. Honda, meanwhile, has gone on, conducting factory racing programs that first dominated Formula 1 and then CART Champ Cars, while developing techniques for extracting every bit of power from a limited-displacement size engine.
Other companies, of course, also develop powerful racing engines, although the ones in NASCAR or the Indy Racing League let independent engine builders, with after-market parts, turn their basic engines into devices that gain publicity and acclaim but have nothing to do with what they send to the assembly lines for the cars we buy for the street.
Honda, however, has directly applied its racing tricks to its production cars. All Honda engines have overhead camshafts and multiple valves, and Honda also has perfected what it calls “VTEC,” for variable timing and electronic control of its valvetrain operation. Varied valve-timing is like getting a specific tune-up every RPM. The VTEC lets the engine adjust to varying altitudes or weather conditions, and actually lets the valve timing adjust to your driving.
You may not need to know all that stuff, so long as you get enough power when you need it, and your car’s engine runs with optimum efficiency, for the sake of fuel economy, emissions, durability and infrequent repair and tune-up intervals. Some companies get by with ancient technology and make up for shortcomings with bigger engines, as if more sheer power can replace technology. Honda prefers the advanced technology that can extract remarkable doses of power, making over-achievers out of comparatively small engines.
CORPORATE HOT RODS
Honda first installed VTEC on its Acura NSX sports car, a marvel of such technology, with a VTEC V6 and a stunning, aluminum body. It also costs about $90,000. The VTEC technology trickled down through the Integra, the $26,000 Prelude, and on into the Accord and Civic. In Civic trim, the technology was aimed at high economy, leaving the higher-performance to the costlier models.
When Honda redesigned the entry-level Civic in 1991 to add a sleek, 2-door coupe, I wondered why the company never really tried to emphasize its sporty lines by offering some sporty touches. You could only get pudgy, standard tires, and normal wheels with simple, cookie-cutter-like wheel covers. Backyard hot-rodders from a new era started fiddling with computer chips, and found ways to spend all sorts of money to make $15,000 Civic coupes perform better, while also installing their own alloy wheels and low-profile tires, in recent years.
For 1999, Honda took matters into its own hands, and produced the “Si” model of the Civic. It’s interesting that it’s “Si,” and not “SI,” because in Spanish, of course, Si means yes. And after driving the Civic Si, I can say that anywhere in the world, the Civic Si commands a resounding “Yes!”
Shortly before I drove the Civic Si, I test-drove a Prelude SH , loaded with technology on a larger, costlier scale. Both had 5-speed manual transmissions.
The Prelude has been Honda’s flagship sports coupe, a rolling test-bed for futuristic technology, and the new one meets that demand, albeit on a limited-production scale. In the Accord, the 2.2-liter 4-cylinder performs well, with single-overhead camshaft and four valves per cylinder. In the Prelude, the 2.2 gets dual overhead cams and the VTEC performance treatment that boosts it to 200 horsepower.
The Prelude SH sticks to the road like a magnet because it has race-bred double-wishbone upper and lower suspension front and rear, plus stabilizer bars and an active torque transfer system on the front-wheel-drive wheels to send a larger share of torque to the outside wheel in any turning maneuver for improved cornering.
Typically, the Prelude still meets all the requirements of a personal luxury coupe, with limited-size occupants only in the small rear seat, and the SH version boosts it to the level of almost any all-out sports car. Certainly a sophisticated way to have your luxury leather interior and ear-shattering audio system, while also satisfying that fiendish urge to outrun most cars from a stoplight and virtually all others under $30,000 if there’s a curve involved.
CIVIC: REAL-WORLD FUN
Personally, much as I like the Prelude, I prefer the look of the previous generation, which was more dramatically styled, front to rear. The new Prelude has unusual squarish headlights and extremely unimaginative horizontal taillights. It has a slinky look to it, to be sure, but I prefer the look of the Accord coupe, for a few thousand less.
Meanwhile, back to the Civic. The Si is a new gem in Honda’s massive and impressive jewel case. The 1.6-liter 4-cylinder engine is a standard of reliability and economic efficiency in base form, with its single-overhead-cam, 16-valve design, but even the hot-rod tuners have to be amazed at what the company did by adding dual overhead cams to that little motor and getting 160 horsepower from it.
While it would be easy to drive the car routinely, shifting at 5,000 revs, doing so would never get you into the power range, which peaks at 7,600 revs. And it loves to be driven hard, with the needle zooming across those neat, italic numbers on the tachometer on its merry way to 8,000. Driving it, shall we say, enthusiastically still showed 32.5 miles per gallon. It undoubtedly would have been even better, but nobody from Honda told me I didn’t have to rev it up on every shift.
Steering is precise and the handling is excellent. Seats are firmly bolstered and very comfortable, and all the controls are efficiently placed. My only complaint is that while the 5-speed manual works flawlessly, the Si cries out for a 6-speed. Honda has closed the ratios of the 5-speed for performance, and the sound from 4,000 RPMs while cruising makes you feel that you should shift again, even though the revs are OK, considering you can go to 8,000. A sixth gear would allow you to cruise the same freeways at 2,500 revs at 70 miles per hour, and you’d probably get 40 miles per gallon.
You get 4-wheel disc brakes with the Si, but you can’t get antilock brakes, which is curious, although I am not convinced that having ABS pump the brakes for you is always an asset. That was another way of keeping cost down, and as a bargain performer, the Civic Si can’t be touched. Even in-house at Honda.
Compare the numbers: The Prelude costs $25,950 and has a 2.2-liter 4-cylinder engine with dual-overhead camshafts, 16 valves and a potent 200 horsepower at 7,000 RPMs, plus a torque peak of 156 foot-pounds at 5,250 RPMs; the Civic Si costs $17,860 and has a 1.6-liter 4-cylinder with dual-overhead cams, 16 valves, 160 horsepower at 7,600 RPMs and 111 foot-pounds of torque at a 7,000-RPM peak.
Unquestionably, the Prelude SH will run away and hide from the Civic Si — and most other cars, as well — in all-out performance. Like the Prelude, the Civic allows you to taste all the wonders of cutting-edge technology. Unlike the speedy Prelude, if you want to run the revs up to 8,000, you can do it without guaranteeing yourself a speeding ticket. But the Civic Si shows that you can satisfy all the demands of budget and everyday driving while still operating a car with the fun quotient on overload.
In fact, compared to other cars that deliver similar pleasure, you could afford to buy a Civic Si and have enough left over to buy a Honda CBR motorcycle.
Mustang GT kicks stronger than ever after 35 years
[Cutline stuff: (Photos by John Gilbert)
#1— The Mustang GT stood, fittingly, beneath the American flag as the ponycar icon of the U.S. for 35 years.
#2— The ’99 Mustang GT looked ready to take off on the streets of Ely.
#3— Seat travel has been increased to make the sporty interior of the Mustang more user-friendly for drivers and their legs.
#4— The sculptured lines of the hood are carried through artfully as the outline for the grille.
Wnen Ford rolled out the Mustang for the first time in 1964, it was an instant success — a long hood/short deck, 2-door coupe that began life aimed at being a personal sporty car that was inexpensive to buy and to operate.
It has continued to dominate the “ponycar” segment that it, and its horsey name, invented. In fact, it continues to dominate that segment even while its prime competitors from General Motors, the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, are facing dwindling sales and heading toward apparent extinction.
It only took a couple of years before Ford’s corporate hot-rod types stuffed a V8 with more power under the hood and made a succession of screaming high-performance cars that carried on into the 1970s. That theme was revived during the ’90s, and as this decade heads for a finish, the 1999 version of the Mustang appears well-prepared to charge on into the new century.
In the past few years, the basic V6 Mustang and the sportier GT have been joined by a Special Vehicle Team version, the Cobra, which has turned out to be one of the nation’s top overall high-performance machines. It includes all sorts of suspension and performance upgrades, most specifically a hand-built, all-aluminum version of the 4.6-liter V8, which includes replacing the single overhead camshafts with dual cams and four valves per cylinder.
While the Cobra continues to be worth its $30,000 price tag, everyday drivers need to be cautioned to not overlook the Mustang GT, which is a strong performer on its own, and a comparative bargain at $20,000.
I recently test-drove a glistening “Bright Atlantic Blue Metallic” Mustang GT, and found it, as usual, to be more than I bargained for, and far closer to the Cobra in overall driving pleasure, while even having a couple of distinct advantages when compared to its costlier twin.
DIFFERENT LOOK
The Mustang was a tight, lean and sleek machine through its term that ended a year ago. I must say, it took awhile before I thought the new Mustang was as good looking as the previous model; in fact, I still like several things about the predecessor better.
For example, style dictated change, and form didn’t exactly follow function with the new look. The rear also has a stacked-up look, as if designers had more of the new molded plastic material than they needed, so they used it anyhow to make the car look higher where it used to taper off into smaller, triple-lens taillights. The front is a little taller, appearing to have more body material because of thinner, wraparound headlights, and the look doesn’t match the sleeker former car. I grew to like that view after noticing how the little raised creases on the hood sweep down and neatly measure off against the tapered outer edges of the grille.
My main complaint, though, is that to make the new car look more impressive, it wears a larger air scoop on the hood, and tall, thin air-scoops on both flanks, where they look as though they might cool the rear disc brakes. True, the engine breathes well through new manifolding, but it gets no air from the scoop, because it’s a phony. And the car does have four-wheel disc brakes in GT form, but those side scoops don’t let any air in, because they, too, are fakes.
Call it form following nonfunction.
All Mustangs have the “35th Anniversary” emblem on the sides of the front fenders.
But while you can quibble about the look of the new Mustang, you have to like the changes made under the skin. For the first time, a traction-control system that retards the power when sensors detect wheelspin is available as an option. That should help foul-weather traction, and the Mustang will need help in an Up North winter, with front-engine and rear-drive, and while it wasn’t slippery enough to check out the system this time, it can be controlled by a switch on the console.
The new platform makes a couple other significant improvements. One is that the turning radius is vastly improved. Its turning circle is reduced almost a full three feet.
Speaking of the console, Ford’s engineers struck out on the cupholding front in the GT. The console has two cupholders indented, with the rear one being larger, and the front one conventional pop-can size. That front one held my coffee cup too, except for one problem: Shifting.
You can shift into first well, but if you pull the shift lever back into second, it either won’t engage, or it will give your coffee cup or pop can a quick somersault. On into third, and you’re fine, but coming back down to fourth clouts the cup again, generally blocking the shifter from engaging. It may be a nitpick, but if you move the pop can or conventional coffee cup back to the second cupholder, you’ll find that it is too big. And hopefully you’ll realize it before the cup or can does an “endo” into the back seat as you accelerate.
Inside, the front bucket seats are cloth, and have a sprinting horse embossed high on each backrest. The power seat option, which was on the test car, is 6-way instead of the 4-way of the former Mustang. A drop of 40 feet, 8 inches to 37 feet, 11 inches, is remarkable.
Another major move is in bucket seat travel. At 6-feet, I used to find that it was difficult to position the seat perfectly in Mustangs, mainly because I like to sit with the backrest nearly straight up, which requires sliding the seat back pretty far. And the Mustang seat never wanted to slide back far enough. The new one, however, has a 1-inch longer track that alleviates that problem.
The Mustang remains basically a 2-seater, with the tiny rear seats only for short people or short hops.
CAPTIVATING SOUND
An impressive sound system, the Mach 460, makes your radio, tapes or discs come to life with dual amplifiers and a powered subwoffer. Driving even a short distance with the bass turned up full will cause the car to reverberate like a bass drum. Turning the bass down about to halfway still affords plenty of boom.
But the most musical part of the Mustang GTs sound has absolutely nothing to do with the stereo system. It has to do with stepping on the gas, building up speed in the 250-horsepower (with 290 foot-pounds of torque) V8, and then letting off as you downshift. Decelerating toward a stoplight produces this wonderful, burbling, rapping sound that can take you back to the good-ol’ days when restrained hot-rodders would put glass-pack mufflers on their V8s, trying to get close to that perfect sound.
There is an interesting story behind that tuned GT exhaust. The prestigious Automobile magazine recently listed its favorite things in the automotive world, and it listed the best exhaust sound as coming from the Mustang SVT Cobra. No mention of the GT, which is a mistake. Perhaps the folks at Automobile don’t realize it, or maybe they haven’t condescended to test-drive the less-exotic GT version of the Mustang.
But there are government restrictions to how much you can free up the exhaust flow in an engine, and the more power an engine has, the less you can fiddle with the exhaust, to free it up or to tune the sound. The Cobra V8 has four cams and 32 valves, and turns out 300 horsepower, which means tuning the exhaust note is restricted. It sounds good, but just pretty good compared to the GT.
The GT has plenty of power, despite having only single overhead cams and two valves per cylinder. With 260 horses peaking at 5,250 RPMs, an increase of 35 over the same engine last year, and the 300 torque peak at 400, an increase of 10, Ford engineers were able to play a lot more with the GT exhaust. If you were sitting on a park bench when a Cobra and then a GT drove past, judging by the exhaust note only you would guess that the GT is the hotter car.
Another tribute to how good the Cobra is, is that Ford engineers have been able to let the best features of that specialty car trickle down to the GT. The test car’s handling suspension offered excellent firmness, bolstered by the 225/55 high-performance tires, mounted on 16-inch alloy wheels. That, along with comfortable supportiveness of the seats, the neat feel of the 5-speed manual shifter (despite the heavy-duty clutch that feel heavier and heavier when your caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic) all enhance the sportiness of the GT.
An added advantage of the GT is that the 2-valve, single-cam 4.6 V8 burns regular gas and delivers good mileage for a sporty performing car. The EPA estimates are 17 city, 24 highway; I got the test car to deliver 18.3 miles per gallon in city driving and 23 on a combined city-freeway tankful.
The base Mustang can be obtained with a pushrod V6 engine, while the GT with the 4.6 V8 starts at $20,870. Adding antilock brakes, an antitheft system, remote keyless entry, traction control, cruise, rear defogger and traction control, boosts the GT’s sticker to $22,585. It may not be the Cobra, but drive it just as aggressively, and you might not find the difference all that noticeable.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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