Antique car show ignites the urge to get a true classic moving
[[[[cutlines:
1/ Normal traffic flow was interrupted last week by a classic car show between Lake Avenue and 2nd Avenue East on Superior Street.
2/ The 1960s didn’t seem so old when measured by a flawless Corvette Sting Ray coupe.
3/ A familiar 1969 Shelby Mustang missed the show and headed off for a mechanical freshening.
4/ Head on, a mid-1960s Corvette looks more futuristic than most new cars. ]]]]]
It was with great concern that I watched as my pride and joy for three decades was loaded onto a flatbed truck and hauled to a trusted mechanic’s shop for refreshening last week.
The car is a hybrid of two great and classic autos — a 1969 Shelby Mustang, and a 1970 Boss 302 Mustang. The brief history is that I bought the Boss 302 new, unloaded it from the train personally, because my young family was heading off on a three-week driving vacation to auto races at Mosport in Toronto, Bridgehampton on New York’s Long Island, and St. Jovite in Quebec.
Three years later, with the car in perfect tune but custom-painted, I got hit from behind by a sleepy driver in a large truck. Fortunately I saw him coming, at 55 miles per hour and about 25 feet from my rear bumper, in time to do a 50-foot burnout before he nailed me. The rear was a mess, totaled.
By sheer luck, I found a 1969 Shelby that had been treated rather poorly, bought it cheap and had a hot-rod mechanic in the Twin Cities do the transplant. Instead of the 351 Windsor engine that looked good but was underpowered, I wound up with my own 315-horsepower Boss 302, with its chassis, wide-spaced competition Hurst 4-speed transmission, and sophisticated suspension with Koni shocks all around.
Then I had it painted by a fellow nicknamed “Peanuts,” a legendary custom painter in White Bear Lake. He put on four coats of black, then four coats of pearlescent white over the black, taking great pains to put eight coats of the white where the Shelby’s stripes should be. Then he put eight coats of cobalt blue over the whole thing, and topped that with three coats of Imron, the car-painter’s plastic armorplating. The result was a one of a kind car, and the stripes gleamed through the blue from the depths of his artistry.
Years passed, and I drove the Boss/Shelby less and less, refining and retuning the engine completely, 10 years back. But as new-car test drives mounted, the Boss/Shelby sat idle. I turned down several impressive offers from folks who knew of my prize. But this was a car that loved to be driven, and craved to be driven hard, performing best when blipped to its formidible limits.
The last few years, however, I didn’t even take it out from under its protective tarp in my garage, despite urgings from eager sons to drive it, and from a less-eager wife to sell it so we could put that garage space to better use.
Three different factors collaborated to cause me to get it going in the past week. One was that moving from your home means moving everything, including whatever prizes you may have in your garage. Another was the consuming guilt of having “abused” my pet vehicle by not driving it hard enough, far enough — or at all, for too long. And the third was last week’s Classic Car show on Superior Street.
There were a lot of neat cars there, parked on either side of Superior Street for two blocks. But to me, by far the most impressive was a mid-1960s Corvette Sting Ray coupe that was parked right across from the Coney Island joint, just past 1stAvenue East.
A lot of the cars were impressive, and many of them had passers-by gathered for a closer look, but I was in a hurry, so I walked briskly through them all with a hasty overview. Until I got to the Corvette. I don’t know my ‘Vettes well enough to know whether it was a 1964 or 1965, but it was awesome, whichever it was.
There was a nice 1969 Mustang next to the Vette, but it had some sort of supercharged drag-racing motor. Too bad. Also some fine antique cars, and a couple of great street rods. There was even a Plymouth Prowler with a giant No. 3 on the door, and a replica of Dale Earnhardt’s signature. Give me a break! Earnhardt is a Chevy guy, who probably got paid contractually to never drive a Mopar, to say nothing of a Prowler. Put the 3 on a Monte Carlo, or let it rest.
I kept coming back to the Corvette and checked it out from every angle. Corvettes have gotten bigger, heavier, bulkier, then slimmer again to reach the high level of sophistication enjoyed now. But if Chevrolet had never issued the Sting Ray model, and brought it out as an all-new vehicle next year, it would look like the best and most futuristic Corvette ever. That’s impressive.
All of the other cars were old. Nice, well done, but old cars. Only the Sting Ray looked futuristic in style and class. I realized then that my Boss/Shelby, parked back in the Twin Cities, had that same ageless, timeless characteristic. If it was ready to go, it would have ranked right up there as maybe the most dazzling car at the show, and it certainly would have gathered a crowd — especially when true car fanciers got a peek at that Boss 302 engine.
So I hustled on back to the Twin Cities, but I soon realized that it would take more than a lengthy battery charge to get the Boss/Shelby fired up. So I summoned the flatbed, and off it went, to meet with my favorite Twin Cities mechanic.
Hoses were shot, some electrical stuff needs refurbishing, the brakes might be stubborn about functioning, and the carburetor gasket seems to have gotten brittle enough to ignore its duty. I got a call from Paul, the ace mechanic at Automotive Services in Maplewood. “I got it running,” said Paul. “But it’ll take a bit of work to get everything fixed up.”
Go for it, Paul. I get a chill thinking about the exhilaration that comes from stepping on the gas, feeling the surge of power, and hearing that Boss motor rev until it whistles. My wife knows that when we get it going, we can sell it, but I know when it gets going, I won’t want to.
Volvo’s new S60 packs luxury, technology into stylish new shape
[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ The new Volvo S60 styling matches the company’s traditional smooth-sailing performance.
2/ High-tailed rear aids the S60’s aerodynamics and sporty look, to say nothing of trunk space.
3/ Everything is in place in the Volvo S60 interior, always a secure and comfortable setting. ]]]]]
Who knows why automobile companies nickname their models by creature, numerical pattern or computer-selected-nonoffending symbols? Volvo has all sorts of reasons for naming its new sedan the S60, which is significant to me because it both reminds me of the ’60s and provides full evidence of how far the Swedish car-maker has come from the ’60s.
The 1960s were both aggressive and progressive in the United States, whether you’re talking politics, shocking social issues, coming to grips with racial inequities, rock ‘n’ roll music, or automobiles. Hot cars were everywhere, and they got hotter right on into the 1970s, when they coughed and sputtered to a halt because of nasty emission laws forced onto the industry.
As it turns out, it was better for the cars to choke than for the people, but that’s another issue, which may not yet be resolved.
Last week, I wrote about owning a racy Mustang Boss 302 which ended up transplanted into a Shelby body. That was as progressive and aggressive as the auto world could be, at that point and possible since. But right before I bought that 1970 Boss 302, I owned a 1968 Volvo 142, a squarish 2-door, that was about as conservative as the auto industry could be at that point, but one with electric overdrive on top of the four-speed stick, and with Koni adjustable shock absorbers and a few other touches, it handled well and performed at a level higher than Volvo’s stodgy image for safety might allow.
That backdrop is interesting now. My mom actually owned a 1966 Volvo 122, also a 2-door, but one with rounded lines. That car was fairly bullet-proof in any accident scenarios, and while the Europeans were ‘way ahead of the rest of the world when it came to safety, Volvo was at the forefront, building the closest things to crush-proof vehicles up through the 122. In 1967, Volvo switched directions, and the 140-series (142 for the 2-door and 144 for the 4-door) became the new theme. Instead of rounded shapes, the 140 series was square, and instead of being crush-proof, it was crushable on purpose — designed with collapsible, energy-absorbing front and rear sections, but maintaining a crush-proof occupant compartment.
That Volvo 142S served our young family well, and will always be remembered. Volvos continued to be squarish, both in design as well as social degree of sophistication, for three decades. Back then, Volvo wouldn’t consider building a front-wheel-drive car, siding with Mercedes in favoring front engine/rear drive layouts. Another factor was the stubbornness of the Swedish industry: Saab made only front-wheel-drive cars, so Volvo, trying to be the upscale Swedish company, wasn’t about to acknowledge that its prime, and only, Swedish rival had anything going.
Flash forward now, to a new century for the world, and a new world for Volvo. The Swedish car-maker gets its financial guidance from Ford Motor Company these days, but, just as it has done with Jaguar and other newly acquired smaller and more specialized marquees, Ford has left affiliate Volvo to its own considerable devices for building cars.
The recent introduction of the renamed S80 luxury Volvo and the S40 basic models really shocked me. Both were redesigned with stunning, contemporary looks, and with rounded off lines and a streamlined roof silhouette that did away with that square image — which was left to the mid-range S70 in recent years. What surprised me most of those two cars was that the S40 seemed to offer luxury car features and feel at an amazingly low sticker price of $23,000. I honestly guessed it would be about $40,000 before I saw the sticker.
Now I get a load of the new S60, and I am surprised and impressed all over again.
The S60 is the new mid-range family hauler, maintaining all of Volvo’s noteworthy assets for safety and security, while also offering contemporary good looks and impressive handling and agility.
One look, and your first impression is that Volvo must have kidnapped someone from BMW to design the S60.
If the second look is at the sticker price, you are again surprised and impressed. I guessed it would be mid-$30,000 range. The sticker was $30,300. Now, that’s high enough for most U.S. customers, even those of us in the snow belt. But the real surprise comes when you scrutinize the sticker more and find that you could deduct things such as the automatic transmission ($1,000), the CD player,sunrof, leather power-seat package ($1,825), metallic paint ($400), and you could work your way on down to the base price of $26,500, which would still buy you a heckuva car and be among the world’s automotive bargains.
FRONT-WHEEL DRIVE
While vaulting from the past into the future with its new designs, Volvo also has conceded the obvious advantages of front-wheel drive. In fact, all Volvos are now FWD, except for the Cross-Country wagons, which are all-wheel drive.
All-wheel drive is obviously the supreme for foul-weather traction. But short of that, front-wheel drive can get you anywhere, during any weather, because the entire car simply wants to follow where the front-drive wheels are aimed.
Some aging purists still maintain you have to have rear-drive to have true performance feel, but having test-driven virtually everything driveable, and realizing the northern climate’s imposing threats, there is no situation where front-wheel drive can be outperformed by rear-drive vehicles, regardless of the sophistication of current stability and traction-control devices. Naturally, having the weight over the drive wheels is the ultimate advantage.
Acknowledging that, my only criticism of the Volvo S60 is that its performance is less than scintillating in off-the-line acceleration. The test car came armed with the 2.4-liter 5-cylinder engine. Five cylinders seems strange, although Audi used to use five cylinders in its mainstream sedans. An interesting thing about engineering is that four-cylinder engines have a harmonic vibration that can’t be avoided as the revs build up. Somewhere between 0 and 6,000 RPMs, there will be a vibration. Counter-balance shafts to offset and neutralize the vibration has gained popularity in recent years. In-line six-cylinder engines, meanwhile, are inherently smooth all the way up, although they compromise their smooth power for economy, and for the matter of housing their length in transverse applications.
So a five-cylinder is a good compromise. In the Volvo, the five doesn’t vibrate a bit. In costlier models, Volvo turbocharges the five, and it is extremely swift. Taking the turbo off it, though, removes the jump. It still runs very well at cruising speed, and it has adequate passing force, but off the line, the normally aspirated S60 is not what you’d first think about when you hear the term “drag race.”
Still, low-end torque is an American concept. In the U.S., a lot of buyers only think about quick take-off when they think about performance, while the rest of the world’s drivers and manufacturers are more concerned with having potent high-speed capabilities after moderate take-off. So the S60 might be more advanced and sophisticated than a lot of U.S. drivers. If you can’t outdrag your neighbor’s Bonneville, you can cruise effortlessly through the 5-speed automatic in the kind of comfort you more associate with cars costing over $40,000.
The 2.4-liter engine has variable valve-timing and turns ut 168 horsepower at 5,900 RPMs and 170 foot-pounds of torque at 4,500 revs. The 5-speed automatic has adaptive shift logic to adapt to your driving style, and winter mode settings for optimum traction.
Also, the S60 delivered 28 miles per gallon in combined city-freeway driving, making it a reasonably priced luxury car that could run with some of the best economy sedans.
CREATURE FEATURES
The obvious assets of the S60 are the seats, the driving position and the safety characteristics. You have the unibody construction with high strength steel in the passenger safety cage, with collapsible front and rear sections to absorb the energy of a crash. If the agility of the car’s steering and suspension fails to allow you to duck the ill-handling beast that is going to crash into you, the S60 has two-stage front airbags to complement the vehicles 3-point safety harnesses — five of them, for front and rear — plus side impact front airbags and inflatable curtain side impact head protection, and whiplash protection front bucket seats.
Going back to 1968, I was at a red light on a street in downtown St. Paul when I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a young man roaring up behind me with a hot car. In a flash, I realized he had no chance to stop on the wet street surface. I had an instant to brace myself before he crashed into the rear of my Volvo S142. He did considerable damage, but after evaluating it, I went back to the car and noticed that the backrest of the driver’s seat had dropped back about six inches — succeeding just as advertised in offsetting the whiplash.
That was 1968, so we will accept without further testing the validity of Volvo’s claim that it has improved on its anti-whiplash technology.
Volvo brakes always have been among the world’s standards. Back in 1968, Volvo offered two complete brake systems, each operating the two front and one rear wheel, with four-wheel discs. The new S60 has advanced all that, with the four-wheel discs, antilock, and an electronic brake distribution. The front independent strut suspension has stabilizer bars and antidive geometry, and the rear suspension is a fully independent multilink set-up mounted on an alloy subframe.
All of that means those all-season tires on those neat alloy wheels stop and turn as well as they go.
Fold-down rear seats, a huge trunk, expanded by the aerodynamically sound high-tail rear end and trunklid, and heat/air vents in the main side pillars are other nice touches. Dual-zone front climate control settings, keyless entry, power windows, heated outside power mirrors, dust and pollen filters, and an audio system with six speakers and a big amplifier also are all standard.
That equipment comes at the $26,500 price. When you add leather seats, power sunroof, the CD player, the S60 goes from an exceptional automotive bargain to an impressive luxury sedan.
If you want one last high-tech, ultra-sophisticated touch, consider this: The S60 has a coating on the radiator that helps transform ground-level ozone into oxygen, as you drive. Think about it. Sure, you use up some fuel as you drive, but as the front end of your S60 funnels the airstream into the grille, the car actually cleans up the ozone and converts it to oxygen!
The test car was a neat Cosmos blue metallic, but maybe all Volvos should be green. Come to think of it, my 1968 Volvo S142 was green.
Turbo-diesel future sweeping the world while U.S. hangs back
If you’re like I am, you must be thinking that the current skyrocket-job of gasoline prices is some sort of evil concoction of Middle Eastern oil moguls, who are out to undermine our carefree, gas-guzzling lifestyle. But when we have to spend nearly $2 a gallon, and it takes $40 to fill one of those new, big vehicles with its subtlely enlarged fuel tank, we might think it’s time to look a different direction.
Last week, we discussed the infinite number of tiny cars I noticed in Paris. Since then, I’ve had a chance to get into some deep and very enlightening discussions with some of Volkswagen’s top engineers, most notably Werner Ebbinghaus, the man in charge of much of VW’s engine development, and Stefan Krebsfanger, production manager for some of VW’s products.
We laugh at Europeans who have been spending $5 per gallon for fuel, although we can understand why they don’t take much sympathy in our current increase toward $2 per gallon. But there are some things I didn’t fully understand. Among them are that Europeans pay more for fuel because of taxes, which are high to promote the use of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars on one hand, and technology to refine higher-mileage vehicles on the other.
While we have been hurtling along on a stubborn plan whereby automotive lobbyists convince the government to NOT tighten the fuel-economy and emission laws, we also are allowing our fuel-refining companies to continue to make fuel that is enormously high in impurities, such as sulfur. I asked those engineers how much more sulfur we have in our fuel than Germany and Europe, and the answer was “between 10-fold, and 100-fold more.”
That is not VW corporate whining. Instead, it exposes the U.S. government’s vulnerability to U.S. automotive lobbyists, who have succeeded in preventing the tightening of fuel-economy and emission laws, which have allowed us to drone along, satisfied to make whopping earnings while shutting down U.S. plants and building them in Canada and Mexico, while our oil companies can rip off gigantic earnings while giving us fuel that is pretty lousy by comparison. But mediocre engines can thrive on lousy fuel. Meanwhile, European companies have made enormous technological strides in engines and engine-management systems, aided by having fuels that are refined to the standpoint that these slick new engines can be developed.
In Volkswagen’s case, as in the case of other European manufacturers, the answer to energy and emission problems is, simply, the Diesel engine.
We think of diesels as those loud, clattering, foul-smoke-spewing things that have tremendous power and are necessary for running semi trucks and buses and huge ships, but they don’t make any sense for consumer-level automobiles. Which proves we’ve been had, again. While those companies build engines for cars that work great in the U.S., we don’t get their best stuff, simply because it won’t work here.
For example, the VW Golf GTI can be had as a hot performer with the VR6 engine, which has a narrow-angle V that has staggered cylinders in a serpentine order. That engine has been improved dramatically, with the addition of dual-overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder and variable valve timing. It is introduced in the U.S. in the revised Eurovan, but has been operting on the top Jetta and GTI in Germany already. We will get those cars next year, and they will be screamers.
In the near future, Volkswagen is coming out with a luxury car with a V12 engine, an ingenious powerplant that actually is two VR6 engines mounted side-by-side. Essentially, each bank of the V12 will be a VR6. It has spectacular power, and Volkswagen officials believe it will challenge the best Mercedes and BMW luxury powerhouses.
However, Ebbinghaus and Krebsfanger are more enthused about a turbocharged diesel GTI, which has 150 horsepower and something approaching 170 foot-pounds of torque. “It is not as fast, outright, as the GTI with the new VR6 four-valve,” said Ebbinghaus, whose first job with VW in 1978 was the diesel engine in the Rabbit. “But it is very quick. All that torque allows it to start up very quickly.”
In Europe, where people demand high-mileage cars and purchase inexpensive smaller cars with smaller engines, the Golf is practically a midsized car. Volkswagen makes the smaller Polo, which is very popular there, and a still-smaller Lupo. Ebbinghaus scoffs at hybrid technology such as electric cars and even the gas/electric combinations, which Honda and Toyota are selling now, and insists turbo-diesels are a far better and more accessible alternative.
He and Krebsfanger told about a worldwide challenge which was issued to manufacturers to offer a car for a lengthy test to travel 100 kilometers on 3 liters of fuel, which would be the equivalent of 80 miles per gallon. Volkswagen took the challenge, and competed against the Honda Insight and a Toyota Prius with their hybrid gas/electric engines, with a VW Lupo with a tiny 3-liter turbo-diesel.
“We brought in low-sulfur European diesel fuel,” said Krebsfanger. “And our car won by getting something over 100 miles per gallon.”
In the U.S., of course, we still scoff and say we aren’t interested in diesels for consumer cars, and only accept them on giant pickup trucks needed for massive towing and hauling duties. We don’t like the noise, the clatter, and the smoke. But the smoke is because of our poor fuel quality. The better diesel fuel in Europe burns cleanly, and the turbodiesel cars do not belch out those black clouds. They also don’t clatter, but run smoothly, with only slightly more noise than gasoline engines in comparable vehicles. And while diesels traditionally don’t have any acceleration close to comparable to gas engines, the turbocharging and electronic engine management systems can combine to provide outstanding acceleration as well as high speed.
The speed may not be sustainable at the over-130-mph level, which gasoline engines can cruise at in Germany, but the tradeout is pretty impressive — 50, 60, 75 and more miles per gallon in normal-sized cars, and the aforementioned 100-plus miles per gallon in the minicars.
Reducing sulfur and other impurities in fuel allows companies to build such high-tech, fine-burning engines. Shipping those engines to the U.S. would result in fouling up their operation, plus all that foul smoke and odor. But it’s not because of the diesel technology, just our fuel.
“Reducing the particulate and sulfur levels would greatly reduce the problem of nitrous-oxide emissions,” said Krebsfanger. “The U.S. sulfur level in fuel is too high to allow our new catalytic converters to work. The U.S. needs a mandate to fix the fuels, which not only would clean up the emissions, but would allow manufacturers to use their latest technology, such as direct-injection.”
Such methods require higher compression ratios, which result in better efficiency in burning all the fuel, with benefits in power and fuel economy. But manufacturers can’t risk having low-grade fuel fouling the cleaning and injection systems of those engines.
“In Europe, fuel is expensive because the fuel is taxed so that the more you use, the more taxes you pay,” said Ebbinghaus. “That is an incentive for the fuel companies to make clean fuel. In Europe, a gallon of premium fuel is taxed more than regular, and regular is taxed more than diesel fuel. Those fuels are highly refined, but the difference in tax from premium to diesel is about 20 percent. That is why consumers go for smaller engines — mostly four-cylinder instead of sixes — and diesel engines.”
But not in the U.S. Here, there is only small demand for diesels, but you can buy a lower-tech VW turbodiesel in a New Beetle, Golf or Jetta. If you ask an owner, you will find an outspoken advocate.
When a new administration takes over and implies we can overcome energy-conservation tightening by simply drilling into all our national parkland preserves to find limitless supplies of oil, a lot of us believe itÂ…can’t we? Despite accusations that George Dubya Bush favors the wealthy, favors big industry, and favors those wealthy supporters to whom he owes favors, we can understand it. That’s U.S. politics at work. So moves to help the bottom-line profit of big business — oil companies to explore for more oil, and U.S. auto manufacturers who want a rollback in fuel-economy and emission standards in order to continue making gas-guzzling enormo-cars — we also seem to accept it.
MeanwhileÂ…”For the whole world, I would estimate that all of Volkswagen’s engines would be 40 percent diesel,” Ebbinghaus added.
But not in the U.S. Here, we are faced with another one of those questions: Are we in the U.S. right, or is the rest of the world right? And if we are wrong, are we falling behind because of a bureaucratic snarl of political posturing?
Ford revisits fun cars of decades past with new Tbird and Bullitt
[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ The 2002 Thunderbird attracted all sorts of passersby along the shore at the surfer’s museum near Monterey, Calif.
2/ A gathering of Tbirds at a rest stop on Highway 1 in the Big Sur region drew attention.
3/ Getting on top of the Pacific Coast fog allowed the top to come down on the new Thunderbird.
4/ The Tbird interior shows off some retro cues but has strict contemporary efficiency.
4/ A pair of Bullitt Mustangs awaited test drives in Monterey, Calif.
5/ The driver is reminded of the early Mustangs with the Bullitt’s gauge package.
6/ The glassed-in headlights give the Bullitt a fierce look, while the tail is emblazoned with the special-edition name. ]]]]]
The everyday tedium of work can be a lot more enjoyable if a little fun can be injected. At Ford Motor Company, the labor of building cars and trucks to compete with the giants of the industry have brought obvious benefits.
Now it’s time for Ford to have a little fun.
Some of the most fun times for Ford date back to the 1950s and 1960s. In the ’50s, Ford built a small, 2-seat sporty car called the Thunderbird. It was small, sleek, contemporary and elicited high levels of emotion from customers and those who saw and coveted them. After building the Tbirds for 1955, ’56 and ’57, tedium took over. Somehow, the Thunderbird grew into a large and far less pleasurable vehicle, becoming a 4-seat coupe, and then a sedan, and growing larger and less sporty by the year.
In the 1960s, Ford shocked the auto industry with a small, affordable sporty coupe called the Mustang. It was a 4-seater from the start, but never more than a coupe, and it, too, elicited strong emotions, right up through the 1970 model year. Then, as if practicality required Ford to make everything bigger to be better, the Mustang grew a foot in 1971, stayed large for a while, then shrunk down to a small compact again. The Mustang is back to being a sporty coupe these days, but there are those at Ford who remember the best Mustangs of all time — the 1968-through-’70 models.
It seems that the popularity of cars like the original Thunderbird and the early Mustangs captivated the public enough to gain starring roles in popular movies. Consider “American Graffiti,” and “Bullitt,” two films that have endured through generations.
“Remember Suzanne Somers, and the white Tbird in American Graffiti?” asked Ford vice president Chris Theodore. “Then there was Steve McQueen in Bullitt, and the most famous chase scene in movie history — a memorable 8-minute stretch with absolutely no dialogue.”
Of course, I remembered the Bullitt scene, where MacQueen in a dark green 1968 Mustang chased a couple of bad guys in a Dodge Charger up and down the steep hills of San Francisco, flying off every flat intersection before plunging down the next block. I had forgotten the American Graffiti bit, with Suzanne Somers, long before the days of Thighmaster promos.
In those days, Ford seemed to be having a lot of fun. Nowadays, Ford sells pickup trucks, SUVs, a lot of sedans of various sizes, and has made it as one of the world’s automotive giants. But you wonder if the company has the wherewithal to ever have that kind of old-time fun.
Well, wonder no more.
Ford summoned several waves of automotive journalists to California this past week to behold the wonders of retro-fun. It was a chance to make introductory test drives of new versions of both the Thunderbird and the Mustang Bullitt.
THUNDERBIRD
Ford brought out a concept car Thunderbird at last year’s Detroit International Auto Show. It was a neat, all-new design, with rounded front and rear, looking both contemporary and a little bit retro. Reaction was so overwhelming that Ford decided to build the car for the real world, and it brought it to life swiftly.
The original Tbird was 175.3 inches long, 52.4 inches high and weighed 3,180 pounds. It was powered by a 292 cubic inch V8, and cost $3,000 in 1955. With Ford executives filling the air with terms such as “heritage” and “emotion,” they unveiled the new car, and it is a jewel. It is 186.3 inches long, 52.1 inches high, and weighs 3,775 pounds. It is powered by a 3.9-liter V8. It will be priced from $36,000 up to $39,000
Ford likes to say it is the Lincoln LS engine, but in reality it is the sensational high-tech V8 built by Jaguar and swapped into the LS, while also powering the Jaguar S-Type and sports car. It is a dual-overhead-camshaft, four-valve-per-cylinder beauty producing 252 horsepower at 6,100 RPMs and 267 foot-pounds of torque at 4,300 RPMs.
The transmission is a five-speed automatic.
Frankly, except for the two-seat configuration, there are few similarities to the original Thunderbird. But while it has a few retro touches, the new Tbird might best be described as a projection of what the Thunderbird might be like for 2002 if it had never strayed from its original 2-seater concept.
We got a chance to drive the Tbirds down the South Coast of California, from Monterey to Big Sur. Typically, while that drive is perhaps the best in the world when it’s sunny, it is still one of the best the way we found it — with a heavy, low-hanging cloud of fog rolling in off the Pacific and shrouding the cliffside roadway as it winds its way along and above the coast. We changed drivers as we visited a neat art gallery and coffeehouse on Highway 1, and the sight of a dozen new Thunderbirds — identical except for color choices of black, white, red, yellow and turquoise — attracted all kinds of attention.
It was thick and moist and about 50 degrees when we angled off Highway 1 and headed inland, twisting and curving up, up and finally above the cloud of fog, where the temperature was closer to 80 and the sun created a surreal effect looking down on the fog-bank below. A flip of the switch, and we put the top down on our glistening black Thunderbird. It took more work to snap into place the boot covering the folded top. You also can buy an optional hardtop for the car, which snaps securely on top and comes with the porthole windows familiar to those who recall the original as a hardtop.
Zipping up and down and around the curving roadways, the Thunderbird had plenty of power, and the smooth-shifting transmission was clear evidence why a 5-speed automatic is far superior to the usual 4-speed version. But it also was evident that the Thunderbird is a cruiser, not an all-out sports car.
The Tbird will be in showrooms by late summer, Ford officials say, and will start at a sticker price of $35,495 — another place where the new car doesn’t resemble the original’s $3,000. All of them will come with the fold-down top, with the hardtop an option. The standard fold-down top has a large rear window, glass, with a heated element, and it fits snugly and easily. In fact, it fits tightly enough that when you open and close the doors, the windows drop 12 millimeters in order to clear the roof and seal tightly into it.
Traction control and chrome 17-inch wheels are standard on the premium models. Traction control is optional on the basic model, which Ford chooses to call the “deluxe” model. The 6.7-cubic feet of trunk space is enough, Ford officials claim, to house two golf bags.
Safety has been well tended to in the Tbird, with steel side door beams, side head and thorax airbags to supplement the frontal bags, and even a two-piece driveshaft to eliminate the risk of one long driveshaft that might bend and break, which could threaten to penetrate the passenger compartment. The long driveshaft is because the front-engined Tbird has rear drive, like the original. With its low-slung silhouette and neat headlight and grille, the new Tbird doesn’t look much like the originial from the outside. But unless you like the original tailfins, you probably will prefer the contemporary look of the new one, which is very classy, and yet pleasingly understated.
BULLITT MUSTANG
The new Mustang has taken great effort to look more like the original, or at least like the early-year 1968-70 models. It does the job, and is impressive either in expensive Cobra form, with its hand-built, 32-valve aluminum V8, or in basic GT form, with its 16 valve, single overhead cam design. The GT is a very good car, having benefited by upgrades every time the hottest Cobra has been revised.
Now along comes the Bullitt, and it is an impressive compromise. It has the GT’s easy-to-live-with allure for everyday driving, but it approaches the Cobra’s spectacular handling characteristics. In fact, the Bullitt, with its considerable suspension tweaks, handles so superbly it is nearly perfect the way it responds to your every input of steering, twisting around the tightest curves and staying flat and firmly planted no matter how hard you go into them.
We got to take a dozen or so identical, dark green Bullitt Mustangs from a diner in downtown San Francisco, up the same hills and along the exact same route that the moviemakers traced when the late Steve McQueen roared through that famous chase scene. Of course, I didn’t drive it that forcefully on those hills, although we crested one hill with enough of a surge to feel pretty light as we started to go down the other side, with perhaps the sight of Alcatraz out there ahead in the harbor providing a deterrent to going too hard.
Style-wise, the Bullitt has its name on the rear trunklid, but otherwise has only subtle styling cues. The headlights are completely covered by a curved glass lens, and there are no foglights. Ford executives say they wanted to “reduce weight” as the reason for deleting the foglights, although using the new “bullet” shaped foglights might have been more logical.
Art Hyde, chief engineer for the Bullitt project, said the plan was to bring alive the spirit of fun and “looking cool.” Clean styling on the vents, pillars and rocker panels, with no rear spoiler, and a fabulous exhaust note are all in place. Under the skin, the Bullitt has been lowered, with higher spring-rate shocks, different valving in the shocks to make the handling neutral, and altered pedals to aid heel-and-toe driving. An 11-inch clutch with tremendous grabbing ability but easy foot feel makes the 5-speed manual easy to operate. Two-piston calipers on 13-inch discs aid the stopping, and the 4.6-liter V8 has been modified with a race-proven intake system and dual throttle-body intake.
The entire Bullitt package costs $3,695 over the price of the Mustang GT, and Ford execs claim that the amount covers about $8,000 worth of parts if they were bought and installed separately. The option would lift the price of the Bullitt to something around $27,000, but only 6,500 models will be built, virtually assuring it as a collector’s item. They are in showrooms now, as 2001 models.
Seats similar to the Mustangs of the ’68-70 era are in place, as are the 5-spoke alloy wheels, which look a lot like the old American mags on the originals. A spring-loaded, brushed aluminum fuel door opens out from the flank, and is brushed silver, a neat touch.
Roaring up and down the hills of San Francisco was neat, but nowhere near as impressive as heading south toward Monterey, using both the hill country inland from the coast, and zipping down the coast highway. The Bullitt can be bought in black, dark blue or green, although the test cars came only in green, because that was what McQueen drove in the movie. Its retro image is only an image, however, because the new model is an improvement on those great vintage Mustangs of three decades ago.
New Q45 takes Infiniti luxury to its new-found performance roots
[[[[[CUTLINES:
1/ The new Infiniti Q45’s lean and agile stance looks sufficiently racy adjacent to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Turn 4 grandstand.
2/ A unique seven-lens low beam provides precise focus for the headlight, with the high beam a separate light.
3/ The navigation screen could be set to find a shortcut to a hotel from inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
4/ The driver’s entry invites you to leather and wood-coated luxury but with a distinctive and roomy sportiness.
5/ The Q45 has a unique look, with the smoothly contoured rear similar to the Audi A6. ]]]]]]]
Nissan’s new Infiniti engine did not win the Indianapolis 500 last weekend. In fact, there were only three of them in the field. But the last serious challenge that winner Helio Castroneves faced in the race came from Robbie Buhl, who closed right in on him and then spun out trying too aggressively to pass him. Pretty much everyone agreed that for sheer power, Buhl’s Infiniti-powered race car was the fastest car on the track in those closing laps.
Similarly, the Infiniti Q45 sedan I drove to Indianapolis wasn’t in any competition on the 10-hour trek, but its engine was a wonderful blend of power, quick response, and fuel efficiency.
Being fast doesn’t always mean being first in auto racing. But the technology required to make an engine run fast enough to win can equate to superior engines for real-world use.
Over the last couple of decades, some Japanese companies have found auto racing providing rich benefits in engine technology. Honda always made good, economical, trouble-free engines, and then it went racing, dominating first Formula 1 and then CART racing, and since then its engines have been incredibly high-tech for performance while retaining all those previous assets. Same with Toyota, which got into CART racing and is now doing well, and suddenly the Celica and MR2 are a lot more fun from a performance standpoint while also remaining trouble-free, durable and efficient.
When Indy switched over to a separate, rebel formula for engines six years ago, the only two manufacturers who could be coaxed into participating were General Motors and Nissan, GM with the Olds Aurora V8, sent to race teams or high-performance shops for refinement to race tune. Nissan sent its top dual-overhead-camshaft Q45 V8 from its upscale Infiniti flagship, but in a different manner.
The Infiniti engines would be supplied to racers for a fee, but Nissan engineers would refine and tune it, and replace those engines as necessary, but it wouldn’t allow engines to be sent to after-market race shops for preparation. The result is that the plentiful Aurora V8s have dominated, although Eddie Cheever has won with the Infiniti. And last weekend, the final bit of drama in the race came when the swift and smooth Castroneves was pretty much overtaken by the raw power of Buhl’s Infiniti.
All the technical data of the Infiniti is retained by Nissan engineers, and no question some of it has filtered through to the 2002 Infiniti Q45, which always has been the corporation’s top luxury sedan. Designed to retain Infiniti’s target market, which is the BMW 540 and 740, the Mercedes E or S Class, the Audi A6 or A8, and such domestics as the Cadillac Seville STS and the Lincoln LS, the Infiniti is little more than a fantasy car to the masses, at a sticker price of $50,000.
We’re talking about the 2002 model Q45, which was shown first at auto shows last year and has been in a carefully planned program for replacing the current model. The Q-ship I test drove was the Sport model, which means it has all the luxury characteristics of the standard Q45, but has a sport package which consists of an active rear damping suspension, which can be set for different stiffness, plus 18-inch wheels, smoke-tone wood inserts on the dashboard, and blue-tone headlights and back-up lights.
That’s a $1,500 option, and the test fleet car also had the $2,100 navigation system, which is based on a digital videodisc device, and plays out on a 7-inch screen at the top of the center-dashboard area. Power sunshades that can cover the rear window and the rear seat side windows are another option, as are heated front seats. That boosted the sticker of the test car to $55,895, which is a lot of money. However, it is not a lot for a luxury-sports cruiser that can run with the world’s elite cars.
LOADED, STANDARD
The standard equipment list on the Q45 sounds like everything in the parts bin, the luxury bin and the futuristic bin. It starts with the motor, which is now a 4.5-liter V8 with 340 horsepower at 6,400 RPMs and 333 foot-pounds of torque at 4,000 RPMs. That is a lot of low-end pulling torque, and also a hot-rod lot of high-end horsepower. With four valves per cylinder clicking away under those dual cams, and a precise electronic engine-management system, the power is sent to the rear wheels via a 5-speed automatic transmission.
The automatic has a Tiptronic-like manual shift gate off to the right side, where you can bump it to upshift or downshift. In a large, heavy luxury cruiser, you might not use the manual gate for much rev-building, but it remains extremely useful in exiting freeways and downshifting to get you into third, for example, for driving on more residential streets.
About the only complaint I could muster in a week’s time with the Q45 is that the car seemed to hesitate on abrupt power changes, almost as if it was giving you time to reconsider before leaping ahead furiously.
With the Sport model’s larger wheels and low-profile (P245/45 by 18 inch) tires, and the active suspension set to the firmest “sport” mode, the big Q cornered well and showed excellent agility.
It also surprised me by delivering 24.7 miles per gallon on the highway, cruising effortlessly at 70 to maybe 75 miles per hour, for hours at a time, with maybe an occasional burst to pass a couple semis, and just to let that powerful engine stretch its legs — for scientific reasons, you understand. Trust me, you have to be watchful or you could go zooming right on up and past 100 without straining anything.
Other powertrain items include independent front and rear suspension, speed-sensitive power steering with excellent feel through the wood and leather steering wheel, vehicle dynamic control which is above and beyond the traction control system to make sure you stay pointed in the proper trajectory under all conditions. The other side of such going performance elements is provided by 4-wheel power disc brakes with antilock and an electronic brake force distribution system that can tell by the force if you need full-panic stop pressure and applies it properly.
The leather seats are comfortable, supportive and infinitely adjustable, the driver’s outside mirror automatically dims if the driver behind you is too dim to dim his lights, and the directional signals have remote blinkers on the outside mirrors’ extremity. The audio system is a 300-watt Bose deal, with a tape player mounted below and a glove-compartment-mounted 6-disc CD changer.
For safety, there are front dual-stage airbags, plus front side airbags and front and rear side-impact air curtain bags, along with pretensioners and load limiters on the seat harness straps, as well as child restraint tethers. The headlights, also, are phenomenal. The low beams consist of seven little bullet-shaped lenses al focused on brightening your way, with a larger, separate high-beam lens. There were no foglights, but the light system was as good as I’ve witnessed without them.
Luxury touches include bird’s-eye maple trim done up in that new grey-ish “smoked” color that I call “barnwood grey.” It’s repeated on the steering wheel and shift knob. Power windows have one-touch up and down, and the dual-zone temperature and climate control system also is standard. There are rear air and heat vents as well. Infiniti’s signature touch is a classy analog clock, right there in the middle of the dash.
SHORTENING THE TRIP
Driving that haul to Indianapolis alone caused me to get prepared, mentally and munchily. It’s a great break to stop for meals on a long trip, but I wanted to get there as directly as possible. So I ate a large breakfast, and set off, loaded up with some healthier-than-normal munchies. Included was a sack of veggies that included whole red, orange and yellow peppers sliced up; a half-pound of almonds, half plain and half with sea salt, mixed together just right; a couple of bottles of ginseng-laced iced tea, a bottle of naturally-sparkling mineral water, and a thermos mug of coffee.
That allowed me to avoid any lengthy meal stops. I drove until I had to make a fuel stop, made one other rest-room stop, and made it the whole distance, over 625 miles, in just under 10 hours. That worked out to be an average speed of 63 miles per hour. All of that was calculated instantly for me on the 7-inch screen at the top of the center dash panel. You also could tune the audio system on that screen, adjust the climate control, and operate the navigation system.
I was all set with radio stations locked in, a working knowledge of how to get the thing to scan, plus a couple of good cassettes in hand, and a variety of CDs. Trip music can be extremely important to fighting fatigue, especially when you’re driving alone for 10 hours. In celebration of Bob Dylan’s 60th birthday, I had some of my favorite early-best Dylan discs as well as his newest one, and a wide range of others, including a couple of Joni Mitchell’s earliest albums, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, and a classic Leonard Cohen live concert, and the year-old Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young disc. My theory is the music has to be good, but it’s mandatory to have significant words, too, to keep you mentally stimulated instead of drummed into a stupor by a pounding beat without identifiable lyrics.
A key element of the trip was the navigation system, which was, in a word, fantastic. I’ve made the drive to Indianapolis to know that unless you have an extra hour or two to waste, or a reason to stop in the big city, you want to avoid Chicago. So I circumvent it, going south from Rockford, Ill., to I74, which is a straight easterly shot into Indianapolis well south of Chicago. When I clicked onto the navigation system, I got it to Indianapolis easily enough, but then I challenged it by installing the name of the motel chain I was booked into.
It gave me five choices, and I clicked the one I was at, although I had never been there before. In a moment, the system gave me a route choice of shortest time or shortest distance. I clicked shortest time, and, sure enough, the computer also avoided Chicago, sending me precisely on the same route I would have chosen, only on a new freeway stretch of I39 I hadn’t been aware of. The computer screen gives you a map of the route ahead, and you can click on “birdview” and get a sort of raised, 3D view of the road ahead, set up in increments you can adjust from ¼ mile to 20 mile scope.
The screen is backed up by a pleasant, English-accented female voice that advises you of upcoming turns. “Stay in the right lane, and prepare for a right turn in a half-mileÂ…” Or, when you pull off to refuel, and the computer thinks you’ve gone astray, it says: “As soon as possible, try to make a legal U-turnÂ…” Very impressive, but most impressive was when it directed me to the hotel I had never before seen or stayed at, exiting the freeway at the right spot, going on past it, making a right, and then doubling back on the frontage road, all at visible and voice commands, until the final: “You have reached your destination.”
I even set the thing up once to launch me on a shortcut back to the hotel from inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the map showed a large, colored area that was the entire track region, with the outside streets identified, by birdview. Coming home was a breeze, too, because I set it on my destination address in the Twin Cities and it delivered me exactly to the driveway. It did not, however, identify the Lakewood Road for my home in Duluth. That meant the map showed me turning off the freeway and the arrow showed me moving northward where there appeared to be no road.
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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