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The very best-handling imported vehicle is…
From the July 1984 Concern of Auto and DriverAnd you believed we had risked it all racing up and down treacherous mountain passes to name the Camaro Z28 the ideal-handling American car (C/D, May). Well, we’;re back on the rock, dancing with the same seraphim of the Angeles Forest, but we’;ve upped the ante to 8 contestants—over a quarter of a million dollars’; worth of turbocharged, 4-valved, double-over-head-cammed heart stoppers. The element that hasn’;t changed significantly is the mission. We’;ve brought imported machines to the mount this time, but the challenge as soon as again is to uncover the ideal-handling automobile of the lot.
As prior to, this is a pure roadability investigation. No acceleration figures or braking distances had been permitted to confuse the proceedings. Cost was not a issue, either: a rapid verify of the important statistics will reveal window stickers ranging from $ 10,345 to $ 50,000. Any present model that United States on a passport was a potential contender.
At the start off we had no intention of testing 8 automobiles to ascertain the best import, but once the floor was open to nominations, the kid-in-a-candy-shop phenomenon took more than. We wanted representatives from all over the globe, a mix of the inexpensive and the exotic, and a range of powertrain layouts. We purposely sought out many highly reputed brands and a couple of Johnny-come-lately challengers. Ferrari, Lotus, and Porsche had to be represented if this was to be a reputable physical exercise, but that raised the query of which Porsche. We answered it by inviting all 3 of Ferry’;s finest. The Audi Quattro is one particular of the boldest handling experiments ever to press rubber to the road, so we had to have the 4-wheel-driver, even even though only a handful are sold here each and every year. Considering that front-wheel drive made such a wonderful impression in our last test, it seemed crucial to contemplate a front-driver this time around. Prior to we knew it, our greatest-handling purchasing cart contained a 2-door sedan and 6 coupes an all-wheel-driver, a front-driver, and 6 rear-drivers. Front-, mid-, and rear-engined layouts are all represented, even though we did not make area for a mid-engined, front-drive station wagon. Maybe next time.
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Rounding up the rolling stock and the personnel to maintain it rolling was no mean feat in itself. Ferrari North America bowed out, claiming that its entire West Coast stock of Quattrovalvoles had been sold! Fortunately, Mike Sheehan of European Auto Restoration in Costa Mesa, California, stepped into the breach to lend us a 1984 coupe off his gray-marketplace lot. A Quattro had to be trucked in from a Gulf Coast port at the final minute, so of course the driver fell ill on the road. And although we intended to maintain the original 6-person jury intact for this second round of tests, Jean Lindamood missed the action simply because of an injury. (Her separated shoulder is on the mend.) The sixth seat was capably filled by Patrick Bedard, C/D editor at huge.
The battery of subjective and objective handling tests tooled up for the American-made cars had worked so nicely that small fine-tuning was deemed required for this round. We allotted more time to study on-center handling, and we applied a new photoelectric timing device to many of our track tests. Considering that the SCCA gymkhana course at the Chrysler-Shelby Efficiency Center had become a tractor-trailer parking lot, we laid out our own array of cones at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.
As usual, you will locate a blizzard of performance statistics sprinkled all through the next couple of pages, but don’;t spend too considerably focus to person test scores or racetrack results. What is most critical here is the bottom line we’;ve determined the ideal-handling import with a single, effortless-to-realize subjective vote. The path to that determination starts correct here.
Continued…
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