F.O.B. Detroit

In 1946, when there weren't more than 25 new sports cars in this country -- and 19 of those were MGs -- the first thing an Owner said on meeting another Owner was, usually, "Hello." The second thing he said was, "Brother, did I run away and hide from a Buick just now, on the West Side Drivel!"

"That Detroit iron. Sad, isn't it?"

"Pitiful. Really pitiful. They ought to be ashamed of themselves out there."

In 1946, it could happen. In 1947, too, and in '48, '49 and '50. But, about 1952 -- that's a decade ago, isn't it -- the worm began ever so slowly to turn. It has some time since come all the way around, and today nothing is so tiresome as the four syllables of the ancient cliché Detroit iron, and nothing so plainly marks a New Boy. American automobiles are no longer categorically fat, slobby, slow and loose on the road. They are big, medium, medium-small, small-medium, compact and in-between and what have you; they're fast, nimble, some of them are economical and some are astonishingly roadworthy.

Excepting the mini-cars, the Morris and Austin and Fiat kind of thing, and Grand Prix or road-circuit race cars, Detroit now makes an automobile competitive with any car built abroad. (At least one mini-car, Ford's Cardinal -- the name could be Falcon Four -- is in the offing, and there are brave souls who talk about a Detroit-built G.P. car.) The Chevrolet Corvette is a genuine sports car; the Chrysler 300H is a real gran turismo machine; the Lincoln Continental is a deluxe town car. Yes, deluxe: the power-window motors are rubber-coated to prevent rust and, mayhap, to muffle their already almost inaudible work-sound; the automatic choke is water-warmed; the trunk lid is opened and the outside mirror adjusted from the driver's seat. And although the total number of makes of automobile has, regrettably, declined steadily down the years, the variety of American automobiles available today, from the points of view of size, function, performance and appearance is remarkable: there are 400-odd models on the market!

Remarkable, too, is the ground that has been covered in the path to eventual full freedom from maintenance: lifetime factory lubrication, 6000-miles oil changes; self-adjusting brakes, two-year engine coolants. The car into which the owner will put nothing but gasoline is in clear line of sight. (He may not do that much. Studies have shown that the automobile owner deeply resents, subconsciously, the necessity of refueling his car; that he doesn't think of gasoline purchase as the acquisition of a useful commodity, since he never sees, touches or tastes it, but as the payment of a license fee or toll to keep his car going. Many first-rate minds here and abroad are working on the proposition that a lifetime fuel must be found. In theory it already exists: nuclear energy. The ultimate fuel will have to be cheaper than that, and very much less dangerous. Before we have it we'll have intermediate fuels, 30-day, 60-day, 90-day fuels.)

Chrysler, just as the new year began, displayed its version of the gas-turbine engine (first run in an automobile in 1950 by the Rover company of England) in Plymouth and Dodge prototypes, announced (continued on page 128) F.O.B. Detriot (continued from page 93) it would go into limited production in 1963. Every major manufacturer in the world has a turbine in the works. The device, basically the same as the aircraft propjet engine, is light, simple, easy to maintain and unfussy about fuel. Against: it's expensive to build, doesn't deliver instantaneous acceleration -- there's a one or two-second lag -- and while it burns cheap fuel, it has, in the past, burned quite a lot of it. Research and development will reduce the force of these disadvantages, and it seems certain that a gas-turbine, whether American, British, German, French or Italian, will be available for purchase before very much longer.

F. O. B. Detroit

So much for tomorrow. But, watchman, what of today?

It's a buyer's market. Last year was the year of the compacts, and this year is the year of the in-between, compact-intermediate, not-big-yet-not-small automobile. It is not a year of great revolutionary change, but there has been notable refinement of existing models, there are some engines of tremendous power, there are some enchanting new convertibles and it's a great year for gimmicks: Ford's door-locks that can't freeze, for example, or Chrysler's new starter, which doesn't make the whine with which starters have always previously announced that they were at work. Also, because California law now requires forced ventilation of the crankcase, an effective antismog feature, and Wisconsin requires seat-belt fastenings, these two humanitarian devices are becoming widely available. Nowax paint jobs are trending toward standard, and the limited-slip differential, for decades restricted to race cars, is a common option. This useful device will not allow one wheel to spin madly in snow, for example, while the other one does nothing: it puts the whip to both of them.

It once was -- and not so long ago -- that 300- and 400-horsepower engines usually came in passenger cars marked "Made in Italy" and tagged at $10,000 and upward. But Ford in 1962 has an optional 405-horsepower engine in the new Galaxie series, Plymouth offers a 410-horsepower option for all models, and the Super Sport kit for the Chevrolet Impala turns out 409 horsepower to such purpose that there are few automobiles of any origin that can stay with it. The American Grand Prix driver Dan Gurney took an Impala to England to run in sedan races. This class in Great Britain is dominated by 3.8 Jaguars, some of which, one hears, have, D-type engines. Whatever they have, the fast ones are fast indeed, but Gurney was overtaking them on the straights just the same, although he couldn't hold them easily in the corners, and he seemed a fair bet to win the race when he broke a wheel. (His car didn't have the heavy-duty "export" wheels optionally available.) An Impala SS hardtop sedan, with the radio playing and the heater on, will get to 105 miles an hour within a quarter of a mile, and in 13 seconds. Not long ago, those were strictly racing sports-car figures.

Chevrolet is full of little surprises this year. For the first time since 1928, for instance, there's a 4-cylinder Chevrolet, the Chevy II. It comes as a 6, too, at 120 horsepower, 30 more than the 4 produces. The Chevy II -- it's amusing, and comforting, that GM decided to call the car what everybody else calls it -- has an innovation in suspension: the rear spring, instead of being made up of several leaves clipped together, is just one piece. The idea is that such a spring, relieved of the friction of the several leaves sliding over each other, will give more easily under weight. To stand up to the work, the single-leaf spring must be shotpeened under load, and Chevrolet has a tight patent on the 50-ton machine that does the peening.

Why did no one ever think of this before: When the cloth of a convertible top is stretched taut over the supporting ribs, they show as ridges, naturally. Chevrolet has cut ridges into the dies that stamp out some of its hardtop roofs. Result, a top with the interesting irregularity of a convertible and the durability of steel.

There's news in the Ford Thunder-bird: a tonneau cover over the rear seats that has built into it a pair of headrests for the front-seat passengers. Good-looking, too. Or at least new-looking, and unusual. That's in the Sports Roadster model, and there are three others, convertible, hardtop and landau -- the last a formal hardtop with a leather-grained vinyl roof. The Thunderbird doors are four feet wide and the car carries 45 pounds of sound-deadening material.

The Fairlane is the "compact-intermediate" Ford. It's 197 inches long, including everything. It runs the 6-cylinder Falcon engine, but it's available with a V8 as well, the package including such refinements as a self-cleaning fuel filter which keeps not only dirt out of the gas line, but water as well. Lubrication is good for 30,000 miles, engine coolant for two years, engine oil for 6000 miles, gearbox and differential lubrication for the life of the automobile, and the whole package carries the 12-month/12,000-mile guarantee originated by Ford.

The Falcon, Ford's best-selling compact, comes in a deluxe version of some distinction, the Futura. The front seat-backs fold flat, by the way, right down to the dash, so that the back-seat riders can get in without using alpenstocks. The Futura is a happy combination of ideas, and the urban shopper should think on it: it's handy enough for town and fast enough for the road. Incidentally, if you think of yourself as a type sportif, and you must have a manual transmission, or stick-shift, the primary tool of the truck driver's trade, Ford's new three-speed has a helpful bit of machinery built into it: a lock-out which will not allow the driver to engage first or reverse gear until the clutch has been pushed all the way down. Prevents chipped gear teeth.

In midyear Ford announced new sports-model variants on the three main stars of the line -- Falcon, Fairlane, Galaxie: the Galaxie 500XL, the Fairlane Sports Coupe, the Falcon Sports Futura. These are all bucket-seated, optionally floor-shifting items meant not so much for transportation as for fun. With the 405-horsepower engine in it, the 500XL ought to be fun on almost any level. You'll be pleased to hear that the medium-sized, 221-inch Ford V8 engine weighs just half as much as the original 1932 V8 and produces twice the power. Like all 1962 Fords, these new ones will pretty much take care of themselves (for example, when the car backs up, the brakes are automatically adjusted): the Ford people believe that they shouldn't require more than two to four hours of maintenance during the first year.

A novelty this year is Rambler's "E-stick" -- a manual transmission with automatic clutch available on the American. The driver just waggles the gearshift lever back and forth almost as if it were hitched to an automatic transmission. Rambler has fully reclining seats, too, and an up-and-down adjustment on the cushion, worked by hydraulic pressure. And a double-master-cylinder braking system.

That pioneer compact, the Studebaker Lark, appears this year in a glamorous dress-up model, the Daytona, carrying separate front seats and offering engines up to 210 horsepower driving through optional 4-speed stick-shifts, if that device is your pleasure.

Studebaker's Hawk has always been good-looking and looks even better this year in its one model: the Gran Turismo. You can have this newly designed package driven by as much as 210 horsepower. The Hawk is handsome, clean, esthetically pleasant inside and out. The round faced instruments are, as always, clustered in front of the driver, but this year there's a refinement: the gauges at the far ends of the dashboard have been turned inward at a slight angle, inward toward the driver. This is a gimmick that appeared first, as far as I know, a couple of years ago on a Bertone Ferrari. A good idea, but of course necessary only on full instrument panels. It doesn't make much difference which way idiot lights point.

In the matter of lights, Cadillac en-gineers have come up with a profundity: the new taillights are white until the brake pedal is touched. Then, by a crafty system of reflection, they go red. Cadillac has also warmed up one of the oldest and best ideas in lights that turn with the front wheels. These are not the main headlights, they're secondary lights, and they will brightly fill in those dark up-close corners in slow, winding roads and driveways. For a real wonder, Cadillac has a parking brake that will not only hold the car, it will stop it! That used to be the idea behind the second brake, you know. It wasn't called the parking brake, it was called the hand brake; it stood in the middle of the floor like a young tree and with it a strong child could stop the automobile. Cadillac's 1962 version doesn't sprout out of the floor, but otherwise there's a resemblance.

Much is going to be heard about the new Buick V6, and if one's not careful it's easy to get the impression that this is the first V6 engine in the history of the world, but it's not: Lancia has had V6s and V4s for years, and General Motors has for some time been building a V6 truck. The Buick engine -- which was decided upon because a 4-cylinder doesn't equate with the Buick "image" and a 6-in-line would require expensive new tooling -- produces about 135 horsepower under ideal test conditions and should be pleasantly easy on gasoline consumption. There's nothing radical about it and it should be entirely reliable. The makings of an amusing little ploy come with this engine: its firing order is irregular compared with a V8, and produces a galloping effect, audible when it's run without mufflers. Muffled, running on the road in the automobile, it would be a keen and experienced ear indeed that could tell the difference. Nevertheless, driving the car one can say to practically any male passenger, "Of course you notice the characteristic V6 exhaust note," and get a wise nod of agreement in return. Buick stylists would have you know that they went through 4800 paint samples to pick the 15 colors they're using -- and 3000 seat-cover materials.

If you can't be made happy by a V6 Buick, a Cadillac or the big new Chrysler Imperial fantastico -- with its stand-up taillights nested in nacelles this time -- or the two-year-guaranteed Lincoln Continental, there's a gaggle of sports-car-emulating machinery to consider, with Europe-reflective model names like Grand Prix, Monza, Gran Turismo (two) and Le Mans, these from Pontiac, Corvair, Studebaker, Lancer and Tempest in the order cited. Of similar purpose are the Dodge Polara 500, the Oldsmobile Cutlass, the Valiant Signet 200. Extra performance capability, bucket seats or reasonable facsimiles thereof and floor-mounted shift-lever, whether manual or automatic, might be stated as shared characteristics of the group.

Power figures around the 300 mark, which identified full-race cars not so many years ago, are characteristic in this echelon. These are going automobiles. You can get 348 horsepower in the Pontiac Grand Prix, for example, and 303 is standard. The Dodge Polara 500 runs 305 HP and even this pales beside the 405 put out by the most powerful engine Ford has ever built. The brand-new Plymouth Sport Fury runs the 365 HP engine as an option for a standard 230; you can have as well dual exhausts, a 4-barrel carburetor, hot camshaft, high capacity radiator and heavy-duty springs, rear end and battery.

Chevrolet, meanwhile, has crammed a trunkful of power into a small package, hypoing its Corvair Monza line with a Spyder model which features such dashboard exotica as an electric tach, manifold pressure gauge, and cylinder-head pressure gauge. Their raison d'être -- a turbine-driven supercharger which lifts the basic Corvair engine's horsepower to an immodest 150. This, coupled with a four-speed box, heavy-duty suspension and beefed-up brakes, has produced a whippet not geared for grandma's supermarket forays.

In the "real" sports-car category, that is, an automobile suitable for competition use, the Corvette remains the only entry, regrettably. (A Studebaker Loewydesigned sports car, the Avanti -- said to have a glass fiber body and supercharged Hawk engine on a Lark chassis -- was to have been unveiled 'twixt this writing and publication date. Cloak-and-dagger operations in South Bend prevented appraisal of Studebaker's bright hope, but if the maximum security curtain indicated great expectations, the car might cause something of a stir in the American marketplace.) With the fuel-injection "big" engine the Corvette will accelerate to 60 miles an hour in less than seven seconds, and its top speed and handling qualities have brought it over the line ahead of such renowned imported stuff as Mercedes-Benz 300SLs and E-Jaguars, although it can't cope with the world's best fast passenger car, the Ferrari. Of course, the Corvette should beat Ferraris, Jaguars, Aston-Martins, Mercedes-Benzes and the lot, on the basis of engine size, the governing factor in race-car handicapping: the Corvette engine measures 327 inches, or 5.3 liters, while the E-Jaguar, for example, runs 231 inches in cubic capacity, or 3.7 liters. But while Jaguar's Sir William Lyons' feat in putting on the world market a 150-mile-an-hour car for less than $6000 was considered almost incredible, at last report fellow General Motors executives had not yet taken to rising in the presence of ex-Chevy General Manager Ed Cole and designer Zora Arkus-Duntov, though they brought the 1962 Corvette in at $3900.

In the eyes of many of the brass-bound sports-car group, a Jaguar at $4000 wouldn't be the real thing: too many people could have one. The American sports-car mystique derives in a straight line from the British attitude and is reactionary to the bone. The view of many Britons of the Edwardian persuasion is that sports motoring most distinctly should be a sport limited, like the hunting of the fox, to the few. People of this persuasion have objected to every development that has made control of a motorcar easier and thus available to more people. Decades have passed since the nonsynchronized or "crash" gearbox was a standard passenger-car fixture, indeed the gearbox itself has almost gone, but still every year someone will take pen in hand to bewail the passing of the crashbox, the silent and speedy use of which required a high degree of skill. When the first sports cars were imported postwar, this attitude came with them. I heard the owner of a new TC MG, asked by a passer-by for a dealer's address, flatly refuse to give it.

When sports cars began to pour into the country in the thousands, it became impossible to maintain that attitude, but it was logical to venerate them still as a group, and to uphold them as desirable rarities, considered vis-à -vis the Detroit product, coming off the line like cookies out of an automated oven. For a long time, this snobbism could be backed by a rationale of a sort: the American product was graceless and unsafe, and absurdly slow to boot. That much was justified, but some carried the notion further, and argued that the Detroit motor-masters did not make a fast and roadable car not because they didn't want to, but because they didn't know how, they couldn't. This was obvious nonsense, and betrayed -- or betrays, because one still hears it -- ignorance of the history of the horseless carriage: the thing was invented in Europe and most improvements on it and developments of it have originated in Europe. But the refinement of the device itself, and its accessories, so that they could be made cheaply and quickly and simply, has taken place in this country in great measure; and it's in this country that concern for comfort and, above all, workability has been paramount.

It is now held to be a truism in the European automobile industry that the United States will not again allow imported cars to regain the percentage of the trade they had a few years ago. That is, the European makers concede that Detroit can keep them out if it chooses -- if it chooses to make a competitive product. In the areas of reliability and performance refinement, the American product has long been much more than merely competitive. For a clear indication of its excellence one must read the road tests published by British technical journals. Some of these magazines have been doing road tests almost as long as there have been doing automobiles to drive. Their staff people have traditions to uphold and they are blasé to say the least. Further, they have believed for a long time that U.S.-built motorcars are big, ugly, fat gas-eaters that cannot get out of their own way. Consequently, it is illuminating to read the composite articles produced by these journalists when they have been driving an American car for a week or 10 days.

"This amazing engine runs with uncanny freedom from vibration and in almost total silence ... the car responds instantly to the steering ... firm, predictable in behavior ... a motorcar deserving of the highest praise ... astonishing acceleration in almost complete silence ... the lowest noise level of any car we have ever tested ... at no point could any vibration be detected ..." A full list of such paraphrases would be a long one indeed.

No, the owner of an imported high-performance car can no longer pull up alongside a Detroiter at a stoplight or a tollgate, look contemptuously down his nose, and blast away. He can still win a parkway or throughway dust-up, but, more often than used to be the case, the driver wins it, not the car. Guile is needed, shiftiness, and skill. The foreign-car pilote has to rely on acceleration to 30 miles an hour, on such ploys as knowing when to flash lights at the fellow just ahead, so as to knock him into the next lane to block the competition; he has to rely on the nimbleness of his car, the narrowness that will let him take it through a tight slot, and he has to be more willing than the other fellow to accept the hazard that a bike cop will roar up out of the ground. In fact, the Man doesn't have to be on a bike. Each of the big firms makes a so-called police special, and any one of them will do an adequate pursuit job on you, no matter what you're driving. It's a pity you can't buy one without a letter from the head of the local department, but if you ponder the options available with certain of the 1962 Ford, Chevrolet and Plymouth sedans, you can put together a reasonable facsimile and go Jaguar-hunting with it.

One thing more: 1962 will be remembered as the year the jet-sized tail-fin went to join the bulb-horn and the acetylene lamp.