The Sportsedan: Roughing It on the Estate

Traditionally, we Americans have measured automotive quality with the same standards we've employed for prize beef and battlewagons--in pounds and feet. If big is good, bigger is better, we have reasoned, and our cars have blossomed accordingly in length and in bulk. But a strange twist in buying patterns is occurring. A growing body of affluent citizens--those who have been the strongest exponents of big cars--is forsaking the implied status of two and a half tons and 20 feet of top-grade American plastic, vinyl and steel for the smaller, lighter European machines.

Imported vehicles have been a factor in the domestic car scene for so long that their presence is no novelty. But until now, their influence has been limited to the bottom echelons of the market, where modest price and stark packaging have enabled them to undersell Detroit's low-line offerings. Excluding a selection of high-priced sports cars, the identity of the imports has been linked with cheap, short-haul transportation, while the general citizenry has remained committed to the bulk-equals-elegance syndrome. The prime example of this mentality is the Cadillac. There has been no stronger symbol of success within this culture than these great, whispering arks. Men have lusted for Caddies, knowing they will catapult them upward through the social strata more effectively than a job promotion or marriage to a rich widow. Ownership of a Cadillac can transform the owner of a grocery store into a supermarket entrepreneur; a neighborhood bookie into a gang lord; a night school chiropractor into a brain surgeon; a sharecropper into a cattle baron. Out there in middle America, there is no stronger medicine than that carried in the amulet known as the Cadillac. If the flying saucers are real, and if they are carrying extraterrestrial anthropologists, they must be going nuts recording the influence of our flashy, finned kings of the concrete.

But things are changing. Wealthy Americans are beginning to drive smaller vehicles. Not less luxurious, just smaller. Take for example, the incredible Mercedes-Benz 450SE, a four-door machine that is positively miniature by Caddy standards yet costs almost twice as much to purchase. The 450SEs are rapidly replacing Cadillacs (and their generic stepsisters, the Lincolns and Imperials) as the automobiles to own in the spiffiest echelons of society; and we know, thanks to the sociological trickle system, that the tastes of the upper class are immediately aped by the upper-middle, then the middle class, and so on down (which is why Chevrolet prospered so long by convincing the working stiff that his Impala was really a replica Cadillac). Hang around the posh spots of the nation--Connecticut's Fairfield County, Philadelphia's Main Line, Florida's Palm Beach, the Hamptons of Long Island, Southern California's Newport Beach, Beverly Hills, etc.--and you'll begin to think everybody, including the upstairs maid and the gardener, is wheeling Mercedes-Benzes. In fact, they are so common in the environs of Carmel, along Northern California's magnificent coast line, that locals refer to them as Monterey Fords. That's how heavy the Mercedes are with the big shooters.

Will somebody please explain why this is going on? After all, how can this German interloper, which is over two feet shorter overall, weighs 1100 pounds less and has a peewee engine compared with the 500-cubic-inch thumper in the Caddy--yet costs over $16,000 to put in your driveway, compared with about $10,000 for the old king--be a factor? For openers, the old king creates luxury in part through the use of insulation, baffles, grommets, bushings, gaskets and sheer space to buffer the passengers from road noise and bumps. The result is an aseptic isolation wherein one is given the impression of traveling in a hermetically sealed space capsule hovering a few inches above the highway. In comparison, the Mercedes-Benz seems to be welded to the earth. This is not accidental. Daimler-Benz, A.G., manufacturers of the Mercedes, trace a lineage to the very genesis of the automobile in the late 19th Century and maintain a fierce Teutonic pride in the excellence of their products. All of their automobiles have a reputation for superior handling and the 450SE represents a pinnacle in terms of production-type four-door sedans. Utilizing independent suspension (where the Cadillac maintains the aged, solid-rear-axle configuration) and four-wheel disk brakes (the Caddy uses disks on the front wheels only), die 450SE corners and stops with staggering alacrity. This baffles the Cadillac contingent, causing it to grumble. Says one dealer, "I can't understand what they see in those goddamned, bumpy Mercedes, when you can buy one of our smooth, soft-riding Coupe de Villes for little more than half the price. It makes you wonder what's happening to the world." To be sure, the Mercedes-Benz ride, with its stiffer suspension components and its radial tires, has traded the Cadillac's silkiness for maneuverability and high-speed stability. "It's a change in American automotive consciousness," says one expert. "The whole European concept of nimble, neatly sized vehicles began to enter our thinking when the first sports cars arrived here in quantity after World War Two. Slowly the idea of functional machines--machines that really worked, rather than represent some Babbittlike social aspirations--became important. People were willing to trade off all the size and marshmallow ride of the Cadillacs and Lincolns for taut functional machines like the Mercedes. Now it's ironic that the only people who are bitching about the harsh ride of the 450SE are the old big daddies and big mommas with the fattest asses."

If the American big-car establishment is alarmed about the new cachet attached to the Mercedes-Benz 450SE and to the longer-wheelbase 450SEL, then other cars of the same type are also causing serious rumbles in the market place. They are, in a sense, a generation of super-sedans that promise to significantly alter American car-buying habits and, hopefully, to upgrade the general automotive environment in the United States. These supersedans include, in addition to the Mercedes, the Jaguar XJ6 and XJ12L, the BMW Bavaria and 3.0 S and the Citroen SM. All are modestly sized, between 193 and 205 inches in length; are relatively light, 3300-4200 pounds; are intended to carry four or five people and luggage in high-speed luxury; and are laden with such mechanical exotica as overhead-camshaft engines, fuel injection, four-wheel disk brakes and complicated independent suspensions. They contain sophisticated power plants varying in configuration from V6s (Citroën) to straight 6s (BMW and XJ6) to V8s (Mercedes) to V12s (XJ12L), each with rather modest displacement by domestic standards, ranging from 181 cubic inches (Citroën) to 326 cubic inches (XJ12L). Each car carries a wallet-busting price tag, beginning at about $9300 for a sparsely equipped BMW Bavaria and spiraling upward to nearly $20,000 for a loaded Mercedes-Benz 450SEL (the L designating Long, which brings the customer a 3.9-inch-longer wheelbase for an extra $1600 beyond the price of a basic 450SE).

If Captain Nemo owned an automobile, it would doubtlessly be the Citroën SM. Not only is it France's only homebred luxury car (discounting its Italian-designed Maserati engine) but its level of mechanical zaniness would provide an irresistible attraction for the man who built and piloted the Nautilus. No other mass-produced automobile in the world is quite like the SM. Beneath its Flash Gordon bodywork lies some of the most exotic mechanical gadgetry to be found outside Cape Canaveral. It is front-wheel drive for openers, with a central hydraulic brain that operates individually controlled suspension units on all four wheels, the fully powered four-wheel disk brakes and the quickest power steering in any passenger automobile. Available with either a five-speed manual gearbox or a three-speed automatic, the SM is one of the fastest, smoothest touring cars known to man. While it is the only machine of the group to have only two doors--technically a coupe instead of a sedan--it functions so well as a transporter of four adults over long distances that it cannot be excluded. Any traveler on France's routes nationales, or four-lane auto routes, has become inured to being passed by SMs--hunkered down on their adjustable suspensions as they whoosh past with the silent determination of a well-aimed arrow.

It is difficult to fault the Citroën, even in the areas of air conditioning and stereo systems, where high-priced European cars often appear rather primitive. If one is interested in 100-mph, land-borne transport for four people in near-perfect comfort and stability, it has few serious rivals. But, sadly, the car is like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When it is bad, it is very, very bad. Over complication is the nemesis of the Citroën SM owner and the men he seeks to keep it running. It is well built and initial quality is high, but the general complication of every component can lead to steady irritations.

The purchase of an SM in France, where the Citroën dealer network is widespread, would be a reasonable undertaking. There the car could be properly maintained. But it is a different matter in the United States. Here the customer who has spent nearly $14,000 for a new Citroën faces a genuine test of his sanity. This notwithstanding, the general uniqueness of the automobile, coupled with its over-all engineering excellence, has prompted over 1200 brave Americans to purchase SMs. But there is a strong possibility that the domestic market has seen the last of this incredible automobile. Citroën has fought hard for an exemption from the increasingly crackpot U. S. Government bumper standards, which the company argues are applicable to price-conscious mass consumers and not to discriminating purchasers of high-priced specialty vehicles. But the bureaucrats, in their fevered allegiance to Gresham's law, have refused to relent. Therefore, lowered production, caused by the relocation of Citroën's manufacturing facility in (continued on page 222) The Sportsedan (continued from page 150) France, has increased demand in the European market to a point where it seems almost certain that the factory will forgo the grief of trying to probe through the rising fog bank of regulations from Washington. The upshot is that once the current stock has left the showrooms, the courageous and highly original Citroën SM probably will not be sold in America again. So much for the bureaucrats' campaign to upgrade automotive quality in the United States.

Jaguar is reeling under similar Government pressures, although it is likely that its superb XJ6 and XJ12L sedans will remain available. Both the 6- and the 12-cylinder version of the automobile encountered extreme difficulty in passing the Government's 1974 exhaust-emission tests and there has been no 1974 version of the XJ12 in the lucrative California market, because it could not pass the state's more stringent air-quality standards. This has caused sales to slump badly, although the sensuous styling, the excellent performance and the indigenous glamor of the Jaguar name have kept demand for sedans at a high level. The difficulties in obtaining exhaust certification, coupled with the ongoing strikes, slowdowns, walkouts and protests that have become such frustrating facets of the British automobile industry, have conspired to reduce XJ-sedan supplies to near zero in America. British Leyland, the U. S. importer of Jaguar cars, entered last summer with an inventory of 156 XJs. "When you count those that are being kept by dealers for their wives to drive, you come up with zero for the public to purchase," says one company man.

Since the XJ6 was introduced in 1968, it has stood among the cleanest, most efficient five-passenger sedans in history. Low (54.1 inches) and slippery, the car quickly gained a reputation for silent running and responsive handling. Its six-cylinder engine is a refined version of the venerable double-overhead-camshaft unit developed in the late Forties that carried Jaguars to five victories at Le Mans in the Fifties. After 30 years of refinement, the bulky, rather heavy, low-revving six is a quiet and reliable device, making the car particularly smooth at low cruising speeds. At velocities over 90 mph, the XJ develops unseemly wind noises and its old six appears to be getting short of breath, which only increases the impression that the XJ6 is a rather sedate old lady when compared with the competition. Realizing this, Jaguar introduced its new 12-cylinder engine in 1971, which was exactly the kind of contemporary power plant the neat XJ chassis needed. For between $1500 and $2000 extra, the XJ12 produced better acceleration, three miles per gallon worse gas consumption (13 1/2 vs.16 1/2) and the strange owner satisfaction of knowing that beneath that sloping hood lay the only 12-cylinder engine available in a mass-produced four-door sedan. A buyer also obtains a heavy dose of traditional English automobile ambience, which features expanses of thickly varnished, deep-grained wood paneling and seats stitched up in aromatic yards of soft leather. All XJs, be they sixes or the new XJ12L, which has a four-inch-longer wheelbase and has replaced the XJ12, are imported into the U.S. in one configuration: fully equipped except for the AM/FM radio. All available options are bolted on, meaning the purchaser gets everything from a new, quite efficient climate-control air conditioner to automatic door locks to an antiquated, lumpy Borg-Warner three-speed automatic transmission, whether he wants them or not.

Despite the supply and certification problems with the XJs, British Leyland has every intention of selling them in America. "We feel the car can be very formidable in this country," says a Jaguar spokesman. "But you've got to remember that Jaguar is a comparatively small organization. Our total output is fewer than 35,000 cars a year, whereas Mercedes-Benz produces nearly ten times that many. That means our engineering staff is under heavy strain to comply with Government safety and emission regulations. American luxury cars are large and heavy, generally with substantial surpluses of space where you can tuck components such as five-mph bumper mountings and catalytic mufflers. But a car like the XJ is tightly skinned, with the bodywork wrapped around the mechanical pieces like a surgical glove. Finding a few cubic inches of extra space for something like a catalytic muffler can mean a redesign. That, quite simply, is why there aren't more XJs in America, but Jaguar is on the threshold of a major expansion in production facilities and hopefully that situation will improve in the immediate future."

If Jaguars are hard to come by, the opposite is the case with Mercedes-Benzes. The 450SE, base price $15,820, is selling at a brisk clip, despite the current economic woes, meaning that Daimler-Benz of North America aspires to equaling its 1973 sales figure, when 9369 SEs and SELs were sold. This is a rather minuscule number when compared with the 202,156 Cadillac de Villes delivered during the same period but becomes impressive when judged against the more expensive Fleetwood sedans, which accounted for only 22,000 sales. Mercedes-Benz has made serious inroads into the top echelons of the domestic luxury-car market and Detroit is beginning to take notice. "It's relatively simple," says one who is close to the Mercedes-Benz selling campaign in the U. S. "The Germans have assigned a high priority to selling cars in this market. They've hired top people, spent lots of money for distribution, marketing and advertising--in the neighborhood of $5,000,000 to $6,000,000, which is more than Jaguar, Citroen and BMW combined--and have developed a tough, enthusiastic and cohesive network of about 400 dealers. The advertising campaign, which emphasized the rationality of buying a $16,000 automobile, where the competition kept harping on glamor, has worked. The snowball syndrome is in effect and people who would otherwise never have thought of a Mercedes--never have considered anything but a Cadillac or a Lincoln--are spending almost twice the money to get a 450SE." The 450SE may or may not be twice as good a car, but the miracle is selling a car that costs that much in such quantities.

If any sedan in the world is worth nearly $16,000, it is probably the 450SE. Aside from the approximately $500 that can be spent for real leather upholstery (standard on the SEL), almost nothing is optional on the 450SE, meaning that air conditioning, a superb three-speed automatic transmission, power windows, a vacuum lock for all doors and the gas cap, four-wheel power disk brakes and AM/FM radio come as part of the basic package. There is nothing frivolous about the automobile. It is the embodiment of Germanic thoroughness. While its body style is hardly dazzling when compared with others of its class, the 450SE is quite aerodynamic and immune from interior wind noises. Moreover, the infrastructure of the car is designed to absorb prodigious crash impacts without deforming. Mercedes-Benz takes safety very seriously and builds its automobiles to handle well enough to elude dangerous situations--called evasive capability--and to protect its passengers with structural rigidity and proper interior padding, etc., if a collision is unavoidable. All this creates within the car an atmosphere of Spartan utility; but then, the Germans have never been famous for their giddiness when it comes to machinery. With a top speed of nearly 130 mph and an inspired four-wheel independent suspension that produces impeccable behavior regardless of the road surface, the 450SE represents another level of consciousness beyond that of the standard Detroit luxury automobile. Mercedes-Benz set out to produce the most perfect mass-produceable four-door sedan and succeeded; it's that simple.

Presuming one aspires to a Mercedes but cannot dupe his banker into lending him $16,000, he can easily turn to German alternates: the BMW Bavaria or its more elaborate sister, the 3.0 S. While the Bavaria is closer kin to the six-cylinder Mercedes 280, in terms of price and performance, the 3.0 S is in the 450SE's league by any standard of measurement. The BMWs are built on the same simple, solid four-door chassis introduced back in 1968 as the 2500 and 2800 models. Subsequent refinements and displacement increases in the exquisite, single overhead-cam six-cylinder engines have resulted in the Bavaria and its gadget-loaded, immaculately constructed $13,000 sister, the 3.0 S. It is this car that most closely rivals the 450SE and, in the context of sportiness and the hedonistic pleasures of driving, is its superior. There is a certain aura of Germanic ponderousness emitted by the 450SE, much like a pudgy Wagnerian diva with a great range and perfect pitch. The emphasis is on results, not ambience, with the Mercedes-Benz, whereas the BMW 3.0 S has a quality of lightness and grace that is missing in its principal rival. Part of this is a simple function of weight: The BMW is 700 pounds lighter than the 450SE. Overall, it is a smaller automobile, with six inches less wheelbase and ten inches less over-all width than the Mercedes-Benz, and this translates into a quickness that is lacking in the larger automobile. This is enhanced by the availability of a slick four-speed manual transmission (unobtainable on U. S.-version XJs and 450SEs), which makes the 3.0 S easily the most responsive of these supersedans. Mounted in the curving, fully adjustable leather seats and facing the large, dished steering wheel and a bank of black-faced aircraft-type instruments, the 3.0 S driver experiences a sensation of command to be found only in first-class motorcars. The first urge is to drive too fast, because cars such as the BMW (as well as the Citroën, Jaguar and Mercedes) become keener, more acute devices at high speed. Their suspensions angle them through corners without effort, their steering gears point them with perfection, the brakes gnaw at the pavement with a fierceness unknown in most American machines. Yet this is done in an atmosphere of serenity, with modest mechanical sounds and minimal noises from wind and road engulfing the driver. Cars like the BMW have been designed to operate at steady 90-to-100-mph cruising speeds, carrying four passengers in air-conditioned splendor. It is a capability virtually misunderstood by most of the men who drive monster Caddies and Lincolns, and the attempt to describe to them the beauty of wailing down a highway in a BMW is like Wilt Chamberlain's trying to transmit the pleasure of a slam dunk to a pack of pygmies.

The BMW 3.0 S is a very fast motorcar. With a top speed of just under 130 mph, and a 0-60 time in the ten-second range, it will not shame itself in any traffic, yet its performance comes from a modestly sized three-liter (182-cubic-inch) engine that many experts believe to be among the most sophisticated passenger-car power plants ever built. Consider that this engine, in this era of performance-choking pumps and valves intended to purify exhaust emissions, produces 170 horsepower (in comparison, the Cadillac, with an engine 318 cubic inches larger, produces only 20 additional horsepower) while providing mileage in the 20-mpg range. The engineers at the BMW works in Munich have developed a magical combustion-chamber design (for you German-technology fans, it's called Dreikugelwirbelwannerbrennraum, or trispherical, turbulence-inducing combustion chamber) that is so efficient that it produces power and economy and clean exhaust without the complicated antipollutant plumbing necessary for most engines to meet American Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Like the 450SE, the 3.0 S comes packed with every conceivable gadget, with the purchaser given the options only to add a sun roof, metallic paint and a limited-slip differential. Another $396 will buy the automatic-transmission version of the 3.0 S, which has slightly poorer acceleration, somewhat diminished fuel economy and, for fanciers of rapid transit, a lower threshold of driving pleasure. The rapid revaluation of the German mark and certain internal complications with the American distributor have seen the price of the Bavaria nearly double in the past three years--and have boosted the 3.0 S from $11,500 to just under $13,000 in the past 12 months. This same phenomenon has hit all German imports, Volkswagen and Porsche as well as BMW and Mercedes, and sales have faltered due to the staggering prices. At $9000 to $10,000, the 3.0 S was a bargain, but at $13,000, many potential customers are being lured toward the better-known 450SE for a few thousand more. BMW realizes this problem and is increasing its advertising efforts as a countermeasure. Last year, only 481 of these superb machines were sold in the U. S. (coupled with 3457 of the cheaper Bavarias), but the parent company, like Mercedes, appears committed to selling automobiles in America.

This is a good thing. Not only will it produce inestimable driving pleasure for a tiny knot of fortunates who buy the cars but the very presence of such cars--the 3.0 S, the 450SE, the XJ12L and, if the powers that be change their minds, the SM--is a powerful force for good on the American automotive scene. These machines represent an allegiance to creative excellence in a nation inured to dull, mass-class cars of compromise. They stand in mute testimony that really excellent motorcars can be produced and sold. Most important, they reaffirm that aged bromide that good things come in small packages.

This nugget is beginning to sink into the brains of the men who run the American auto industry. Buffeted by sagging sales in the energy crisis and baffled by mass defections of the very rich toward the supersedans, Detroit has begun to recognize the essential goodness of small, terse luxury cars. Both Pontiac and Oldsmobile have modified intermediate sedans (the Grand Am and the Cutlass Salon) to reflect a more European sense of styling, if not of performance. Chevrolet has produced several models with radiator shells blatantly copied from the Mercedes-Benz, and Chrysler has unashamedly photographed its pentastar emblem in television commercials to suggest an association with the Mercedes three-pointed star. But those efforts are puny compared with Ford's 1975 Granada and Mercury Monarch models, both of which claim such close identity with the Mercedes that comparison drawings of the 280 Mercedes were circulated to the press during the cars' introductory previews. Mercedes and BMW sized (109-inch wheelbase, 199 inches overall), the mechanically identical Granada and Monarch have been called "nickel-nose Mercedes," but there is little question that they represent a growing awareness in Detroit that future automobiles must be smaller and more cleanly engineered than today's so-called family-size sedans. Surely, the new Ford products are good news, but they remain middle-priced machines, hardly intended to compete in terms of quality or damn-the-expense engineering with the 3.0 S or the 450SE. That final test of strength will come from the old Yankee standard-bearer, Cadillac. Yes, after decades of producing only the largest, most ostentatious luxury vehicles, Cadillac will market, beginning in February, a small, luxurious four-seat sedan called the LaSalle (resurrecting the name of a low-priced Caddy product taken off the market in 1940). The car will be slightly larger than the European supersedans (114-inch wheelbase) but will reportedly cost over $10,000 and be aimed smack at Mercedes-Benz. The LaSalle will utilize a totally new body shell and, understanding General Motors' tradition for using such shells throughout its line--Cadillacs, for example, use the same body shell as the large Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs--it is likely that the car is the beginning of a whole new generation of middle-sized, top-quality cars. The car was originally designed to employ Wankel power, but now that GM has encountered some development problems with the rotary engine, a normal V8 will propel the first models, at least.

How will the LaSalle compare with the supersedans? That is difficult to determine, except that speculation is strong that the car will come closer to the mark than any American effort up to now. If Cadillac's engineers can resist the effort to maintain the rather dead-feeling suspension and steering that characterize their larger automobiles, they will have taken a quantum leap toward returning American sedans to a point where they can once again be compared with the best in the world.

But until that day arrives, if your sensibilities and bank account are such that you can aspire to the most intelligent, most exciting--and safest--sedan transportation in the world, the odds favor your next car's coming from Europe.