It's easy to assume that car company engineers have a constant parade of other manufacturers' cars to compare to their own fare. In fact, that classic novel of automotive design and production - Arthur Hailey's Wheels - talks about the engineers' teardowns of opposition products, looking at how to save a few cents on a bracket here, a few cents on a chassis brace there. But while sampling such a smorgasbord of opposition products may be the norm for cashed-up major car companies, for Mitsubishi in Australia, the engineers are lucky to see more than their direct opposition Falcon and Commodore models. In fact, a few years ago when I attended a Society of Automotive Engineer's briefing on the (then) new Magna model, someone in the audience asked what up-market competitors' cars the company provided their engineers to drive. There was a long silence, followed by a mumbled response about a Volvo wagon that was made available when Mitsubishi was developing the first Magna wagon...
It is the literal truth that auto journalists drive a far wider variety of cars than many of the company personnel responsible for designing new cars!
So the other day a thought struck me. We had on test an Alfa 166, a car that we panned as expensive, cramped, and having a woefully matched engine and auto transmission. In fact, as we discussed during the course of that story, a Magna Sport has a far better engine and much superior (also Tiptronic-style) auto trans. However, one are area where the Alfa totally caned the Mitsubishi was in its steering. Simply, the Alfa has better on-centre feel, better feedback, better directness - in fact better everything. Ahh, if only the Magna (one of our favourite cars) had the steering of the Alfa!
Hmmm - so why doesn't it? Could it be that those Mitsubishi engineers - working just 10 kilometres from where I then lived - just don't know what they should be aiming for? Five days into the seven day test we'd finished with the Alfa - maybe we should ring 'em up and offer them a drive? I don't know what precedent there is for a magazine offering a car company a drive of an opposition manufacturer's press car - but if it doesn't exist we just established it.
Cos the Mitsubishi engineers just about fell over themselves to have the Alfa 166 for the day....
And when they returned the car to us what did they say about the steering? Very direct, they said. That few turns lock to lock could be a bit of a problem if the power steering pump failed - wouldn't be able to turn the wheel, they said. Has nice turn-in, but the steering can kick back, they mumbled. Good build quality - loved those interior plastics, they smiled. And the relevance of the beautiful steering to future Magna models like the Ralliart car? They just looked blank.
But maybe the Mitsi engineers should get out more - it was only the next day that we discovered that they'd tried to play an Alfa CD-ROM of press release photos through the 166's VDO-Dayton navigation system - and then had not been able to get the CD out....
A mad urge to buy a car.
One journalist a few years ago described it as having the Car Crazies. Y'know, where you just wanna buy a car and simply nothing's going to stop you doing just that. The urgency that afflicts sufferers of the disease is known only to those infected.... But this time for us it wasn't just a dose of the Crazies; this time there was a real automotive need as well. And a genuine urgency - no more the luxury of musing, researching, selecting, driving, reappraising - then starting the cycle again: musing, researching... Nope, we needed another car, and we needed it now!
Not next month, not even next week - literally today or tomorrow another set of wheels was required.
Having arrived in Brisbane from Adelaide - the Nissan EXA and the Volvo 142 now sold - we were the proud owners of just the Audi S4. Perhaps that should be rephrased;' 'just' implies some sort of dissatisfaction that's not at all present. But with my partner Georgina looking for work immediately, and with that place of employment likely to be on the Gold Coast and not in our short-term residency of Brissie, another car was required.
The budget started at $4000. For four grand something like a (first model) twin cam Camry, or the last of the old-shape 2.6 Magnas, or even an older Cressida. Well, those were my thoughts. But the Cressida was simply laughed out of court; "I'm not driving an old barge like that!" came the scornful summation. Hmmm. Well, for something with character there was also a Peugeot 505, early 900 Saab Turbo - even an old Merc. Or we could lift the budget and look at a Mazda MX6, or Telstar TX5 Turbo, perhaps. But taking this sort of thought-out approach was leading back into Car Crazies mode - better to simply head out to the local car yards and take a look. After all, no point in selecting a car that actually wasn't for sale right now and right there....
First up was a Cressida - not one of the 'old barges' but a 1985 model. It was a little tatty - one dent, paint a bit tired, driver's seat upholstery worn - but nothing too major. At $3950 it was in the right price range, too. But then I spied the odometer - no less than 375,000 kays! Wow... Then there was the Camry wagon - 280,000 kays - or the Laser S 1.8, hmmm - only 150,000km. The Laser made sense... but when have I ever bought a car on the basis of sanity?
And then I saw it.
A white Saab 900 5-door turbo. Nineteen eighty-nine, 147,000 kilometres, factory rear spoiler and alloys. Inside - leather, sunroof, central locking, power windows and mirrors. Air and power steering, too. Under the bonnet - 16-valves, turbo and intercooler. Not absolutely immaculate, but in superb condition. An automatic, but, well, I once owned a VL turbo auto and I know how effectively an auto trans and turbo can work together. (The 900 shown here is a slightly later model, and yes it's black, but otherwise you'd be hard-pushed to tell the difference.)
Our four grand budget? Oh yeah - now totally outa the window. The Saab was stickered at $9999... but how well would it drive? It started and idled smoothly, no timing chain clatter or puffs of smoke evident. Acceleration away from a standing start was s-l-o-w, but the in-gear grunt (and in the real world that's where it counts) was good without being breathtaking. On the freeway 180 km/h came up reassuringly quickly, while the kickdown of the (3-speed only, unfortunately) trans always launched the engine straight into its peak power band.
But what I liked most about the car was its stability; the feeling that whatever the weather and road surface, the 900 would keep on tracking with assurance and predictability. Its handling seemed fine (and later proved even better with decent tyre pressures!); its room under that enormous rear hatch exemplary. All the gadgets worked - try electrically heated front seats and headlight wiper/washers as well - and it was a car that had character in spades.
Hmmm, $9999.
I ducked back to the house that I was staying at and fired up the PC. I checked Red Book prices and looked at the dollars being asked for other late-Eighties Saab 900s. 'Our' car looked well priced, with many base model naturally aspirated 900 5-doors on sale for around the ten grand mark, and suggested retails being more like twelve grand for the turbo model. Hmmmm.
Time for another drive.
This time we went over the car with a fine-toothed comb, drove it for 45 minutes and generally inspected it as you do when you're buying a car costing over twice the original budget. There was a disconcerting rattle at certain engine speeds that we traced to the exhaust (cat converter?) touching the body, but the cruise control, air, power steering and trans all seemed fine. The leather looked like it had been treated some time in the past with something not quite designed for leather - it had none of the supple feel common to high quality cow - but that would be easily enough remedied with some good quality treatment.
And how low would the yard go on price? Nine thousand, five hundred as it turned out. We put down a $100 deposit and went away to find the money. A few days later, the car was ours.
