From the November 1981 issue of Car and Driver.
Hot news is not normally within the purview of a monthly magazine, but today I'm able to bring you some. Mike Knepper, having heard destiny's call, has gone off to be the PR man for the De Lorean Motor Company, and we hope they'll be very happy together.
This occasions big changes here at Ann Arbor's leading car magazine. Former technical editor Don Sherman has become technical director and the highest-ranked man on the editorial staff, reporting to me. Sherman came to Car and Driver in 1971, via a circuitous route that involved going (riding a Harley-Davidson XLCH Sportster) with Pat Bedard's sister, serving as an engineer–test driver for the United States Army at the Yuma Desert Proving Grounds, getting his Master's in automotive engineering from the University of Michigan, and working as an engineer at the Old Chrysler Corporation.
I usually describe Sherman as the hardest-working member of our staff, and this still holds true, but I have never mentioned the fact that he is more than a little crazy. His madness generally takes a constructive form, but it can be seen gleaming from his eyes in unguarded moments. Life with Don Sherman is never dull. The Harley Sportster has long since been replaced with the world's most perfectly modified and scienced-out Mazda RX-7, a glorious red device that's been lowered and spoilered and tweaked to a fare-thee-well. Sherman has been a vital force in the affairs of this magazine ever since his first day on the job, and now he has the title and the authority to go with the clout that up to now has been his by main strength.
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Don Sherman's new responsibilities, his added workload, and Car and Driver's increasing interest in matters technical all combined to create an opening for a new technical editor. Filling this slot, and reporting to Don, is Csaba Csere (pronounced "Csaba Csere"), who is 29, a bachelor, a graduate of MIT, and—most recently—an engineer in Ford's Advanced Engine Engineering group. He owns a 1974 Porsche 911, a 1973 Porsche 914 two-liter, a 1978 Suzuki GS1000, and a 1976 Capri, which he's trying to sell. He's a stereophile—more for the music than the technology—a motorcycle road racer, and Sherman charges that his apartment looks like a Suzuki-factory tool crib. Among his diverse gifts is the ability to speak Hungarian. That was enough to convince me we couldn't produce another issue without him.
Associate editor Jean Lindamood is the daughter of Bob Lienert, editor of Automotive News, and the sister of Paul Lienert, managing editor of Autoweek. She came to see me, at her brother's suggestion, when she was laid off as a mechanic–test driver at the Chrysler Proving Grounds. The only things she had in her portfolio at that interview were several copies of the proving-ground local's UAW newsletter, which she edited, and a yeasty stream-of-consciousness essay she'd written for a local literary magazine three years ago when she was driving her own cab on the streets of Ann Arbor. I decided to hire her on the strength of that essay and her ebullient good humor, and Sherman found her irresistible because she can weld. The other day I asked her if she was impressed by Csaba Csere's first appearance, for us, at a press conference, and she said, "Listen, he made those other guys look like base nosepickers, man." All this, plus welding experience. My cup runneth over.
One of the tragedies of Energy Crisis II—or maybe "Energy Department Crisis" would be a better way to describe it—will be the premature death of the General Motors B-body line of cars. These were introduced in 1976 as downsized 1977 models and were without doubt the best so-called full-sized American cars ever built. They still are. We loved the Chevrolet Caprice with the optional F41 sports suspension, and we had the time of our lives flogging a Buick LeSabre Sport Coupe through the hills of Connecticut. The public loved them too, and their very success did much to demoralize and confuse the competition at Ford and Chrysler, leading in part to some of the serious problems those companies face today.
A couple of years ago I shared the speakers' platform at a University of Michigan Management Training Seminar with an executive from the world's largest car-leasing concern, and he reported in his presentation that this family of cars had simply put everything else on the trailer for his thousands of clients. His company's records showed, at that time, that they were cheaper to operate as lease cars, easier to maintain, brought better resale prices on the used-car market, and generally made for happier lessees. On another occasion, just before we moved the magazine from New York to Ann Arbor, I had lunch with Prof. David Cole, the gifted young automotive expert and engineer whose name appears in our magazine from time to time, and we drifted into a discussion of the truly great cars of the past 35 years. I riffled through my favorites, most of them hallowed names in the enthusiast's hall of fame, but he thought about it for a moment, then demurred. "No," he said, "the most important car since World War II won't turn out to be something with four cams and two seats. I think you'll find that automotive historians, at the turn of the century, will look back and identify the current line of General Motors B-cars as a kind of watershed point in automotive technology. First of all they're very good cars, but more importantly, they represent the industry's first, from the ground up, attempt at NASA-style computerized development. In that sense, they're truly revolutionary, and they'll change the whole face of automotive development worldwide."
I was reminded of all this last week, when I put over a thousand miles on a new Pontiac Bonneville diesel station wagon. There's no question that it's a great big car—too big, to be sure. Yet it was a friendly reminder of just how good Detroit used to be at building large, comfortable, luxurious cars at prices people could afford. The marriage of the 350 diesel V-8's torque curve with the ratios available in the three-speed automatic transmission made it seem almost lively at times (though I hasten to add that these moments of perceived peppiness never occurred when passing on back roads). The level of fit and finish was superior, and everybody that rode any distance in the big old sweetie remarked on its comfort. If there was an occasional whiff of Diesel Number Two from the fresh-air vents, and a veritable waterfall across the top of the tailgate in the carwash, well, what do you expect, Japanese quality? I guess I drove it much too fast to ever enjoy anything like the EPA's estimated fuel consumption (21 mpg), but I was getting close to 300 miles on a tank of fuel, and that was pleasant. At least half of my time was spent on narrow dirt roads winding through woods and swampland, and the big car's only other annoying trait was a tendency toward tail-happiness on the frequent washboard surfaces. (GM's live-axle cars have always done this, and I guess they'll always do it, but dammit, companies with fewer engineers and less money than GM have been solving this problem for decades, and I wish GM would.)
Having alternated back and forth between the Pontiac wagon and the Chrysler Imperial for the best part of two weeks, I was a little surprised to find that I preferred the Pontiac. It was more refined than the Imperial, even though it lacked niceties like electric windows and Mark Cross leather seats, and it was a better driver's car—however one defines that vague term—and it cost about half as much. Pontiac won't be selling any more of these next year, according to informed sources, and the other GM divisions will give them up in favor of something smaller with front-wheel drive in the following year. Nobody's complained longer or more loudly than I about Detroit's unwillingness to abandon the big cars, but it does seem a shame to have to give up such a good big car, especially when it would have enjoyed a much longer life in a more normal market environment. Sic transit gloria, and all like that.
