From the June 1987 issue of Car and Driver.
Automotive historians will look back on the eighties as the decade in which the Ford Motor Company emerged as an independent thinker on a global scale. Simultaneously, Dearborn produced the remarkable Taurus/Sable, Ford's Asian affiliates got together on a range of efficient small cars, and Ford of Europe had the nerve to create an autobahn express that doesn't pay homage to Mercedes. In fact, the Scorpio takes no inspiration from anything on the road. It's a new definition of bucks-up automobiling.
The radical approach doesn't stop with the car's shape and mechanical layout, either. When the Scorpio goes on sale here this spring, as a 1988 model, Ford will guarantee its resale value. The promise is that your Scorpio will retain the same percentage of its retail price as the Mercedes 190E in the period between two and four years after its sale (assuming that you trade for another Merkur or a Lincoln). If it doesn't, Ford will send you a check for the difference.
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That's even gutsier than making an expensive four-door that deviates from the traditional three-box silhouette. There is no track record of customer willingness to pay Audi 5000 prices (the target of the base U.S. Scorpio) for cars with ski-jump hind ends. The Scorpio is a hatchback, and it looks the part; it's a cough-drop-shaped car that every Harvard M.B.A. would say is wrong for the market, at least the American market.
Still, customers who are willing to pay prestige prices for a model that no one will ever confuse with a Mercedes will get something else for their money. The Scorpio has more useful interior room than any other car in its class. The long roof provides headroom for a rear seat positioned farther aft than usual. The payoff is limousine-style legroom and kneeroom—or you can fold the rear seatbacks down (they have a 60–40 split) to expand the cargo capacity in typical hatchback style.
An extra attraction is a rear seat that folds completely out of the way. Pivot the bottom cushion up and forward, then fold the seatbacks down into the vacated space, and you've got a station-wagon-flat load floor. That floor is a bit on the narrow side—at 69.5 inches wide, the Scorpio is 1.2 inches skinnier than the Taurus—but there is still room for three-across seating in back if you really need it. The narrow width helps aero drag a little (the Cd is 0.33) and makes parking lots seem wider.
For those confident enough of their status to drive an astutely designed car, no matter what it looks like, the Scorpio will be an attractive package. But the typical American buyer will probably have reservations. In any case, there won't ever be enough Scorpios sold in the U.S. to make the shape common. Ford expects 700 Merkur dealers to sell a total of 15,000 Scorpios a year, which isn't many compared with the flow of such competitors a the Audi 5000, the Mercedes 190E, the BMW 5-series, the Volvo 700-series, and the Acura Legend. (Another rival, the Saab 9000 series, sells in somewhat smaller volumes.)
The situation is different in Europe, however, where aerodramatic shapes are becoming the norm: the Scorpio, now entering its third year, is second only to Mercedes in sales in its class. The Scorpio has earned an arm's-length list of accolades, including the European Car of the Year Award in 1986. It outsells the BMW 5-series in Germany and owns 25 percent of the executive class in England. In Europe, you might say, the Scorpio is what's happening in the high end of the market.
Since the whole idea of the Merkur line is to provide a European choice at your local Lincoln-Mercury store, the Scorpio is very little changed for the U.S. Only the top-of-the-line version is being imported. It's powered by a fuel-injected, 2.9-liter V-6 that drives the rear wheels. Its output is 144 horsepower, identical to the European version's. Anti-lock brakes are standard, as in the European car. The suspension we get is unchanged, too, except for those changes required to get rid of the European car's nose-down rake, which is good for autobahn aerodynamics but bad to American eyes, according to pre-introduction styling clinics.
In addition to the generous interior space, Ford reckons the Scorpio's luxo interior appointments will be a major attraction in the U.S. market. This is not one of those hard-butt German cars that make you comply with somebody's rigid ideas of proper driving posture. The front seats have real padding under their covers and are adjustable sixteen ways, the rear seatbacks adjust over a fifteen-degree angle with power recliners, the steering column tilts and teles, crinkly-looking leather is available, the dashboard has a token insert of beautifully finished wood, and all the molded padding on the dashboard and the windowsills has the right no-shine texture. The interior ambiance is plush but businesslike, the other side of the world from Lincoln.
The Scorpio doesn't move like a Lincoln, either. While others may be impressed by the accommodations, we'll save our raves for the over-the-road dynamics. This car is a model of equanimity. The suspension gives the ride a liquid motion; the Scorpio flows over the road, undaunted by broken surfaces, unfettered by crosswinds, unchallenged by speed. Chassis engineers speak of suspension "memory": When you hit a bump, or make a steering deviation, how long does it take the car to regain its composure? How long does it remember the disruption? The Scorpio's suspension sets the standard for short memory. What's past is forgotten, which means the car never dallies in the recovery process when you throw something new at it. This is the mark of a good high-speed car: it's always ready for your next move.
The Scorpio is a German car, made in Cologne, and its autobahn breeding is apparent. The steering has a relatively strong return-to-center feel, and it's very slow to move off center. This is typical of good autobahn tuning; at three-digit speeds, you don't want a sneeze to land your butt in the ditch. In addition to a good dose of caster in the front suspension, the Scorpio has a variable-ratio steering gear that is quite slow on center. The result is a car that is very happy on the Interstates but a bit languid in urban motoring. You feel exceptional poise rather than sportiness. The Scorpio doesn't give you the quick grin that comes in a BMW. It's ready for anything, but it doesn't seem eager to prove its readiness.
Nor is it a lot of grins with a five-speed. Ford expects that only three out of twenty American Scorpio buyers will choose the manual. The shifter works fine, no hangups, but there is no snick-snick, either. The linkage is too well damped to have much mechanical feel. Low speed in low gear produces some jerkiness in the drivetrain, albeit silky jerkiness, and that also isn't a lot of grins. And the gear ratios seem very long, chosen more for economy than for performance. For these reasons, but mostly because the languid tempo of the car seems inappropriate to shifting, we'd opt for the four-speed automatic. The automatic Scorpio behaves nicely. It does display Ford's paranoia about the park-into-reverse controversy, however: you move the console-mounted lever through a notchy labyrinth to select the gears, and you have to press it down before it will move from the park-reverse area. Rocking the Scorpio out of a snowbank would be difficult. Just backing it out of a garage is annoying.
The manual has a similar annoyance. The gear lever must be in neutral before the engine will start, which means a blur of right-hand motions if you kill the engine in traffic: shift to neutral, turn the key to full off, turn it back to start, reach for first gear. The clutch-to-the-floor starting requirement of GM and other manufacturers is a better idea.
While we're complaining, the power seat controls have an obtuse logic, and the squeeze-bulb lumbar inflators look a bit obscene. (Why not electric pumps, which are optional in the Taurus?) The climate-control system blows noisily, with odd and uncalled-for changes of temperature. (The automatic system in the Taurus is superior.) And the console-mounted button for the electric gas-door release falls readily to something, because people are always coming up and saying, "Do you know your gas door is open?"
Despite these complaints, the Scorpio seems to be a high-quality car. The body is tight and free of quivers. The door and seat latches work beautifully. The interior is wonderfully silent at speed. The car feels its price. It's a first-class compartment for covering the miles.
The Scorpio is a fast car, too, though not a quick one. It has long legs. At speedo readings in the high double digits, the Scorpio is so relaxed that the driver suspects inflation. But getting up there takes a while. With the manual transmission, 0 to 60 mph takes 9.6 seconds, and the quarter-mile comes up in 17.1 seconds at 81 mph. Nothing here to get your blood pressure up.
Stops from 70 mph take 191 feet—not as good as we expect with anti-lock brakes. Interestingly, Ford says that the advantage of the anti-lock system is controllability, not shorter stops—though the spokesman acknowledges that shorter stops are usually achieved, particularly on slippery surfaces.
Buyers of expensive cars expect features to show off to the neighbors, and the Scorpio has its share. The power recliners for the rear seatbacks ought to score high at show-and-tell time. The Scorpio also has an unusual key design; it fits the ignition, door, and rear-deck locks, which are said to be pickproof. Certainly the key is a puzzler, and it can't be duplicated anywhere but at your Merkur shop. An overhead console features, among various lights and switches, an electronic display for time of day, date, elapsed time, and outside temperature. This window glows green when the instrument lights are on, but it's not controlled by the dimmer, which makes it very distracting at night.
Putting the gadgets aside, the Scorpio strikes us as a comprehensive answer to the problem of highway transit. It unselfconsciously trades away traditional appearance for extra room inside. It avoids the stern interior feeling usually associated with German cars. And its liquid suspension motions produce a fine combination of comfort and confidence.
In other words, this is a strange and wonderful car, and we look forward to seeing who will buy it.
Technical Highlights
The Scorpio is unlike any other car ever sold in America, and the powerplant under its sleek hood is in some ways equally unusual. Although derived from the Cologne-built 2.8-liter V-6 that has powered Capris, Mustangs, and various Ford trucks, it has benefited from an $84 million redesign for Scorpio duty.
The Scorpio's V-6 still shares enough critical dimensions with the older design to allow its manufacture on the same tooling, but its only obvious carryover is its 93.0 mm bore. Its stroke has been lengthened from 68.5 to 72.0 mm, increasing its displacement from 2792 to 2935 cc. The block itself has been redesigned for 30 percent greater stiffness with no weight increase. New pistons with slightly dished crowns carry much narrower piston rings, reducing friction. The connecting rods are forged with thicker sections, and a new cast-nodular-iron crankshaft has six counterweights.
The redesigned cylinder heads are probably the greatest advance over the old engine. The conjoined exhaust ports are finally gone, replaced by three separate exhaust passages for each head. The resulting breathing improvement is enhanced by a new high-swirl combustion-chamber shape, which combines with a centrally positioned spark plug to extract the most energy from each intake charge. The compression ratio is 9.0:1.
The goal of many of these changes was to produce the best possible torque curve. One of the most unusual measures adopted toward this end is the engine's dual intake system. Ford engineers stumbled onto this unique approach when they were working on a version of the engine in which one of the banks of three cylinders could be turned off to improve fuel economy. That idea was shelved, but the engineers kept the dual-manifold arrangement, having found that it produced a better torque curve than any alternative. Each bank of cylinders breathes through its own manifold, throttle body, and intake plumbing. The only communication between the two banks is a small port that equalizes manifold vacuum at low rpm, promoting a smooth idle.
All of this effort pays off with 144 hp at 5500 rpm and 162 pound-feet of torque at 3000 rpm. Moreover, at least 90 percent of the peak torque is available from 1800 to 5200 rpm. That's not bad for an engine that dates back to 1964. —Csaba Csere
Specifications
Specifications
1988 Merkur Scorpio
Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 5-door sedan
PRICE
As Tested: $26,000 (est)
ENGINE
pushrod V-6, iron block and heads, port fuel injection
Displacement: 179 in3, 2935 cm3
Power: 144 hp @ 5500 rpm
Torque: 162 lb-ft @ 3000 rpm
TRANSMISSION
5-speed manual
CHASSIS
Suspension, F/R: struts/semi-trailing arms
Brakes, F/R: 10.2-in vented disc/10.4-in disc
Tires: Pireli P6
205/60HR-15
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 108.7 in
Length: 186.4 in
Width: 69.5 in
Height: 54.6 in
Passenger Volume, F/R: 50/45 ft3
Trunk Volume: 20 ft3
Curb Weight: 3240 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 9.6 sec
1/4-Mile: 17.1 sec @ 81 mph
100 mph: 32.6 sec
Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 12.4 sec
Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 12.8 sec
Top Speed: 117 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 191 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.76 g
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 19 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City/Highway: 17/23 mpg
