Spannerhead Dot Com

Selling this one was the right thing to do. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Ending a self-imposed 3-year “exile” from interesting cars, during which time I commuted to work in a beat-up late-’90s Saturn wagon (which served me admirably, I should add), the acquisition of my 1986 BMW 635CSi was at the same time a very deliberate purchase and an impulse buy.

I’ve always had an affinity for big GTs. I had just sold our (very faithful) 1993 Volvo 940 Turbo, and was still somewhat involved with the Volvo Brick community. But I also wanted something more engaging to drive, and I’d never owned a BMW before. Taking all that into consideration, I gravitated toward either a Volvo 780 Bertone—Volvo’s quirky, academic coupe of the late ’80s—or the E30-generation BMW 3-series. I knew an E30 would surely satisfy me from a driver’s standpoint, but there was (and is) something about the Volvo 780’s uniqueness—not to mention the familiarity of its platform—that I found very appealing.

So combine some of the driver’s car qualities of the E30 with the big, unique GT angle of the 780, and during the course of my deliberations, I arrived at the BMW E24 6-series. The E24 had presence, adequate pace, perfect proportions and was available with a 5-speed. I found the example shown here on Craigslist. I e-mailed the seller; he was the third owner and lived just down the road. I arranged to meet him one late summer evening in local grocery store parking lot; with my first in-the-flesh glimpse of the car, I knew it was something special.

It had 253K on the odometer, an amazingly stiff clutch pedal and the dash was cracked in multiple places (typical E24 interior problem), but the paint was in fantastic shape, it ran perfectly and most importantly, there wasn’t a hint of rust on the car, being as it was of west-coast origin. The big M30 straight six made a lovely sound as it hustled its way up to redline and the engine’s midrange punch was very impressive. So with little research, only a day or two after the very idea of acquiring an E24 had popped into my head, I bought one.

I owned the 635 for 9 months, from late August through the following April. It never let me down; never missed a beat, even with as many miles as it had. Autumn cruises through the piedmont with the windows rolled down were heaven. I got admiring glances from folks at gas stations and thumbs up from other BMW drivers. I was introduced to the wonderful E24 community, chock-full of helpful, unpretentious owners with encyclopedic reservoirs of knowledge about the car. With all that, though, I still began to be, if not exactly eager to sell, at least resigned to the fact that I had to get something else, for a number of reasons.

The first problem is illustrated above: The E24 was my daily driver all throughout a particularly snowy winter. The car was rust free, and ’80s BMWs not exactly being known for their comprehensive and durable rustproofing, I was on pins and needles every time I drove it through the slush, or even in the rain. I took it to the coin-op car wash at least twice a week during that period, but that didn’t assuage the feeling that I was accelerating whatever seeds of deterioration were planted in the fenderwells and rocker panels. It was awful owning such a classic and knowing I had to drive it in those conditions.

Next, the car didn’t fit our family’s car project paradigm. My 240Z project had yet to commence, but I knew it would, and if I’d kept the E24, my car affections would have been split between it and the Z. In the end, our family budget wouldn’t support more than the Family Hauler + Daily Driver + Project Car equation, and the 635 ventured too far into the Project Car category.

And finally, I simply hadn’t done enough research before buying the car. If I had waited a week or two and gathered additional information, I might have learned that a gray-market Euro import E24 can be had in similar condition to the one I bought for a very small premium over the price I paid—if not the same price. Euro E24s are blessed with a higher-compression engine, oftentimes can be had with a close-ratio dogleg gearbox and most importantly, sport the lovely thin-profile Euro bumpers that absolutely make the lines of the car. I liked my 635 very much, but I never got over the hideous US-spec “diving board” bumpers and the way they contrasted with the beautiful Alpine White paint.

I was sad to see it drive away. Its present owner lives in the sunny, snow-free Florida panhandle and is an ’80s BMW enthusiast, hopefully putting many happy miles on the car.

Left-mounted. A common arrangement, the only practical disadvantage has to do with the fact that the fuel filler door is almost always located on the opposite side of the car from the tailpipe. The configuration makes pulling up to a gas pump a bit trickier for those of us in LHD countries. Many Toyotas, Nissans, BMWs and Mercedes locate their cars’ tailpipes on the left side.

Right-mounted. My favorite arrangement, for the simple reason that when observing a LHD car from the rear, looking through the rear window, the silhouette of the driver’s head is located on the left side of the car. This visual asymmetry is neatly balanced by locating the tailpipe on the right side, under the rear bumper. Mazda particularly seems to favor this setup.

Dual. Once confined to exotics and high-end sports cars, the dual tailpipe arrangement has trickled down into every car category, from luxury SUVs to hot hatches. Its ubiquity has diluted much of its visual impact, and now dual tailpipes seem rather cliche and unoriginal, especially when added to cars with transverse or inline engines, where there isn’t a direct correspondence between a longitudinal, V- or flat-engine’s cylinder bank and one tailpipe side.

Center-low-mounted. The Porsche Boxster (shown above) and Cayman, along with Mini’s performance line, among others, feature the center-low-mounted tailpipe setup. Advantages include perfect visual symmetry (so long as the driver isn’t in the car); a downside is the tendency for the arrangment to make the rear of the car look taller and narrower than it is—and most performance cars would prefer to project a lower, wider image.

Center-high-mounted. So far, this layout has only appeared on high-end exotics like the McLaren MP4-12C (above) and Pagani Zonda. A full-width, perfectly-optimized rear diffuser can be developed for these cars without having to work around tailpipes. The weight of the muffler(s) and tailpipes does have to be mounted higher in the chassis, though, raising the CG somewhat, and any risks to passers-by from a thigh- vs ankle-level exhaust outlet have yet to be assessed.

Whatever. Vintage BMWs (among others) make me smile. Featured most prominently on cars such as the classic 2002 and E24 6-series, in that golden era BMW obviously had higher priorities than tucking their cars’ tailpipes neatly into one particular corner of the bumper. The slightly off-center layout says “I don’t really care where the exhaust comes out; I’ve got bigger fish to fry development-wise, like perfecting the suspension design and harmonizing all the controls.” I love it.

This is getting a little ridiculous.

Top Gear has info today on the newest Mustang breathed upon by the tuning gods at Shelby, the 950-hp GT1000.

While I’m not quite sure about the chronology here:

[It] arrives on a wave of history: exactly 50 years ago Carroll Shelby premiered the Cobra at the ’62 New York motor show, announcing the arrival of a new tuning house.

seeing as how it’s 2013, there’s no doubt Shelby’s creation is designed to steal some of the new C7 Corvette’s thunder at the upcoming 2013 New York Auto Show and to stoke enthusiasm for the outgoing Mustang generation, even as a new one is being readied by Ford.

What we have here, essentially, is an officially-sanctioned version of a particular flavor of tuner car familiar to almost all enthusiasts: The dyno queen. Bragging rights are the GT1000’s sole raison d’être. Whoever shells out the asking price of $200K (for a Mustang!) for one of the 50 that will be produced can claim ownership of unarguably the most monstrous pony car ever screwed together by an official tuning house. Nevermind the fact that there’s absolutely no way that kind of power is usable in a street or track setting; wheel that baby up onto the dyno rollers, fire up the digicam and get ready to upload the video of the pull to YouTube and achieve instant Internet fame. That’s it, really, aside from sedate cruises to local meets and being lovingly waxed every couple of weeks. I understand Shelby’s reasoning behind the GT1000’s build, but as a prospective automotive experience, to me, it’s less than desirable. No thanks.

Image credits: mustangsdaily.com, motortrend.com

2003-2009 Subaru Legacy. Every time I come up behind one of these, I make a mental note to look for a nice 5-speed on Craiglist when I return home…and then I pass it and catch a glimpse of the nose in my rear view mirror. The concave rear treatment combined with the inswept taillights and general stance give the ’03-’09 Legacy a taut, arrow-like presence from the side and rear. But the fascia is so awkward, so anodyne it completely undercuts the effect.

2007-2012 Nissan Altima. While maybe not attractive in the conventional sense, the ’07-’12 Altima’s rear gets major points for being immediately recognizable and adventurous. The way the tops of the taillights flow into the horizontal surface of the trunk recalls a sports car’s low, wide rear—even if the Altima’s isn’t; the visual effect is there. Come around to the nose, however, and all the adventurousness melts away, replaced by a yawn-inducing, stock corporate grille treatment. Unfortunate.

1997-1999 Acura CL. The 1997 CL’s lovely rump was actually featured on a Car and Driver cover back in the day. The nose, however, was buried further in the story, and for good reason. Compared with the distinctive taper of the trunklid and elegant simplicity of the taillights, the fascia was depressingly conventional. The grille, the headlights—they were all in the usual places, but none of it converged with the same eye-catching grace as the elements in the rear.

Image credits: netcarshow.com, motortrend.com, theautochannel.com

I miss my previous cars. I think about them often, reminiscing about overall qualities and specific situations, snapshots from my experiences with the RX-7s, the Supra and the Audi 4000, among others. From time to time, though, my nostalgia for a particular car seems to spike, and I think I’ve identified at least one possible culprit: The feeling of an unfinished project.

No, not open-ended projects currently in progress—outright failures. The images at the top of this post represent arguably my biggest failure when it comes to automotive projects. They’re a before-and-after of the wiring harness of my 1988 Toyota Supra Turbo, whose engine, during the fall, winter and spring of 2003-2004, I decided to replace with a Japan-only, half-as-powerful-again 1JZ-GTE unit. The physical swap itself went perfectly smoothly and was complete within a couple of weeks, but the necessary wiring harness lengthening operation wasn’t. The harness I acquired had already been hacked by a previous tuner, and in the process he had made a complete hash of it, to the point where, with everything connected, the car would barely start and stay running for a couple of seconds. After a few experiments and rabbit trails, I eventually decided to completely pull the harness and clean up the wiring, the result shown at right. To my great dismay, although the overhauled harness improved the situation to the point where the car was (barely) drivable, it didn’t solve the car’s fundamental running problems, and after struggling with it for several more months and losing motivation (and running out of money, natch), I decided to unload the whole project.

The right decision it may have been at the time (I was in the midst of some pretty major life changes during that period as well), but in retrospect I desperately wish I had at least had the persistence to overcome the car’s problems and sell it as a fully-functional driver. The new owner, a Toyota tech from Charlotte, camped out in my apartment complex garage for an evening or two, sorting everything out, and drove the Supra home, fueling the immediate feeling of regret by demonstrating how close I had been to a solution. Even now, it just bothers me that there was a car project I didn’t finish. The car was not complete. I didn’t have a chance to experience it at 100%, to assess it on its merits after having been swapped and make an decision about whether to sell then. Yes, I probably would have kept it, at least for longer than I did, but there wouldn’t be any loose ends dangling in my personal car history.

What about you? Do you have any unfinished projects or unsolved problems lurking in your automotive past? If so, does it bother you?

It could have been great. Really.

Arriving in showrooms a year before Ford’s acclaimed Mustang reboot in 2005, the 2004-2006 Pontiac GTO had a real chance to vault past its eventual competitors, including the Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger, as the first of a new generation of muscle cars. Pontiac’s “GTO” nameplate has volumes of automotive history and lore to draw from, aesthetically and philosophically, and the platform chosen for the new car was GM Australian subsidiary Holden’s excellent Monaro sports GT.

Such potential…such failure. The GTO never even approached GM’s sales expectations and lingered in showrooms for a few lonely years before being quietly euthanized. What happened?

To put it mildly, the enthusiast community was underwhelmed. I pin the vast majority of the blame on the looks. It really is hard to fault the combination of a GM pushrod V8, RWD chassis, 6-speed manual transmission and competent suspension tuning. All reviews of the day noted that although the dynamics of the car lacked the ultimate polish of the GTO’s European rivals, they were exemplary for an American car, and for Pontiac especially, who, as noted in the recent post on the equally ill-fated G8 sports sedan, had been forced for years to convince the buying public that warmed-over, badge-engineered FWD family sedans were the last word in “performance.” Finally, finally, they received a platform with all the mechanical organs in the right places, and…the styling deep-sixed the car’s chances before the enthusiast community even entered the showroom.

It’s not that the GTO is an ugly car—it’s not—it’s just… Utterly anonymous-looking. Plastic. Jellybean-like. It could have been the 2-door version of a contemporary FWD Pontiac family sedan and no one would have been the wiser. It did not mine any classic GTO design themes or cues, and its innocuous aesthetics were completely at odds with any kind of rip-snorting “bad boy” muscle car feel its chassis tried to convey.

For its last two model years in 2005 and 2006, Pontiac attempted to “beef up” the car’s visual flair with a pair of hood scoops and true dual exhaust tips, among a handful of other detail changes, but it was too little, too late, and anyway the changes didn’t alter the GTO’s fundamental styling shortcomings. Pity; there was so much goodness under the skin.

Image credits: netcarshow.com

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series wherein we discuss unsuccessful cars whose styling was their overlooked (or denied) Achilles heel. Read the other installments here:

• BMW 5-Series Gran Turismo
• Chevy SSR
• Chyrsler Cirrus
• Chyrsler 300M
• Nissan Murano Redesign
• Mercedes-Benz R-Class
• Third-generation Ford Taurus

Note to other performance automakers: This is how you do a commercial if you want to get your enthusiast base fired up about your flagship’s capabilities. None of that gentle-winding-through-a-wooded-backroad crap—which, ironically, Audi’s also done—just pure, raw, unadulterated power, full stop.

Aside from the visceral appeal, it’s quite a brilliant ad for Audi in that it directly addresses one of the main criticisms leveled against their R8 supercar: It’s too user-friendly, too sterile, too easy to drive quickly and not edgy enough to be called a proper supercar. As a result, the entire focus of the clip is on the roaring, crackling, popping, savage, well-nigh alive quality of the car’s engine—with a nice shot of the ultra-wide rear tires thrown in for good measure—dispelling any notion that the R8 is some kind of ho-hum “speed appliance.”

Between this and their well-received Super Bowl commercial, Audi’s marketing has been firing on all cylinders lately. I particularly appreciate the ads’ focus on the cars themselves, instead of simply trying to gin up an emotional reaction via a non-automotive storyline. It speaks to the confidence Audi (rightly) has in their design and engineering that in many cases the spots highlight those aspects of their cars which, according to conventional wisdom, would have less mass appeal. Well done, Audi, and carry on.

This engine had real promise.

Killed by Saab’s GM overlords due to budgetary reasons, the Swedish automaker’s variable compression engine, or SVC, had one of the most favorable risk/reward ratios I’ve ever seen. In other words, for the small amount of new, unproved technology used, the potential benefits were phenomenal.

As with most new engine technology, the touted benefits of the SVC included (much) more power from a given displacement, along with substantially increased efficiency. The proof-of-concept engine, shown in the accompanying images, was a supercharged 5-cylinder displacing only 1.6l, yet it delivered a remarkable 225 hp, with 30% less fuel consumption than a conventional engine of similar output.

The secret to the SVC’s capabilities was the movable “Monohead” that allowed the engine’s compression to vary dynamically between 14:1 and 8:1. The engine’s control unit would raise the compression toward the higher setting in low load situations in order to squeeze the most energy from a given amount of fuel. And when higher power was required, the compression was lowered to accommodate the boost delivered by the supercharger and avoid engine-damaging detonation.

The Monohead was hinged on one side, and actuated from the other with a stepless hydraulic crank (shown above). In practice, the system moved the cylinder head alternately closer to and farther away from the top of the pistons at top dead center, decreasing or increasing the “squish” volume, thereby varying the compression ratio.

Simple, robust, effective: The Monohead was really the only innovation introduced by the SVC; everything else—pistons, ignition system, intake and exhaust, supercharger, etc—was proven, off-the-shelf technology. As I mentioned, given the engine’s promise, the amount of R&D required was shockingly low.

So what happened? After being unveiled at the 2000 Geneva Motor Show, Saab’s corporate bosses at General Motors decided the project would consume too much development capital, and pulled the plug. They apparently thought badge engineering Subarus and GMC Envoys as Saabs was a better direction for the brand than potentially groundbreaking new engine technology… Given the Swedish automaker’s demise last year, we’ll never know if the SVC would have secured Saab’s future, but we know for certain that GM’s pathetic and shameful marketing strategy didn’t.

Check out Saab’s promotional video for the engine:

Further reading: SaabNet article, autozine.org article

Image credits: autospeed.com, carenthusiast.com, autocentral.com

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series examining unique and significant powerplants. Read the other installments here:

• Rolls-Royce Goshawk
• Mercedes-Ilmor 500I
• Napier Nomad
• Mazda R26B
• Pratt & Whitney R-4360

A “launch edition” of Alfa Romeo’s mid-engined Boxster-fighter, the 4C, was recently unveiled during the 2013 Geneva Motor Show, Motor Authority reports. As the first morsel of Alfa’s upcoming reintroduction here in the States, we enthusiasts should sit up and take notice.

It will be fantastic to see Alfa return to the American market. There’s been a real decline in the number of desirable new cars that make absolutely no rational sense from an ownership perspective, and however Alfa has improved its cars’ reliability and other left-brained attributes, the brand will forever be associated with their charismatic yet heartbreaking cars of years past. So as crazy as it sounds, I actually hope their 4C compares unfavorably to its competitors like the Boxster in a number of key areas; being unable to make a case for the Alfa from a rational standpoint will only enhance its romantic appeal. A healthy dose of numeric mediocrity (as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of subjective sweetness) will only ensure that those who buy it are fully committed to the idea that the essence of a car is more than its power figures or Nürburgring lap times, and who better to make that case than Alfa Romeo?

Image credits: netcarshow.com