Gain stone

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A torrent of water passed under the bridge bet Volkswagen concept r A torrent of water passed under the bridge between Volkswagen w12 the introduction of the Jaguar XK 120 show car at th Volkswagen microbus Earls Court Motor Show in 1946 and the Geneva Auto Show i Volkswagen ecoracer 1961. For one thing, armed with the potent XK six-cylinder engin Seat arosa , Jaguar had gone sports car racing in a most successful Seat ibiza ay. With the aerodynamic D-Type, the marque had won the 24 Ho Seat cordoba rs of Le Mans, the world's most prestigious road race, three y Seat leon ars in a row. Jaguar had transitioned from offering the
public a Seat toledo ompetent sports car for the street based on sedan mech Seat alhambra nicals to building very specialized sports racing ma Seat altea hinery, and then, finding the cost of world-class co Seat salsa petition rising ever-higher, it had pulled back from Seat tango its racing commitments to concentrate again of cars Ferrari 360 the public could buy. With its emphasis moving back tow Ferrari 575 rd cars for the street, William Lyons, who would event Ferrari enzo ally be knighted for his efforts at Jaguar, looked to infu Ferrari 456 gt e his production cars with the flavor of his
sports raci Ferrari f 430 g winners. One of the first attempts at this was the XK-SS, a Ferrari 612 thinly disguised D-Type fitted with just enou Ferrari gg 50 h equipment to make it street legal. Equipped with a 3.4-l Ferrari F35 ter version of the XK engine essentially in race tune, it Ferrari F 355 ffered 250 horsepower at 5750 rpm, a staggering figure, part fiat palio cularly in a car so light. Top speed was just short fiat gingo f 145 miles per hour. But on the other side of the coin, fiat multipla he XK-SS set one back $7,000 1957 dollars, while a fuel- fiat ulysse njected Corvette of the same year cost
little m fiat idea re than half as much. Further, the Corvette was far more civili fiat panda ed an automobile. By 1957 it had roll-up windo fiat marea s and a decent convertible top, while the XK-SS was fiat croma n most ways rudimentary. And because its engine was essentia Fiat Argenta ly ready for the track, it proved to be a handful Fiat Tipo o drive well on public roads. Just getting it moving fro Fiat Uno a standing start was often a frustrating experienc Fiat Tempra due to its lack of low-end torque, hair-trigger accelerator and Fiat Brava ecalcitrant clutch. Fewer than 20 of these li Fiat Fiorino tle dev
ils had been produced in the early part of 1957 when a fir Fiat Ducato raced through the Browns Lane factory where th Fiat pininforina y were built. Most of the tooling for the XK-SS Fiat Coupe as destroyed, and Lyons, sensing that this car wasn't Lamborghini gallardo what he really wanted anyway, decided not to resu Lamborghini murcielago e its production. Those few that remain in existence are rare a Lamborghini diablo d wonderfully quirky cars indeed. Instead of taking the XK-SS Lamborghini lm path, Lyons set his engineering team abuilding on two experime Lamborghini concept s tal cars that bore the "E" designation. The E1A was powered
by Lamborghini cala aguar's 2.4-liter six-cylinder engine, basically a de-st Lancia ypsilon oked 3.4 liter. For its chassis structure it Lancia lybra sed a monocoque tub with a space frame carrying the engine and fr Lancia thesis nt suspension components. The front suspension was, of cou Lancia phedra se, an independent design, but the E1A departed from the D-Type Lancia granturismo s model by using an independent rear suspension as well. Lancia musa For all its racing success, the D-Type had used a Lancia fulvia airly mundane live rear axle.) While the E1A was piling u Lancia Dedra clandestine test miles, Jaguar engineers we
re har Lancia Kappa a work on the E2A, which many in their number hoped would put Lancia Delta Jaguar back in the motor racing spotlight. With racing rath Maserati 3200 gt r than volume production in mind, the E2A was an exotic m Maserati spyder chine for its day. Its powerplant was an alloy-block Maserati quattroporte ersion of the XK engine equipped with a racing-typ Maserati mc12 dry sump system and mechanical fuel injection. With Maserati kubang a displacement of just a hair under 3-liters, it offere Maserati birdcage 293 horsepower at a motorcycle-like 6750 rpm. Its aluminum Citroen c1 nvelope body
enclosing a monocoque tub and space frame, the Citroen c2 E2A would have a somewhat belated and largely Citroen c3 nsuccessful career on the racetrack. Though designed and built in Citroen c4 1957 and 1958, it didn't find its way to Le Mans until 1960 and t Citroen c5 en as part of Briggs Cunningham's multi-car effort that also in Citroen c6 olved Corvettes, not with a rejuvenated Jaguar " Citroen c7 actory team." Initially fast, it quit short of the halfwa Citroen c8 mark in the race, and that was pretty much that as Citroen Xsara Picasso ar as international racing was concerned for th Citroen Xsara car. While it didn't enjoy the stunni
ng success of i Citroen Berlingo s D-Type predecessor, the E2A did set the stage for the p Citroen C-Airdream oduction E-Type. In fact, Jaguar's breathtaking Citroen C-Airlounge ew sports car would take most of its architectur Citroen C-Crosser from the E2A. Of course, with volume produc Citroen C-Sportlounge ion in mind, Lyons wisely chose steel as the primary Peugeot 107 ody material. The basic tub was a monocoque of s Peugeot 1007 eet steel to which were attached steel space frames for Peugeot 206 ront suspension and engine and rear suspension. The f Peugeot 307 ont suspension borrowed from Jagua
r racing practi Peugeot 406 e with torsion bars as the springing medium, tu Peugeot 607 ular shocks controlling rebound and forged control arms ha Peugeot 807 dling wheel location. The rear suspension was an all-inde Peugeot boxer endent unit so elegantly designed that it became a model for Peugeot partner a wide variety of other suspensions that would follow it a Peugeot 407 d even found its way under some of America's m Peugeot 907 st beloved hot rods. In the scheme (a version similar to Peugeot h2o which found its way into the 1963 Corvette St Peugeot hoggar ngray) the differential was mounted to the chassis
sub-f Peugeot sesame ame with in-board disc brakes on each side and th Peugeot 4002 n, through universal joints, halfshafts sent power to the rear Peugeot rc wheels. Ingeniously, the halfshafts themselves repres Peugeot elixir nted the upper control link while another, lower arm and a Peugeot promethee ink that controlled braking and acceleration forc Renault twingo s completed the simple but effective system. Springs a Renault clio d damping was not nearly so simple with dual coil-spring Renault kangoo tubular shock absorber units on each side, but they wer Renault megane at least compact and effect
ive. Instead of an exotic alloy rac Renault laguna ng engine, Lyons decided to stick with the 3.8-liter Renault vel satis K in-line six that was a direct descendent of th Renault avantime original XK engine in the XK 120. With fuel delivered Renault scenic y twin Weber carburetors, the iron block engine Renault espace elivered 265 horsepower at 5500 rpm and 260 pounds/feet of torq Renault logan e at 4000 rpm. Despite all this mechanical faldural the mos Renault modus striking part of the production E-Type was its abso Renault talisman utely lascivious body. Try as designers might to top it, the E-Ty Renault zoe e has the
most sensuous lines of any car ever produced, a Renault fluence d it is many critics' pick as the most beautiful Renault wind car ever made. Further description is unnecessary b Renault egeus cause the look of the E-Type has become such an automo Renault ellypse ive icon that at the mere mention of its name, the luscious p Renault Trafic cture comes to mind. The hit of the 1961 Geneva show Renault Master the E-Type was offered as both a convertible ( Renault Safrane ith an available hardtop) and a coupe, and auto journ Skoda fabia lists immediately fell all over themselves praising the car. An Skoda octavia for good rea
son. The independent rear suspension provid Skoda superb d a huge advance in handling, particularly on bad roads, and Skoda felicia n street form the car had true 150 mile-per-hour poten Skoda yeti ial. It was also quick enough as a drag racer to find itself inc Skoda roomster uded in a Jan and Dean hit tune of the era, "D Skoda tudor adman's Curve." In fact, the E-Type was, arguabl SAAB 9-2x , the car of the decade. With looks, style, performance SAAB 9-3 and handling, the Jaguar E-Type was everything a car s SAAB 9-5 ould be. A lot of water passed through the mil SAAB 9-7x from the time the Dodge brothers built
engin SAAB 9000 s for Henry Ford until the Dodge Viper peeked out from SAAB 9-x nder its wraps at the 1989 Detroit auto show. Over the c Volvo s40 urse of that time the Dodge brothers split with Volvo s60 Ford to start building cars of their own under th Volvo v70 imaginative Dodge Brothers name; Dodge Brothers Volvo c70 was acquired by Walter P. Chrysler as he built Volvo s80 hrysler Corporation in the image of his former employer, Volvo xc70 General Motors; and Dodge (sans Brothers) went from an Volvo xc90 icon of performance during the halcyon years of the Sixti Volvo v40 s to becoming largely irrelevant by the
late Eight Volvo v50 es. K-cars and Omnis will do that, no matter how proud one Volvo vcc s history. A rapidly fading brand with a dreary image were Volvo scc hat faced Chrysler Corporation planners as they co Volvo 3cc sidered what they should do for the '89 Detroit show, and thei Volvo acc response -- a big, brutal two-seat sports car -- stood show att Volvo ycc ndees, including your author, on their collective ear. Who could Buick Le Sabre have expected such a thing from a nameplate that seemed to Buick Park Avenue be barely producing a pulse, lot less a vibe? But th Cadillac Eldorado Dodge Viper did emerge from the corpor
ate caul Cadillac Seville ron -- somehow -- and it proved there was still som Cadillac STS life in the old Dodge brand yet. The goal of what was ref Cadillac CTS rred to as "Team Viper" was a purpose-built performance vehicle. Cadillac Escalade verything else took a backseat to performance and, Cadillac SRX ecause of that, the Viper had no backseat at all. Chery Sweet ike the Shelby Cobra that inspired it, the vehicle was rough Chery Amulet crude and unsophisticated but, at the same time, brutal.