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STYLING BNGINEERING
VISUALLY, THERE’S SOMETHING FOR all tastes here. Of the two
Oininfarina-styled cars, both paragons of elegance, the
distinctive Alfa 164 out-ranks the rather bland Peugeot 605 with
a bold face that proudly shouts its maker’s identity. The only
thing wrong with the Peugeot, which apes the lesser 405 on a
grander scale, is that it’s too anonymous. Not so its PSA
stablemate, the big Citroen: criticise the fussy multi-pillared
superstructure and kicked-up waistline if you vvill, but the
Xl\/I eschews convention - and for that we applaud this
individualistic car.
The same cannot be said of the German nobility. Take away the
trademark grilles of the BMW and Mercedes, and all that they
symbolise, and the 525 and 260 shape up as attractive,
well-proportioned cars rather than crowd-pulling ones. Both give
best aerodynamically to \/auxhall’s
overtly streamlined Senator, its chip-grille snout distancing it
unconvincingly from the lesser Carlton. Even so, the Senator
carries off its uppercrust pretensions rather better visually
than the Saab (which is more attractive as a hatchback) and the
multi-layered Rover Sterling (more glamorous than its looks
suggest).
The booted Ford Granada lacks the cohesive form of the five-door
hatch that spawned it, and the best that can be said of the
Volvo 960 ls that it doesn’t look quite as ugly as the 760 it
supplants. As Volvo capitalises on tank-like safety, why not
Chieftain styling to promote it?
That leaves the svelte Jaguar, the sleekest, most imposing car
of the 11, not least because it is the most dated. Instead of a
fashionable wedged profile, shunned by Sir William Lyons’
disciples in the name of tradition, the bluff-front,
chrome-embellished XJ6 droops at the tail, to the detriment of
drag and boot space, but not presence or style.
For smaller cars, the push-or-pull debate is no longer an issue;
front-vvheel drive is now universally accepted as the way
forward. Here, in the executive sector, where packaging
efficiency is not so crucial, the debate still runs, and
heatedly so. The front-drive brigade is represented by the Alfa,
Citroen, Peugeot, Rover and Saab. Ford, Volvo and Vauxhall have
all turned to front-drive povvertrains for their down-range
models, but they retain traditional rear-drive layouts at
executive level, like the three grande marques they seek to
emulate - BMW, Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz.
With one exception, this is a battle between normally aspirated
sixes. The BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes, Vauxhall and Volvo are powered
by in-house, straight-six engines - 24-valve twin-cams in all
but the sc Mero. Of the V6 quintet, Citroen and Peugeot employ
joint-venture 12-valve Douvrin V6s (foresaken by Volvo in the
960 for a new in-liner with Porsche connections), each
individually tailored to the maker's needs. Both are out-ranked
now by more expensive 24-valve alternatives, although, in the
XM, the 24V engine is not mated to an auto box.
Alfa and Ford have their ovvn 12-valve V6s, that of the Scorpio
looking pretty antiquated with pushrod valvegear. Under the
Rover’s bonnet, there’s a Legend V6 24-valve powertrain,
underlining the Sterling’s technical debt to Honda.
Odd car out, and on the face of it least, is the 2.3-litre Saab,
two cylinders short of all its rivals and nearly a litre down on
the
biggest of them, the 3.2-litre Jaguar. To offset these
deficiencies, the Saab’s four-cylinder, 16-valve twin-cam engine
has two counter-rotating balance shafts and an exhaust-driven
turbocharger.
Five of the 11 cars (Alfa, Citroén, Jaguar, Peugeot and Saab)
use ZF’s ubiquitous four-speed autmatic transmission in various
guises, the BMW going one better with ZF’s new tive-speeder. The
Ford, Mercedes, Rover (Honda) and Vauxhall (GM) use their own
four-speed gearboxes, Volvo one sourced from Aisin-Warner in
Japan, which also supplies the Lexus LS400.
Assisted steering is obligatory at this level. So are all-disc,
anti-lock brakes.
While several cars have very sophisticated coil-sprung
suspension (such as the Merc’s multi-link arrangement) only the
Citroen displays real chassis innovation, gas/air springs being
linked to an electronic system that resists cornering roll
without penalising ride resilience.
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