Ford's Kill List

I said it looked like an old man's car trying to be cool. And it does.

A squared off blacked out large 4 door formal sedan... All wrong.

Components, but not style.

Reply to
Brent P
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I thought it was some new urban slang for "disguised". :)

Reply to
John C.

I figured with most of the group being Pupsters, AMC was about as far back as I could go.

Hell what kind of engines would a 2006 Packard have in it?

Reply to
Zombywoof

I always called the Mercury Mystique was the Mercury Mistake. :)

Reply to
nospam

Ala Avanti, Hawk, or the Commander.... Wrong cars, wrong time.... Had they caught on, we might be discussing in a Studebaker Avanti, Hawk, or Commander newsgroup instead of Ford Mustang....

Reply to
Spike

at 26 May 2006, dwight [ snipped-for-privacy@gEEmail.com] wrote in news:VPadnUL1upCApurZnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

In Europe, a few years back, the new escort line got called Focus and Ford marketed it as such. A name change rather than anything else. The European Ford Taunus morphed into the Sierra(Tempo) which morphed into the Mondeo (Contour). Same class of car basically, just a new name.

GM did the same with their Opel Kadett (Pontiac LeMans) same car, but new name. Forgot what is was.

The whole reason was they told the names sounded dates, old fashioned and they tried to spruce them up with new more modern names.

Reply to
Paul

"Paul" wrote> GM did the same with their Opel Kadett (Pontiac LeMans) same car, but new

And the newest of the batch. The GTO from Australia.

Reply to
Blue Mesteno

On Fri, 26 May 2006 14:43:27 -0500, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Brent P) puked:

Are we changing the subject to D/C 300s?

-- lab~rat >:-) Do you want polite or do you want sincere?

Reply to
lab~rat >:-)

"dwight" wrote in news:f6KdnWaNUZ2cW-rZnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

Let us not forget the wonderfulness of the Vega, the Corvair, the Monza, the Citation, the Chevette and all the other incredible pieces of automotive history Chevrolet has given us.

Then there's Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs, each with many, many, many "killed" names.

Reply to
XS11E

XS11E wrote in news:Xns97D782CD039B8xs11eyahoocom@70.169.32.36:

Now, don't start on the Corvair. The last gen was a truly wonderful car that was unfortunately killed off by a paranoid nut case.

Reply to
Joe

Joe wrote in news:Xns97D7A3223B6CBnospamforme@216.77.188.18:

I can't even begin to imagine why people think Ralph Nadir had anything to do with killing off the Corvair? Corvair sales were not high the first year, dropped the second year, dropped again the third year, etc. etc. By the time Nadir wrote his book, the handwriting was on the wall.

Every year it was produced it was outsold by the Ford Falcon and the Plymouth Valiant and THAT, boys and girls, is why GM stopped making it.

BTW, the Corvair was also a total piece of crap, unreliable, uncomfortable, sluggush, bad handling and worst of all, for a car supposed to be an economy car, it got poor gas mileage.

The design was also unsuitable for change, as Ford and Chrysler realized what the public wanted the Falcon and Valiant got air conditioning, power steering, power brakes, V8 engines, etc.

Reply to
XS11E

Ever own or drive one? The last year turbo models were a real kick in the ass. They go for semi-big bucks nowadays. Nobody can say that about an Edsel.

Reply to
Zombywoof

Zombywoof wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Yes, unfortunately.

Have you checked Edsel prices lately? Those in decent condition are going for around $10,000.00 or so and the Corvair turbos around the same. Personally, I'd rather have the Edsel. A LOT less maintainence.

Reply to
XS11E

XS11E wrote in news:Xns97D7865E8B1A4xs11eyahoocom@

70.169.32.36:

His name is spelled 'Nader'. And the reason you can't even begin to imagine why people thought he had anything to do with killing off the Corvair is because you're an idiot.

The Corvair basically failed because: a) It was too radical for its time and people weren't ready for it. b) Ford introduced the Mustang. c) Nader wrote 'Unsafe At Any Speed'. d) The Camaro was soon to be released.

That's one of the reasons, but it's far from the only reason.

Obviously all spoken out of ignorance. All of the above is simply nonsense.

And the ignorance continues.

At any rate, the Corvair was years ahead of its time, and was eventually sold as a higher-performance alternative to the Falcon, which it consistently beat. Even with the 260 V8, the Falcon couldn't keep up with the 150-hp Corvair Spyder.

In 1965 GM put a Corvette-style IRS into the car along with a n/a 140-hp motor (4 single-barrel Rochesters and dual exhaust) and the top-of-the- line turbocharged 180-hp motor.

Even with it's increased power and unmatched handling, the car died for the aforementioned reasons. Most people who trash the Corvair have never driven or owned one; they only know heresay.

Reply to
Joe

Joe wrote in news:Xns97D7C4B9C5886nospamforme@216.77.188.18:

And facts, which you seem to be short of.

Reply to
XS11E

XS11E wrote in news:Xns97D7CA7FE6B44xs11eyahoocom@70.169.32.36:

Idiot. LOL!

Reply to
Joe

On Sat, 03 Jun 2006 23:20:24 GMT, Joe wrote:

While it did have some excellent handling characteristics, most who drove them to their upper limited where very unfamiliar with the dynamics of driving a rear-engine high-powered light car. This caused many an unnecessary crash and is partly what prompted Nader's book.

The fact is, no matter how much anyone try's to deny it, there was a definite problem with the 1960-1963 Corvair. And that problem, a weakness in the rear suspension, was not a problem of design - as the original designs for the Corvair in fact took this into account. The problem was clearly that marketing and cost-cutting won out over intelligent engineering. The designers that planned the Corvair knew that anti-sway bars would be needed to support the added weight of the rear-mounted engine. But to save a measly $4 per car, those bars were not included in the final product, and the inevitable disaster struck.

Here's an interesting quote from "Car And Driver"'s 1959 article on the Corvair (the complete text of which can be found at the Car And Driver Web Page on the 1959 Corvair ):

Let us be honest, as usual: The Corvair is fundamentally a profound oversteer. With 62-percent of its weight on the back wheels it could only be otherwise if very ingenious suspension techniques had been called into play. This was not the case. As cornering forces on the Corvair chassis increase there is an initial very mild understeer tendency, probably attributable to the rear suspension geometry, but then, well within the average driver's range of slip angles, oversteer sets in in a gradual way that is easily countered by the excellent steering-whose very lightness, of course, is in part a function of the oversteer. Having heard that Uncle Tom himself had declared that he "tried but just couldn't lose the Corvair", I asked Chevy's affable engine development engineer Bob Clift to keep a path clear to the basement while we tried some very fast turns. By making extremely deep corrections it was possible to hold the car on a line but, as in any automobile ever built, there was a point beyond which it wasn't prudent to proceed. For a moderately skilled driver the Corvair is a genuine ball to drive, it being possible to hustle hard into tight corners and bring the tail around with just a twitch of the wheel, counter-steering until the slide stops and the time for acceleration arrives. This is not, of course, everybody's way of driving. Chevy spokesmen have said that they didn't feel a front anti-roll bar was needed because the car's center of gravity was so low that it doesn't roll much. This is true enough, from that standpoint, but such bars are also powerful tools for adjusting handling, and one of the first things that should be done to this car is to replace that anti-roll bar. Since this would only actually counterbalance the difficulties that exist at the rear, however, thorough redesign should commence at that end. With the conventional design methods used, the high spring rates needed to support the rear end weight have resulted in unduly high roll stiffness at the rear, a sure harbinger of oversteer. A solution like that on the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster is called for, having a single central coil or a pivoted transverse leaf spring to support loads without affecting roll. For all its novelty the Corvair is surprisingly naïve in this major respect.

Whatever the reason for the problems, by the time that the '65 redesign fixed all of Corvair's shortcomings (except its relatively high cost to build), it was too late - Corvair's name was mud with the public. This would not have been an unsurmountable problem had Chevrolet believed in the Corvair, but the fact was that several Chevrolet executives of the time did not like or understand the Corvair, and as a result Chevrolet's solution to the PR problem was to kill the line... a sad, and completely unnecessary course of action, but perhaps perfectly in line with GM's tradition of picking the lowest cost solution over the most innovative or intelligent.

Now lets fast forward to the Pontiac Fiero, another rear-engine Sports Car that was nit-picked by the bean counters into an economy car. Again the last generation of it showed what it could become, but by then it was to late and alas another rear-engine GM Sports Car bit the big one.

Reply to
Zombywoof

Zombywoof wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Exactly. GM basically gambled that drivers wouldn't push the car to that extreme, thereby masking the issue. However, because the car was considered more or less "sporty" for its time, some people did push it with unfortunate results.

To sum it up, the last-gen cars basically had Corvette IRS; the pre-'65 cars had VW swing-axle setups. The last-gen cars were truly the "Poor Man's Porsche", with fabulous handling and decent power with the 140 and

180 hp engines. With simple tire/wheel upgrades to 14" or 15", those cars were unbelievable.

Actually, the Fiero is mid-engine (like the Toyo MR2), and it had both front and rear trunks (if you want to call them that). As for the bean counters, marketing, and engineering, you'd think GM would've learned by then, but no. They still have yet to learn.

BTW, there's an LS2 Fiero that comes to Friday night cruise every so often down here. Real slick install - looks totally stock until you lift the deck lid.

Reply to
Joe

Joe wrote in news:Xns97D867E587A57nospamforme@216.77.188.18:

Me? You're the one who spouted all the hearsay and ignorance.

BTW, while I appreciate your attempt at playing spelling teacher, "Nadir" is correct, you might look up the word. He earned the title because his book reached the depths of yellow journalism. Obviously you've not heard him referred to that way but that doesn't surprise me.

Reply to
XS11E

Zombywoof wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

According to a Car and Driver article published when the car was new, GM allowed the bean counters to de-sport the car but supposedly GM planned to fix the car by upgrades over the years, suspension one year, engine the next, etc. But sales were slow and the rumored upgrades never happened.

Reply to
XS11E

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