The Scirocco

It was about 1987. Earlier that year my need for cheap wheels and the vacuum in my cousin’s wallet had collided to form my marriage with a 1977 Mk1 VW Scirocco. The car was a Frankenstein built of a hodge-podge of salvage parts, and even though my cousin had been a part of building the engine he didn't remember what all went into it. I didn't care. It ran hard for no more than it was and really enjoyed life above 3000 RPM. I often gave it that opportunity.

On this particular November evening I was enroute back to St. Louis from visiting family in Kansas City. These trips were fairly frequent, and as I had the attention span of a six year old in a toy-shop, I would often take two-lane to break up interstate monotony. The road was winding, the car responsive, and I was making good time.

The air was crisp at about 35 degrees and somewhere around a megapolis called Rosebud I hit fog. It got thicker as I drove so it wasn't long before my 65 MPH curve-carving spree gave up the ghost. If visibility hadn't killed it the car would have. Soon I found myself downshifting and straining to hold 25 MPH on hills. Up ahead I saw lights and pulled in. A 2-bay self-service car wash with flickering fluorescent lights, It looked abandoned except for the presence of all the wash hardware. Lifting the hood of my $800 wonder, I noted that the aftermarket Weber carburetor was encased in ice. The carburetor heat-riser had been discarded with the OEM induction, so there was nothing to do but sit around until it thawed and limp it along until I hit dryer air.

This would never occur today. The ‘80s brought computer controls and fuel injection, the ‘90s advanced the artform, and today it is rare to have anomalous automotive behavior. Somehow the software engineers have infused their coding with Ritalin and Xanax. Mass-produced cars are no longer flighty, prone to moodiness or angry outbursts. You turn the key and they go.

But sometimes as I stand in a parking lot and push the panic button on the remote FOB to locate my mundane wheels among its Stepford Wife sisters, I find myself missing the fire.

© 2014 D.W. Williams. All rights reserved

The Tale of Two Diesels

In 1919 a man named Clessie Cummins had formed a company building stationary diesel engines. Cummins engines were effective and started to be respected and used in marine applications too. Clessie was convinced the diesel had viability for more purposes that anyone had given it credit for, so he evangelized. He had spent much of the 1930s showboating his concepts, even entering Cummins diesels in the Indianapolis 500 as early as 1931.

In 1938, one of GM’s premier engineers, a guy named Charles Kettering, managed to convince the powers-that-be to let him develop a new diesel engine. Kettering had conviction that the diesel was a good solution for automotive/trucking applications, but believed existing engines were too heavy and too underpowered. He wanted to develop a lightweight diesel engine that was practical in those applications, and so the General Motors Diesel Engine Division was born, later becoming Detroit Diesel.

Both men, brilliant and undeterred, worked their ideas into fruition. And while WWII put a kink in plans, it also provided an impetus for more development. So by the mid 1950s, diesel engines were becoming more common in bigger trucks. Eventually other engine manufacturers such a Mack and Caterpillar started developing their road-going diesels.

The early 1960s had everyone in trucking looking at diesels, and the big grumbling 6-cylinder gasoline engines that had the market foothold up to the mid-1950s were becoming harder to find. The diesels were proving more durable, more powerful and more economical than the gas engines.

As recently as the early 1970s it was the Detroit 238 and Cummins 250 that ruled the streets in fleet tractors. Both had their adherents and detractors and neither was perfect, but they were functional, got double the fuel economy the gas engines doing same work and were comparatively easy to work on. Of note, the 238 and 250 happened to be the horsepower ratings of these engines, so while they went down the road, doing so at modern legal weight required bushel baskets of gear-changes. A guy running an old Detroit had his right hand welded to the shifter; he was constantly downshifting to keep the engine in the sweet-spot.

Fast forward to the 70s-80s. More and more weight required more power. Owner operators with baloney-sliced 6” chrome stacks and Christmas trees worth of clearance lights on their trucks were buying big-bore 500HP engines like hotcakes. Farmers had started buying diesel pickups for durability and economy but needed more power to pull their stock trailers. Before long the horsepower wars were raging in the light truck diesel market too. By 1995 pickups with diesels consistently had more power than the fleet tractor-trailers of the 1960s.

But fleet tractors were doing an about-face in the ‘90s; engines got smaller and had more conservative power ratings. Fleet operators were concerned about economy, and they were finding that the custom-tailored programming available on the new electronic mid-bore diesels was actually allowing them to run nearly as well as the old big-bores, all the while getting continually better economy.

Light truck diesels aren’t there yet. While it is true that a few the 400+ HP monster pickups are really used for pulling paying loads, most live out their lives under individuals doing less strenuous activities, like pulling a 16’ bass boat or maybe a camper trailer. Drivers always like more power, but don’t always need more power. Maybe it’s time for light-truckers to ratchet-back the baloney sliced, dual-piped, chrome air-cleanered bravado just a hair?                                                                                                                                                                                               © 2014 D.W. Williams. All rights reserved

Is Thin “In”?

I will admit it. When Motor Trend came out with their “truck of the year” announcement and Ford’s new aluminum F150 was third down the list, I was a little amused. It amused me because of all the hype the aluminum truck had gone to press with, and as the Motor Trend writers indicated, the performance didn't live up to the promise. The truck wasn't bad, but it wasn't exceptional either. Extensive redesign, bleeding-edge technology and new metallurgy aside, the truck fell in with its peers in actual performance.  So it appeared that the marketing department came out with the guns blazing, but they were shooting blanks.

When I read further, the fact that Chevy’s reintroduced mid-sized Colorado won the Truck of the Year award actually shocked me.

As I've said before, the American truck-buying public has seemed obsessed with bigger/tricker trucks, so they have grown both in size and options. In selecting full-sized test trucks, Motor Trend indicated that if all were optioned out heavily, they would all cost about the same, around $53,000.

I tend towards pragmatism, and to me a truck is a work vehicle. My last full-sized truck was a 1980 Chevy that was about 20 years old when I bought it. A little long in the tooth and all the gloss gone, it still ran great and did everything a truck needed to do. I paid $1000 for it, and it served me well for several years and then through a home remodeling.

In fact the $53K that these half-tons can cost today is about what I paid for the house which the Chevy helped remodel. I prefer to sleep in a bed, take hot showers and have a place to plug in a coffee pot, so I won’t be trading my mortgage for a truck payment anytime soon.

Maybe, just maybe, the Motor Trend selection of the Colorado speaks volumes on this topic of automotive excess. A couple of the test writers even mentioned the smaller size being more appropriate for many things. The fact that the little truck also cost about two-thirds what the big ones do was also noted. To no small degree, auto writers are editorialists. So if they are making these statements, they believe doing so will hit a public nerve, addressing some slightly contentious point that is making the rounds among their readers.

Certainly the automotive market has an earnest place for a full-size 4X4 short-bed truck with a 6” lift kit, but it could be we are realizing that this place isn't the parking spot at our 9-5.

© 2014 D.W. Williams. All rights reserved