Wednesday 24th January 2018

The downsizing disaster discussion

Downsizing is inevitable in 2018; PH reflects on or two of its less successful previous attempts

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Great to see a Jensen FF adorning the home page of PistonHeads. The FF/Interceptor is a big car, even by today's standards, but that's OK because it also had a big engine - 6.3-litres worth of eye-streamingly inefficient Chrysler V8.

The Peel P50 recently tested by Autocar has a 49cc engine, but that's OK too because the P50 is so small you don't so much get in it as wear it.

What's annoying is the car that promises a lot but delivers little. Dressing disasters up as good ideas is an art form in which the auto industry used to excel. A while back Autocar famously ran a picture of the then-new Range Rover Sport being towed off the test track. Turned out it wasn't a breakdown at all, though. In fact, according to an LR spokesman, it was "the Sport's towhook being tested". See what they did there?

A few years previous to that, I was at the test track (very possibly the same one) crashing a Japanese sporting hatchback into a stupidly-parked MoD Land Rover. At least, that's what it might have looked like to the ignorant observer. What I was actually doing, of course, was "testing the hatch in an impact situation". Along similar lines, my last speeding conviction should never have reached the courts, as I was not speeding. I was actually amassing test data on the feasibility (from a safety perspective) of a 138mph motorway maximum.

In the industry's defence, most of motoring's major letdowns - Ford Edsel, Chevrolet Corvair, Jaguar Polecat (you may have missed that one) - are long since forgotten. There have been more recent ones though. Like the Alfa Romeo 166 Ti.

A road tester once tossed me the keys to one of these. I was immediately suspicious. It's best to be suspicious when a road tester tosses you the keys to something with big wheels, fat tyres, lowered suspension and a swoopy body that looks like it's breaking the speed limit even when it's standing still. Why? Because if the car was any good, the road tester would be keeping it for themselves. That's how it can work on car mags.

The key-tosser's motives were soon revealed. As the tossee, I found it difficult to detect much difference between the Ti's 'standing still' and 'going along' modes. Even with one's big toe firmly embedded in the carpet, the Alfa struggled to shake off a pizza delivery moped, a well-driven double-decker bus and an OAP on a circus unicycle.

Only by peering under the Alfa's bonnet did I discover the awful truth. Not the 'awesome' (to quote Alfa's website at the time) majesty of the 243hp 3.2-litre V6. Not even the 'mighty' vision of the 223hp 3.0-litre. No, this dandied-up mountebank featured the 'unique' disappointment of the 152hp 2.0. It was hard to imagine how a dealer test drive of any 2.0 166 Ti would convert into a sale, even to the most masochistic company car tax dodger.

That muttony Alfa reminded me of a Volkswagen Type 2 microbus I used to own. Its 1.6 flat-four engine seemed a bit too flat, so I had a recon replacement put in. On the van's return I immediately noticed no change whatsoever in its performance, or in its appalling 18mpg fuel consumption figure - a figure which I decided to report, in person, to the mechanic responsible for this frankly rubbish transplant. The follow up plan, which involved ramming an inlet valve up his nose, was cut short by his response. '18mpg?' he marvelled, with total sincerity. 'Really? That's brilliant.'

That mechanic might have been impressed by the Alfa 166 Ti. Generally though, it's not a good idea to put a titchy engine in a big vehicle. I could easily be persuaded to eat a blue loaf, or even to drink bacon-flavoured milk, but I'd never buy a small-engined big car.

A big-engined small car, now that's different. Who wouldn't pay £45k or more for a 444hp RS4-engined Audi A1? How much would you pay for a 500hp Aston V8-engined Fiesta, a 600hp AMG S 63-powered A-Class Merc, or an Alfa Mito (yes, they still sell them) with a 700hp Ferrari 488 GTO lump shoved up its miniskirt? Soon, if the market continues in the way it's going, we may have the chance to test out this sort of proposition.

[E65Ross]

Clearly this author has different thoughts than the one who said smaller engines make for more enjoyable and better cars.