Motorweek; 1309

Next on motor week a new generation of Ford Mustang lost natural gas for the future and the glorious past of modern right. So come join with us next. TV's automotive magazine. Your hopes for Motor Week. John Davis. Well hello and welcome to motor week. We're glad to have you with us. The original Ford Mustang was a true automotive milestone after its debut at the 1964 New York World's Fair. The Mustang almost instantly became the most successful new car introduced in America. But in recent years Ford is not the sporty image of the original pony car

languish. Now there's a brand new Mustang just in time for its 30th anniversary. Is it time to celebrate. The first Mustang to find debris aiming at a whole new generation of car buyers those millions of baby boomers who reach driving age in the 1960s well-born hopes to ignite their passion again with the 1994 mustang by enabling base or GTI grades as either a coupe or convertible. Ford polled thousands of Mustang Club of America members to find out what they wanted most in this sixth generation of America's favorite pony cars. They answered power beauty and affordability. Ford responded to the first by altering Mustangs engine mix. It's 145 horsepower three point eight leaders B6 replaces an underwhelming four cylinder is the Mustang very insurable based powerplant. It's 215 pound feet of torque. Set a low 20 500 rpm look good off the line acceleration and Ford

says 0 to 60 and 9.1 seconds with a manual. But for many Mustang fans only a be able do so Ford continued its pushrod 5 liter but in GTI models only horsepower is up 10 to 215 the robust 285 pound feet of torque and reach 60 and six point seven seconds for about the same as last year. Faster Mustang Cobra arrives in spring transferring punch of both engines to the pavement as the same borgwarner T5 manual transmission the shifter seems a bit lighter now and there is much more appeal to the delightfully progressive clutch or wheel does brakes are favored on all Mustangs for the first time. Any lock system is available based Mustangs get a 15 inch tires right 16 enters the 17 and 45 series Goodyear's the R rated eagles on 8 inch wheels. Our only option. The exterior styling was the number one concern of those Mustang Club members. So Ford revisited many design features found in 50s and 60s American cars but

focused on the original Mustangs long hood short rear deck treatment and their traditional galloping pony which rides inside the Mustangs grill for the first time since 1978. Although the front end has a modern Aero look the long hood power dome and functional hood vents clearly mimic the original. So to the deep body sculpting that runs from the front wheels to just behind the rear doors ending with air scoops that can be used to cool the brakes. Should anyone want to do a little racing with the new Mustang outback Mustang tail lights again have three sections but now they're long horizontal slits rather than the 1965 short vertical ones you get. The 1994 Mustang may not have dozens of options but it does have well-defined packages. This standard car's cloth interior isn't your choice. Leather is available as an option on both models. Whatever its material the interior design is all

new. The twin cockpit theme recalls the late 50s Corvettes as well as the original Mustang power seats with height adjustment are standard dual airbags are standard two on all Mustangs and we like the way the passengers are fully integrated into the right cockpit pod. The left pod contains a full complement of clear analog gauges practically all controls are located within the center stack for easy operation. My driver and passenger top stereo choices include a 460 watt 8 speaker system for the industry's first many disc players and we're pleased that Ford continued to equip Mustang with its user friendly rotary climate controls. The system is now free. The new Mustangs ride is far smoother and more refined than recent models. That's by design or rather redesign which is what Ford did to its venerable Fox chassis replacing or modifying virtually every component. The results are Mustang bodies that are far more rigid and deliver more perfect. That's especially true of the convertibles which only needs this extra cross member so that its

body no longer feels like it's trying to twist into a pretzel every time you turn into a sharp corner or hit a pothole. The removable hard top is a first time option on the Mustang convertible Mustang safety is well served by standard dual air bags and 5 mph bumpers. All Mustangs meet the federal government's 1097 side impact standards and the cars can be equipped with anti-lock brakes. Affordable 94 Mustang prices start at thirteen thousand three hundred sixty five dollars for the base coupe. While the V8 power GTI coupe goes for seventeen thousand two hundred eighty dollars the base V-6 going to vertical is twenty thousand one hundred sixty dollars and the GTA version twenty one thousand nine hundred seventy dollars. Even though my thing is that while those numbers are a lot more than 30 years ago we know that many Mustang enthusiast can't wait to ride the newest and more seasoned Mustang. We also know they won't be disappointed.

As more states consider adopting California's strict emission standards automakers are searching for new ways to meet them. Elisa Barrow has previously focused on compressed natural gas as a low emissions fuel. And now she has a CNG update. In this first of a two part f while i report. The same natural gas that many of us cook wind is now powering our automobiles. In fact 700000 vehicles run on natural gas throughout the world. The U.S. Department of Energy says that there is about a 200 year supply of natural gas in the United States alone. And Laura Canada if we convert about 8 to 10 million vehicles running on natural gas it would only consume. About 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas which is about five to six percent of the total gas consumption.

Taking advantage of natural gas found here in North America will help to lessen our dependence on foreign oil and vehicles fueled with compressed natural gas emit low levels of carbon monoxide and small forming hydrocarbons. But according to the Environmental Protection Agency achieving these reductions in pollutants depends heavily on the level of technology that's being used and how well it's installed. The natural gas is an extremely safe motor vehicle fuel. For example we have tests that show natural gas stored cylinders with a stick of dynamite exploded against them and the only effect being the release of that the gas the relief valve at the end of the tank. So there's absolutely no impact on the tank cylinder itself in the sense of any kind of change in IT and IT or explosion of a natural gas has a cost advantage over gasoline. It's at least 30 percent less. There's no federal tax on natural gas which is a cost advantage right there. But bear in mind in a compressed natural gas vehicle your range is greatly reduced compared

to a gasoline powered vehicle because of limited onboard storage. So you'll have to fill up two to three times more often. Still today everything from trash trucks to school buses run on natural gas. It's even made its way into the National Hot Rod Association circuit with this vehicle. The natural gas and production has begun on this 490 horsepower natural gas powered Corvette for 90 is going to be an American super car that will run right along with the Ferrari Presently the majority of compressed natural gas vehicles are placed in fleets because they have a centrally located refueling station. But as more and more public natural gas refueling stations open up and refueling it home becomes practical. We get one step closer to bringing these vehicles to the general population. And unlike some alternative fuels natural gas is readily available in all 50 states. So refueling your vehicle with this clean burning fuel may soon be as easy and as convenient as cooking tonight's dinner.

Well it's Karkare time again and that means another visit with motor wakes master mechanic Pat doss. John used to be this was the only type of mouse that you were apt to see in an automobile repair shop. This of course is more to our motor week mouse. But in today's world we're probably going to see a mouse like this. This is a computer mouse. Now this is come to be since 1981. What's magical about 1981. Well that's the year that virtually every car on the road came equipped with an onboard computer so this computer managed virtually everything under the hood of the car and it does a very good job of giving us better performance better fuel economy and lower emissions. But as time goes on and the automobile wears things inside the engine change and we need new operating parameters. Well these operating parameters are controlled by the prom program read only memory chip. This is the part of the computer that actually tailors that computer to your individual

car. So it takes into consideration things like old things like tire sizes and axle ratios and a whole bunch of stuff like that. Now these computer chips are sometimes so tailored that they can't operate in this expanded range that they have to as the car wears and the result of that is that the car doesn't perform as it should. Now what do we need. Well we need a computer system similar to this. This is an all data computer system and it gives the technician a lot of information about problems and how to repair and how to diagnose cars. It stores its information on CD-ROM hundreds and hundreds of pages of information for each year make and model. Now what do we do. We need to determine if our car has a prom problem. So if you have any kind of performance problem on a car that has a computer you take the car to the technician the technician first checks all of the baseline things

things like spark plugs and wires and computer sensors and so on. If no problem is found there the technician then hooks up a scan tool. One of the very first pieces of information that scan tool displays is the identification number on the prom. That is in the car. Now the technician goes to the Alldata computer and looks up the appropriate screen to determine if there are any updates and if there are then the prom in the car is replaced. This most times will correct the performance problem that you're trying to diagnose makes it very efficient and inexpensive. And if you have a question or a comment write to me. If I use your letter on the air I'll send you a motor week T-shirt. The address is Motor Week always Mills Maryland 2 1 1 0 1 7. Mark of the week one with a rich automotive heritage it's a 1961 Borg award.

Isabella who belongs to Steve Ballmer of Santa Cruz California. Submit good color photos of your car of the week candidate to voter we always Mills Maryland 2 1 1 0 1 7. There are few sports cars as legendary as the Porsche 911 Turbo or possessing a more fearsome reputation in recent years however mechanical changes have tamed many of the turbos touchier traits but as we found with the latest and perhaps the last version of Porsche is rear engined masterpiece it's still a car to be reckoned with. As would be any car as unique or powerful as the 1994 question 911 Turbo 3.6. Its uniqueness comes in part from the unmistakable 911 body shell. After all these years it still looks like nothing else on the road and it still covers the only true rear engined rear drive chassis available in a production support.

Car the turbo also stands out with its huge whale tail spoiler and is further distinguished from other new 911 by its standard 18 inch alloy wheels where sticky Yokohama Z rated tires serious rubber has always been essential on the turbos but never more so than now. The legendary flat 6 turbo engine has been in large for 1994 from three point three to three point six liters since the 94 named 911 Turbo 3.6 power jump to three hundred fifty five horsepower and three hundred eighty four pound feet of torque. It also means a motor week. Cars. 0 to 60 in only four seconds flat nasty gas pedal and hold on since with the time of twelve point two seconds at 117 mph even the quarter mile goes by almost too fast to follow. The car's underpinnings have also been upgraded making the 3.6 the most stable 911 Turbo so far. Thrashing around Popenoe international raceways newest road course showed it to be easier to drive fast than any of its predecessors thanks in part to stronger and smoother low

rpm engine response. Our test drivers were also and hammered out the tremendous feel for the larger wheels. Horses for syncing power steering. As well as the massive and he could put the brakes which one simply declared to be the best in the business. The 9/11 turbos interior may not have the best or most modern design layout in the business but it certainly has great character and is also one of the safest. Both driver and passenger airbags are standard on all 94 911 models and Porsche owners don't seem to miss trendy interior trimmings. Instead they revel in the 9 11 firm grip the seats large 60 style analog gauges and precise short throw shifter. Unfortunately modern exchange rates dictate a very untraditional base price for the turbo of ninety nine thousand dollars and that price may go up. Porsche has already announced that there will be no turbo model in the all new 1095 911 lineup. So trade in those dull stocks and bonds and buy this now because no

one knows when a car is unique. Formidable yet understandable as the Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6 may never appear again. Jack in with motor week's end formation expert Lisa Barrows you have all the latest Motor News as part of the 10th anniversary celebration of Pacifica Chryslers west coast design studio. Chrysler gave us a peek it's a neon based concept cars it will soon unveil at U.S. auto shows. First is the espresso which adapts the neon platform to taxi cab design. The result is a unique four door sedan. A fun vehicle whose interior space is highly user friendly. It's 66 inch height allows airline style under seat storage. Yet it's tiny one hundred forty one inch length makes it half the size of a traditional taxi. The sleek all aluminum obvious combines the neon platform with aerospace technology placing its cooling modules in the back help of a point to zero coefficient of drag far lower than

today's production vehicles. We'll have more Chrysler concepts closer to their debut. In other news the Southern California Gas Company will build a plant to convert vehicles to run on natural gas. The 10 million dollar facility known as eco trans rebuilt in East Los Angeles for the first three years its goal will be to convert 5000 vehicles annually. General Motors will sell the vehicles mostly vans medium duty trucks and pickups to So-Cal gas and the conversion costs will range from twenty five hundred dollars to seven Valen dollars per vehicle. Large business leads and government agencies are expected to be the main users. And that's the noter news for this week. Every year Motoring Enthusiast States thousands of events to celebrate their

love affair of the automobile. But for the vintage racing community there is none so significant as the modern historic automobile race is reporter Craig saying shows us why for two decades Monterey has become synonymous with the very best invented racing. We're just obviously terminally sick people. People say well don't you get tired of this or is a lot of work as a work as doing something you don't enjoy doing their work. They know this is meant. For riding of cars at the Monterey historic says what makes it so interesting. There are two birdcages Maza Roddy's there's a five or six Ferrari's that are priceless cars and to see those cars go out on the racetrack and embrace each other and try to pass each other in turn 11. It is very exciting.

The 20th running of the Monterey storks is again turned out to be a blockbuster event with only the Kremlin Kram of the vintage racing community on display. At most vintage races. It's unusual to see more than a handful of truly significant cars here at Monterey. Million dollar cars are everywhere and historically significant cars come roaring around every corner. Our host for the past two decades is the ever present Steve Earle Steve is the driving force behind the creation of the Monterey historic ce. This is really what I want to say the end of Apple's a bet is racing but then again maybe it is or the Kentucky Derby or whatever. But it it really is the place to go if you love cars but you can't own it all. So the next best thing is to be able to share it with other people who enjoy it. So that's really

the guts of the monorail Stark is that it's a gathering of current and sharing all these awful. Each year Monterrey features one example remark in a show that consistently boasts some of the finest cars of all time this year featured the phenomenal racing cars of automotive engineering genius Harry Miller. From early experiments with double overhead cam multiple valve engines through pioneering efforts with front wheel drive and all wheel drive racing machines. The innovations of Harry Miller are seen on today's most sophisticated automobiles. Still it's the variety of marks here at the Monterey storage that boggles the mind and makes my heart beat faster. From the delicate diminutive formula juniors to the emotional power of the late Mark Donahue's 917 a Monterey's storks are truly the greatest vintage racing spectacle of all. Though most people won't admit it one of the main reasons that many of us buy a particular brand

of car is the color of our cars after all reflect our personalities and social status and few of us want to drive a car that doesn't show us at our best. Lisa Bair always always looking into how the auto industry sells cars and since color is critical to how many cars a manufacturer moves she's decided to take a closer look. We make decisions about it every day from the clothes we wear to the cars we buy. And you might not know it but fashion is part of a sophisticated process that determines what colors wind up on our cars. We go out and gather a lot of information over the course of the year to try to determine where colors are moving. We go to shows and shows and any other types of transportation shows that are appropriate. Then we also go to active sportswear shows to the major contract and home furnishing shows around the United States to see what's happening in those markets.

Companies like Ford Motor Company gather color information for their interiors and exteriors from other sources as well. They subscribe to color forecasting services that predict color trends for specific industries. They also exchange information with their fabric and paint suppliers. But before a color ever reaches a car. Studies are done to determine what colors are appropriate for a vehicles image. We're working on programs approximately two and a half years prior to the vehicle coming out on the street. We're looking at what's selling and we're looking at what we feel has reached the end of its life cycle need to be replaced. As you might have guessed the hot color right now is green. Ford has many shades to choose from but one color that's gaining in popularity is Iris a pinkish purple metallic goods on their F-Series flare side pick up. Many of the new colors are driven by the push to clean up the environment. This panel represents influences from nature. These colors would most likely wind up on luxury cars. But technology also drives color.

In the last several years we've had a couple of new technologies come out. The newest one was frost technology which is a new pigment. And what it does it gives the color a slight color change or travel to it. All the information that Ford gathers throughout the year is used to develop both interior and exterior color. They also look at textures and patterns to see how that's going to influence the fabrics they put inside their cars. Dolly Chang develops interior fabrics for Ford. Yeah sure what we're trying here Lee says we use the computer a lot more to generate the original graphic or idea for the pattern. Here's the original graphic and this is just a piece of paper that we've done. We can actually go in and create the yarns on the computer too but this is illustrates just a black and white graphic. We can then go in and do different color schemes for that pattern. We can change the scale to the pattern for tracks color trend worldwide. Right now they're waiting to see what color choices consumers in the eastern bloc countries will make.

Until now those consumers haven't had much of a choice where color is concerned. But one thing is for certain no matter how much the world changes we'll always have the good old standards like white blue. And red. There are experts in every field and if Porsha power performance and perfection is anything to go by. Author Susan Miller is a bona fide Porsha expert. The coffee table format puts the emphasis on the books gorgeous color photos of the well written tags while hardly copious covers all of the most important events or sheer production car and racing history. Be sure to join us next time for more motor week as we test the Rugged Land Rover Defender 90 and the rapid Chevy Camaro 28. Lisa Barrow continues her report on natural gas for our cars ahead God has some handy tips for the home mechanic and Gregg saying hoss hits the beach. I'm John

Davis. See that. To order a video cassette of this program call 1 800 4 2 2 0 0 6 4. Or send twenty nine ninety five plus $4 shipping and handling to this address. An expanded version of motor week's Porsche past present and future is available on video

cassette. It explores the history and future plans of the German automaker and includes test drives of the Porsche 911 Turbo at 9:59. Do you use your credit card call 1 800 4 2 2 0 0 6 4. Or send one thousand ninety five plus $4 shipping to Motor Week home video. Post Office Box 6 8 6 1 8 Indianapolis Indiana 4 6 2 6 8.