Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 07:36:23 +0000 From: Martin Rich <M.G.Richnospam.ac.uk> Subject: Re: SAABillac
On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:15:25 GMT, "Al" <alistairdorenospamo.com> wrote: ><Absolutely enormous SNIP> > >> There was a Lotus version of the Alpine was there not ? I seem to recall >> it did >> well in rallying. I also recall it being quite sought after. Wasn't it the >> original 'hot hatch' ? I have no personal experience of driving one but I >> suspect the hot versions were somewhat better. Then again many cars' >> gearboxes >> were like stirring porridge in those day ! >> <yet more snippage> >> >You're thinking of the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus, which was indeed a hoot of a >car, although whether you could officially call this or the Peugeot 205 >1.9GTi the original hot hatch is probably debateable. > The hot versions of the first generation Renault 5 would also have had claims to be early hot hatches and were certainly around a little earlier than the 205. In standard form the original Renault 5 had a longitudinal engine with power taken from the front, in the same way as in the C900 (desperate attempt to remain on topic). Renault did make souped-up versions with this standard configuration, but they also made a very powerful version with the engine just behind the front seats. Returning to the Talbot Alpine, stirring porridge probably was a fairly apt description for the gearchange in the early versions. Chrysler had bought the former Rootes group (British) and Simca (French) during the 1960s, and Talbot was a make introduced hurriedly when the whole lot was sold to Peugeot around 1979. Though I don't rember driving an AlpineI drove various examples of the Talbot Horizon. This was essentially the same car sold in the US as the Plymouth Horizon, and the one instance where Chrysler in the US had any significant engineering or design influence on a European model. US versions apparently had a Volkswagen engine and transmission. European Horizons initially had European Chrysler engines and gearboxes, and the influence from Chrysler US on the gearbox design seems to have been one of the things that big motor manufacturers did best in the 1970s: providing insufficient resources for product development. I remember the gearchange on early Horizons being appalling even by 1970s standards and I know that later models had Peugeot's own (vastly superior) gearboxes. Martin >
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