Thursday, May 2, 2013

Thursday Trivia: You Coulda Had A V-8

These were the good old days. Picture courtesy Oldcarphotos.com

There are bad ideas, there are terrible ideas, and then there's the transverse V-8 drivetrain. There's just something comically pathetic about having eight cylinders sitting sideways in the front of a car. The Eldorado you see above and its predecessors didn't suffer from that; they had the engine pointing the right way so you could open the sharply-creased hood and see a proper mechanical vista. In those cars, and in the Toronado, front-wheel-drive was a nifty engineering trick for low-speed traction and a flat floor so all three of your bitches could sit in the back of your pimpmobile without discomfort.

The transverse V-8, however, was something else. It reeked of cost-cutting, of easy assembly, of last-minute decisions to add a decent engine to a middling platform. With very few exceptions, it's been a lousy idea. And yet there were two vehicle platforms that had not one, but two completely different V-8s installed in them. One of them, of course, was the Cadillac E/K-platform, which shouldered the load of both 4.9-liter OHV and Northstar DOHC engines in the Eldorado, Seville, and Deville/DTS. (Arguably, the E/K was similar enough to the G-body that one could add the Aurora "Shortstar" to the mix for a total of three difference V-8s.)

And the other? Make your guess and click the jump.

Why, it was the Ford DN101!

SHO is. Picture courtesy Wikipedia

Your humble author was in the business of selling the third-generation Taurus SHO, which featured an absolutely pointless and thoroughly gutless Yamaha V-8. In a straight line, the SHO was barely any quicker than the three-liter Duratec Taurus and considerably less sprightly than the previous-gen V-6 stick-shift SHO. It had special ZF steering, so it was pleasant to drive, and its full complement of features made it kind of a left-field entry into the entry-luxury class. But it wasn't very fast. If you wanted a fast Taurus you had to go across the street.

A kiss on a hand is quite Continental. Picture courtesy Wikipedia.

DN101 also spawned the Continental, which had a detuned, 260-horsepower "InTech" mod-motor V-8, later bumped up to 270hp during a facelift. For years, Mustang guys have been pulling these engines out of junkyard Continentals, hoping they'll drop into V-6 SN95 platforms, but so far it hasn't worked out. There's a missing motor mount and the bellhousing pattern is different. It wasn't a horrible car, and it could apparently be coaxed into running a very high fourteen in the quarter-mile, but the mod-motor was simply too large for anything like effective or convenient servicing, making these relatively new cars a rare sight on the modern road.

Lincoln and Cadillac are out of the transverse-V8 business now, as is everyone else; the MKS offers the EcoBoost twin-turbo V-6 while the XTS is, apparently, about to have something similar. We'll never again see the day when a company commissions a bespoke V-8 that cranks out 230 horsepower and swallows its cam gears right after the warranty runs out. It's even possible that we'll never again see a major manufacturer offer a transverse V-8-powered automobile.

And that's okay.



from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com




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