Comparison Tests
From the December 1981 Issue of Car and DriverTESTED
The C/D crew could see that he was an officer of the law; not a state cop, but one from the county, though they paid him no more than a sinking glance in verifying this. He had come rumbling out between the clapboard buildings up at the top of the hill and idled slowly down, slowly as only a cop can. They could feel him taking it all in: the quiet country road, the thick trees to one side, the Y-shaped intersection, and them down there along the tail of the Y, off to one side in the little churchyard. With the Ferrari, the Porsche, the Corvette, the Datsun Turbo, and the De Lorean.
The cop eased over onto the gravel shoulder at the lap of the Y and sat gazing out his side window at them. They, chattering madly, as birds faced with the neighborhood cat will do, set about polishing their five already shiny examples of circumstantial evidence.
Had someone put in a call, or was the cop just there because he had a sixth sense? He sat taking in the countryside and the group nearly polished right through the paint (except on the De Lorean, which was being properly spritzed with Windex and dried with paper towels). The chattering tailed off into silence. He'd be down at any moment for a few words, or worse!
As quietly as he'd appeared, he put the cruiser in gear and throttled off up the other wing of the Y. He was obviously devious. Probably going off to the Particular Stretch via some shortcut that would bring him back to it cross-lots. This caused the Designated Runner no end of worry, because it was his tail that would proceed directly to jail should the cop chance to see even a glimpse of what was going on.
A boy on a bicycle came by and said the cop had only been in the area because there'd been some vandalism lately. Pretty soon the Designated Runner breathed a little easier. He buckled himself into another one of the cars and headed off up the hill in a wary eastbound prerun. His road was a carefully selected bitch. The rest of the group stayed behind, passing the time of day in the quiet of the churchyard. In fourteen miles, the Designated Runner would turn around, trip the watches, and head for 140 mph.
We have now, finally, tested the new De Lorean. After years of anticipation and months upon months of negotiations, an actual stainless-steel sports car from Ireland has found its way to the suction cup that holds it fast to our fifth wheel, where it can't hide anymore. As a second line of defense against its escape, we have brought in four of the De Lorean's competitors and ringed them around stockade-style to keep the De Lorean right in the captive perspective.
The category being sports/GT cars, it was only proper to make them jump through the sports/GT hoop. So for our De Lorean and its four adversaries, we arranged a classic three-legged trial by fire: our usual proving-grounds performance testing, a face-off at the Waterford Hills road course, and a final, furious timed attack on an impossible, real-world stretch of Ohio asphalt.
It pleases us no end to announce that John Zachary De Lorean has no reason to mount a rescue attempt for this brainchild. De Lorean and his new factory have done quite a splendid job of producing his car from the ground up. The bugs it bears lie at the easy-to-eliminate end of the scale, and with 3000 De Loreans -- and counting -- built by late summer, it is obvious that the car is now ready to account for itself.
Growling around the De Lorean you will find the Ferrari 308GTSi, the Porsche 911SC, the Datsun 280-ZX Turbo, and the Chevrolet Corvette, each representing a very different answer to the same poser of a problem, that of how to get the most driving and viewing pleasure out of a given number of modern dollars. With prices ranging from $17,500 to $56,650, the De Lorean's $25,600 fits right in the middle.
Within these pricing latitudes lies a remarkable range of hardware. The De Lorean has an all-aluminum, overhead-cam, fuel-injected V-6 mounted in front of the rear wheels. The Porsche boasts an all-aluminum, overhead-cam, fuel-injected flat six mounted in the tail of the car. The Datsun antes up an iron-block-and-aluminum-head, overhead-cam, fuel-injected, turbocharged straight six mounted forward of the windshield. The Corvette clings to its heritage with a cast-iron, pushrod, carbureted V-8 mounted behind the hub line of the front wheels.
Looking past these disparities, all five cars have fully independent suspensions, four-wheel disc brakes, and, as tested, five-speed transmissions (except for the Corvette, with its four-speed). Each car also has glass, lights, weather sealing, rubber tires, and room for two conspicuous consumers. Beyond that, these machines celebrate a rainbow of variety, and we'll presume you're here because you want to know what to buy, what to make snide remarks about, and what to worship with glassy-eyed reverence.
