| Special
Test Report:
A Car and Driver staff comparison of America's fastest sports sedans 
OLDSMOBILE 4-4-2 . CHEVELLE SS 396 PONTIAC GTO . SKYLARK GRAN SPORT FAIRLANE GT/A . COMET CYCLONE GT |
GATHER
together six of the hot intermediate sedans and compare them? One against
the other? Actually rank them on the basis of their performance on the
race track, the drag strip and street? You guys are out of your minds! And so they laughed when we sat down to play. The idea to run a bonanza six-way test on the so-called Super Cars was hatched immediately following our wildly successful test between the Ferrari 2+2 and the Pontiac 2+2 that appeared exactly one year ago. Proceeding cautiously, we established a basic format for multicar comparisons with our evaluation of six luxury cars in July, 1965, and the stage was set for the most elaborate and possibly the most important automotive test that has yet appeared in CID. The choice of the Super Cars was obvious. First of all, no group of sporting automobiles has made agreater impact on the American scene. The excitement started the moment the first Pontiac GTO appeared in 1963 and has steadily mounted as new cars like the Olds 4-4-2 and Comet Cyclone have arrived to compete for a share of the booming performance market. Secondly, these automobiles are tailored specifically for the American enthusiast and CID has therefore had a great editorial involvement with them since that famous moment in March, 1963 when we alternately enraged and delighted readers everywhere by implying that the Pontiac GTO was in many ways a better car than the fabled Ferrari GTO. Two years later, we are still receiving mail about that story. |
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| Our
original plan of action called for testing eight cars, all to be driven
by an expert driver on a drag strip and road course. Acceleration, braking
and suspension behavior would be measured there, with the final phase of
the test involving extended use of the cars on the street. From the start,
it was agreed that the ultimate measure of the test cars would be their
usefulness as high-performance, over-the-road vehicles, and not as potential
racing machines. The eight cars included the Buick Skylark Gran Sport,
Chevelle SS 396, Comet Cyclone GT, Dodge Coronet Hemi, Plymouth Belvedere
Hemi, Ford Fairlane GT/A, Oldsmobile 4-4-2 and the granddaddy of the bunch,
the Pontiac GTO. This would have given us a group of cars ranging in wheelbase
from 115 inches to 117 inches, with engines varying in size between 389
cubic inches and 426 cubic inches. |
Weights would
have averaged somewhere around 3700 Ibs., and we would have had a chance
to evaluate eight basically similar automobiles. As it turned out, the
two Chrysler products were unavailable (for reasons we will recount later),
and we ended up with six nearly identical cars. In fact, our test cars
were within one inch of having the same wheelbase, within 12 cubic inches
engine displacement and within 166 pounds curb weight Because it is an excellent road course, with plenty of room to shake out really fast cars, our first choice as a test site was Bridgehampton Itace Circuit on the eastern tip of Long Island. We had used the track on previous occasions and knew it was the sort of course that strongly resembles a first-class, twolane highway, with pronounced elevation changes, sweeping bends and long straightaways. It was an ideal place to evaluate cars of this sort. Because it was near CONTINUED |