The Road to Zacatecas: 1993 Coupes Across the Border
From the June 1993 issue of Car and Driver.
To make the 7:20 morning flight to Memphis, you get up with the garbage men. On the morning in February that we flew south, it was zero degrees and snarling in Detroit. Driving to the airport in a darkness illuminated intermittently by flashbulb-like bursts of white powder whipping across the windshield, the radio coughed up two new items. First, remaining outdoors this morning for nine minutes would most likely cause the delicate, lacy membranes of your sinuses to freeze over, solid. Second, Lee Iacocca has moved to Palm Springs.
Winter had a ticket south, too. It was nineteen degrees in Memphis. An hour later in San Antonio, where uninterrupted centuries of sun have turned everything into sand, the sky sagged low, the gray color of despair. It was just seven degrees from turning water into ice cubes.
We ate lunch impatiently in one of those hotel-lobby restaurants where you feel like you're in an aviary. The place stood in stark contrast to the place we were going—a part of Mexico that has yet to be turned into a Club Med. Rawest Mexico is exciting because you never know what kind of weirdness will come your way, and you don't care either—in fact, you're looking forward to it because Mexico is the last place on this continent where almost anything goes, where no one sits around worrying what the cholesterol count in a tortilla is and how cellular phones are giving everyone brain tumors. Anything goes.
Time was wasting. "Let's get out of here," someone said. Everyone stood up at once, pushing back the chairs noisily, like the scene toward the end of The Wild Bunch where William Holden and his buddies are so fed up with living that they decide to shoot it out with a thousand Mexican soldiers, knowing they're going to get converted into fertilizer.
The cars were lined up behind the hotel, where some of our seven-man crew had come the night before. There was an indefinable outlaw look to these four very expensive, badass coupes, each with a CB radio antenna standing at attention on the roof.
The highway from San Antonio south to the border at Laredo is 154 miles of straight-forward snore, but a Texas state trooper appeared to provide light entertainment. Passing us northbound in a baleful, dopey-blue Caprice, he probably surmised that the Branch Davidians had something to do with this column of automotive firepower—a BMW 325is, a Lexus SC300, a Subaru SVX, and a Ford Thunderbird SC, trailed by a rare BMW station wagon brimming with camera gear and two highly suspicious-looking photographers. (Why no Legend Coupe? The PR folks said no '93 production model was available, they didn't want to send one south of the border, and they were disinclined to compete with this crowd.) Of course, the trooper performed a hugely melodramatic U-turn and arrived pop-eyed in the manner of Barney of Mayberry—zooming up on the hindquarter of each car, where his lips were seen moving frantically as he radioed in our license-plate numbers. Discovering these cars were not in the employ of Colombian nationals on lapsed visas, he beat it. This was the last threatening cop we'd see in four days.
By late afternoon, we arrived in a shabby section of Laredo near the border. We'd been looking for a cambio, a money exchange, and finally found one, seedy as a pawn shop.
For years, a dollar was worth twelve pesos. Then the Mexican government let the peso float free on the market. It jettisoned downward, so that today when you slide over a buck you get back 3070 pesos. I passed $300 through a slot, and the clerk, without a word, returned a wad of 921,000 pesos.
We were fondling our new fortunes on the street when Padgett, our youngest staffer, emerged from the cambio counting and recounting his pesos. His face had gone slack and pale, and if it could speak, it would have said: "I'm not even in Mexico yet and already I've been screwed!" The mixup involved miscounting "new pesos"—to keep the numbers down, the government has issued bills called "Nuevos Pesos," in which a thousand old pesos now become one "new peso."
It continued cold and dreary as we inched our way through a traffic jam on the narrow old streets of Laredo that lead to a bridge above the Rio Grande—the radio dial thick now with salsa music—and suddenly we were in Nuevo Laredo, in Mexico.
An ideal time, I suggested, for a cultural excursion to the nearby Ciudad de Los Muchachos, or "Boys' Town." This huge, walled compound on the edge of town may not have been founded by Father Flanagan, but indeed it is devoted to the most basic ideal of human exchange. Anything goes, most notably your supply of pesos.
First, however, we had to locate and obtain permits for our cars. We followed a series of signs that led to a cratered dirt lot and a ramshackle one-story concrete building. A sign at the entrance read:
To All Tourists:
Don't Let Outsiders Take You
By Surprise
In short, that stranger with his hand in your jeans is not Mexican, he's an "outsider." (Obviously, this is the same strategy NBC used during its exploding-truck fiasco, when the news anchors read a huge retraction in a way that sounded as if they weren't involved.)
When we finally had the little silver window stickers in hand, two and a half hours had passed. It had required hand signals, waving of registration papers, and running back and forth to a cavernous chamber next door where a cheerful twelve-year-old kid ran a lucrative photocopying franchise with a portable machine that produced blackened copies for $1 apiece, copies that were unreadable but nonetheless quite acceptable at the license department next door.
4th Place: Ford Thunderbird SC
Expensive and luxurious automobiles of modest size seem to represent a classic "foreign" notion. American automakers simply don't turn out cars of this sort—even when the goal is a swift sports coupe. So it comes as no surprise that our Ford Thunderbird SC, which weighs 3894 pounds and stretches 198.7 inches long, is the heaviest and largest machine in this test.
Despite its bulk, the supercharged T-Bird is hardly a slowpoke. Its 139-mph top speed keeps it right with the pack, and its 15.4-second quarter-mile time leaves it only a tenth of a second shy of the quickest car, the vastly smaller and lighter BMW 325is.
Such performance is a testament to the sheer muscle of its supercharged 3.8-liter V-6. Although this engine idles somewhat unevenly and doesn't rev with abandon above 4000 rpm, it offers abundant and instantaneous punch at any rpm level in between, thanks to its Roots-type Eaton supercharger, which provides more even and consistent boost than any turbocharger could. Some of that punch is offset by the Super Coupe's tall gearing, designed to maximize the heavy car's fuel efficiency, but even so, the Thunderbird is plenty responsive.
It's also a comfortable and steady high-speed cruiser. On the smooth Texas highways, with the electronically adjustable shock absorbers left on the automatic setting, the T-Bird's suspension was soft and compliant, if a bit prone to transmit road noise. On the wavier Mexican two-lanes, flipping the rocker switch to the firm setting provided the additional control needed to keep the big Bird on an even keel all the way up to its top speed—where the engine was loafing at a mere 3500 rpm in fifth gear.
Its steering doesn't, however, provide the delicate feedback that makes driving at such speeds seem natural. This lack of precision in the mechanism, combined with the car's large size, lends the T-Bird a ponderous feel.
As a result, the Super Coupe was capable and stable through the mountain curves and switchbacks, but a firm hand on the controls was needed in fast going. This is not a car you drive with your fingertips.
The Thunderbird's size pays off in interior space. With the roomiest back seat in the group, it was the number-one choice for group excursions. The front compartment is also comfortable, with a good driving position and decent seating, though lateral support isn't very plentiful.
HIGHS: Slick styling, plentiful thrust, sedan-like accommodations.
LOWS: Vast size and weight, lowbrow interior.
VERDICT: Low cost per pound isn't quite enough in this league.
No one was left breathless by the Thunderbird's interior finish. The particular plastic materials that Ford has chosen for the T-Bird's interior surfaces do little to create a rich atmosphere. The fussy switchgear and the lack of even a driver's airbag reinforce the lowbrow ambiance.
In its defense, the Super Coupe looks terrific from the outside and, with its $26,028 sticker, was from four to twelve grand cheaper than the other cars in the test. Such a hefty discount makes it a lot easier to overlook the shortcomings of Ford's speedy and stylish coupe. —Csaba Csere
In line in front of us, a young American of Mexican descent helped explain the required procedure. We watched as it became his turn at the clerk's window. For some reason—wrong papers, lack of registration, whatever—he was denied a permit. The clerk waved him off. Our friend shook his head: he couldn't believe it. He trudged outside to tell his father that the visit to the relatives was off. His father returned alone, went to the window, politely whispered something to the clerk and ever-so-gingerly slid a roll of Yankee dollars toward him. The old clerk waved him off daintily for five seconds, then palmed it. Dad departed with the permit sticker.
Bribery, you say. In Mexico it is a mordita, a personal tax that miraculously makes things work. Had we ponied up one Andy Jackson, we could have been in Boys' Town discussing Freud. But with 143 miles to Monterrey, we'd blown it.
I failed to inform my six colleagues that two of my guidebooks had gone so far as to capitalize this warning: "DO NOT DRIVE AT NIGHT IN MEXICO UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES." Something to do with donkeys, coyotes, dogs, cattle, and disoriented people having some strange inclination to wander onto roads at night. Not to mention the propensity of drivers with a snootful of mezcal to play "anything goes" on the roads.
Highway 85 is two lanes straight ahead. In the dark, the first 50 miles can be unnerving—big rattletrap trucks shake and shudder past tremulously, and the road has sudden ragged spots. Then we came upon a fork in the road, with a sign announcing a toll highway ahead that ran parallel to the public route, Highway 1. Being arrogant, rich gringos, we took the toll road, and it turned out to be a pair of magnificent, newly asphalted two-laners running in each direction, complete with reflectors and luminous white stripes. It ran about 75 miles, all the way to Monterrey.
We were cruising near the century mark. The radar detectors were strangely mute, and there was almost no one on the toll road but us. We learned why at the road's midway point, when a toll plaza appeared.
The toll was 64,000 pesos—about $21. Made a note: "world's most expensive toll road." For campesinos, it must amount to a month's labor in the fields. The plaza's location made sense; if it had been placed at the termination point in Monterrey, imagine the chaos when drunks and chiselers and the cash-depleted refused to pay and blocked traffic, or simply tried an off-road end-around just before the tollbooth.
It was about nine o'clock when we arrived on the edge of Monterrey, a city of 250,000 that bears no resemblance to the similarly named California town. This is a grim place where anything industrial goes—grim, that is, to genteel American ecoheads, but an economic oasis to Mexicans. Here we will have a second mordita adventure.
The way we navigate through strange, complicated turf is to flatter someone, like Csere, concerning his powers of perception, then suggest he select a co-pilot and lead us poor fools out of the wilderness, which leaves us with nothing harder to do than follow his taillights and whine on the CB when orphaned momentarily by a red light, or deride his ancestry when he takes a wrong fork in the road.
On this night, our photographer, a Brit named Dewhurst, was driving the BMW wagon when he followed our train of cars through what for him was a red light. A transito, a sort of freelance traffic cop driving a ragtag VW Beetle with a flasher on the roof, had been trailing this bevy of luxury cars, waiting for one of us to make a mistake and become his prize.
Seeing the flasher behind him, Dewhurst got on the CB radio to announce his imminent arrest. Idzikowski, our Polish/French fleet captain who has a barroom grasp of español that would have served him well in Boys' Town (this disappointment dogged me for days), was dispatched to do something. The four coupes stopped on the shoulder. Meanwhile, seeing $126,000 worth of gringo avarice parked there, every sort of police vehicle—even a paddy wagon—appeared like vultures circling prey. This irritated the transito cop, who shooed them away.
Before Idzikowski arrived at the rear, where Dewhurst was engaged in feigning innocence as only the English can do, Dewhurst's sad voice came on the radio again: "He wants a hundred dollars."
3rd Place: Subaru SVX
What's not to love about a flat-six-powered, four-wheel-drive, eccentrically styled sports coupe—even if it doesn't carry Porsche badges?
In the case of the Subaru SVX, we don't love the transmission. We can get over the ungainly C-pillar that hacks into the slick curves of the quarter-panels. We can deal with the motorized seatbelts. We can even accept the name "Subaru" on a $30,000 car. But we can't get used to an automatic where a manual gearbox belongs.
Don't get us wrong. The SVX's electronically controlled four-speed unit works invisibly, without the half-throttle hunting of last year's edition, and aims for the redline at the snap of the throttle. If the SVX were without sporting pretensions, the automatic would fit with its mission.
But the SVX steers cleanly, has a well-controlled ride, and remains flat while cornering. It also has a 3.3-liter horizontally opposed six-cylinder that invokes the spirit of flat-sixes past as it pumps out 230 horsepower, and a sophisticated four-wheel-drive system that completes the Porsche analogy.
Especially when stacked up against the silky rowers from BMW and Lexus, the SVX's shiftless gearbox seems inappropriate in a car of this type.
The SVX forges into its second year with few changes. Each 1993 SVX wears a knockout red suit, studded with a tacky vinyl C-pillar sticker that makes movie logos on NASA rockets look tasteful. The petroleum-based finish of the interior has been revised with a 'woodsier' look. And that's it for this year. We hear that the passive belts will be ditched next year, and that the styling will be massaged the following year, but no news yet on a five-speed gearbox.
Meanwhile, there's been no tampering with the SVX's agreeable ride-handling combination or its plush accommodations. The steering still rivals that of true sports cars for accuracy and feel. Large expanses of glass give even the rear occupants panoramic views from supportive, leather-covered seats. The 80-watt Panasonic stereo thumps out bass notes with the authority of a drill sergeant.
HIGHS: Inviting cabin, cushy ride, usable back seat.
LOWS: Does-it-itself gearbox, left-field styling.
VERDICT: Undersold and underappreciated.
Still, on our 1400-mile jaunt through Mexico, we noticed some ragged edges in the SVX that were foreign to the Lexus and the BMW. For instance, the SVX became slightly unsettled when trail-braking in the tightest of bends, while the SC300 and the 325is maintained near-perfect balance. Manually rowing the shifter brought quicker gear changes but sent fuel economy below 18 mpg; with 200 miles between Pemex stations, that kind of fuel consumption would furrow the most experienced Mexican traveler's brow.
Warts and all, the SVX has come up just shy of two Ten Best lists. It remains a well-executed, endearing long-distance tourer that rises just short of the cream of its class. Does the purity of the SC300 and the 325is make it pointless for this interestingly flawed car to exist? We don't think so. —Martin Padgett Jr.
This was exorbitant, even by Chicago standards. Next time, Idzikowski will have learned to begin haggling at the low end—say, ten bucks—but in this case he wagged his head sadly in recognition of the violation and opened with "Cinquenta." Fifty damned dollars. The transito swooned. He was so happy he personally provided a police escort, complete with flashing lights, to our downtown hotel. Where we enjoyed a cerveza or two, a tad of molé, and then to bed.
As we headed west the next morning, a misty fog mixed with the cold. Thirty years ago, I recall, many of Monterrey's streets were dirt. Now they're paved, and the highways are excellent—the one we were on, Mexico 40 toward Saltillo, was smoother, in fact, than I-94 in Detroit.
The moment we left the last smokestack of Monterrey and entered the vast, arid countryside that lies about ten miles out of town, the fog and clouds lifted like a curtain to reveal a sun putting out 75 degrees. You could almost hear the cheering.
We blew past Saltillo on the well-maintained two-way, two-lane highway 54, the road to Mexico City. About 220 miles north of Zacatecas, the landscape turned silent and empty, like a desert backdrop in a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. We had forgotten what it feels like to be warm, to drive with the windows down. The road was fine, the traffic sparse, and there were none of those sudden depressions in the asphalt common on the Baja peninsula far to the west. Most encouraging, it seemed that the Mexican Highway Patrol had yet to be invented. We flew south.
In the afternoon, we crossed the imaginary line of the Tropic of Cancer. Nothing freezes below here. We gassed up at a Pemex station, the gasolina nacional of Mexico. Free advice if you're driving down here: bring cash. Here in the sticks, folks look upon plastic for what it is: plastic. Traveler's checks can be passed in hotels, but don't try it in the outback. Unleaded gas is identified on the pump as magna sin (roughly, powerful stuff without lead) and runs about $1.50 a gallon.
The photographers stumbled on Morelos, a picturesque stone and stucco village off the highway ten miles from Zacatecas. We stopped for a group shot along a dry creek bed that borders the village. The streets are narrow and cobbled, the sidewalks swept clean. An ancient church stands regally in the sun not far from a charming cafe with open vaulted doors, a place that seems more Italian than Mexican. It is an indicator of things to come. This is Spanish Mexico—the land of the conquistadors.
For someone accustomed to the rawness of border towns, to hard-knuckled Chihuahua and Monterrey, or even the Califomiafied Ensenada, Zacatecas is a shock. The city Lies on the slope of a hill, and a wide boulevard sweeps down and around it. The well-scrubbed streets in the old part of the city are cut in all shapes, giving it a European look.
More than four centuries ago, Hernando Cortez savaged the Aztec empire, only to find the promise of riches had been greatly exaggerated. But a source of Indian silver was discovered at Zacatecas, and it would become the single greatest source of silver in the world, inappropriately called the Eden Mine, after 'The Garden of"-which it definitely was not for generations of Indians forced to work it. The Eden Mine produced silver from 1583 until the 1960s.
2nd Place: Lexus SC300
It's easy to let your heart rule your mind when you're zooming through Mexico in luxury coupes. In these circumstances, the visceral appeal of BMW's extroverted 3-series coupe proves enormously seductive. Practical considerations like long-term durability, cost of ownership, and resale value don't really impinge. Nonetheless, this was a close call. Lexus's stick-shift SC300 trailed the winner by just two points.
The BMW is entrancing because of its high-fidelity communications with its driver. The Lexus, while not bad at passing essential data back to the driver, does an even better job of isolating him from the violence of high-speed motoring. In the process, the SC300 becomes more of a willing servant than a co-conspirator. But it would be a mistake to conclude that the SC300 is a creampuff coupe. The road roar and occasional stiff-leggedness over broken pavement speak of high-performance suspension calibration, and confirm it when clear roads beckon.
Pitch and rebound motions are neatly snubbed at high speed, even when you're bounding along less-than-perfect pavement, and the helm remains sharp and undiluted by any unusual steering influences from the rear wheels, as might be felt in lesser cars. The SC300's composure at speed is, to put it mildly, unshakable.
This is a surprise to anyone who figures that prototypical Lexus owners prize isolation well above participation. Some hard driving in the mountains revealed decent levels of communication from our SC300, along with dependable handling. Although we've known SC300s to hang the tail out on tight autocross courses, ours never flicked its tail in anger.
In fact, it felt perfectly predictable and confidence-inspiring, able to whisk through bends near the limits of adhesion while communicating sensations from the tire footprints in a most reassuring fashion. When you add the car's dependable cornering verve to its remarkable acceleration (it's on par with the 325is and nearly as quick as its own V-8-powered sibling), the SC's performance credentials seem impeccable.
HIGHS: Solid structure, peerless engineering, understated elegance.
LOWS: Firm rough-road ride, hefty weight.
VERDICT: Get on the waiting list now.
Compared with the BMW, the Lexus's outright dynamic virtuosity is a little less obvious, its capabilities more subtly expressed. Where the BMW takes you by the hand, the Lexus waits for your lead. Although that extra shot of charisma won the BMW the top slot in this test, that is not necessarily the last word on the subject. During our trip, the door-handle surround came off our BMW, and later, the door panel pulled away from its frame. Nothing like this happened to the SC300, and our experience with long-term Lexuses leads us to believe it never will. In fact, we're willing to wager that the Lexus offers a longer, more enduring relationship than will the BMW. Any bets? —Barry Winfield
Vestiges remain of this city's beginnings—and of its strange past that mixed greed with a violent enslavement passed off as religious paternalism (the Spanish built 12,000 churches in Mexico while slaughtering a major portion of the potential congregation). Work on a convent that still stands began in 1572, eight years before Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the planet. From the street, it looks like a Moorish fortress. Walk through its high-domed rooms—some ceilings have given way to reveal the sky—and the notion of ghosts isn't so remote; speak and the echo of your voice sounds strange.
Part of the Convento de San Francisco has been turned into a museum, where some 3700 mostly nightmarish masks produced by the vivid imaginations of Indians are on display. The masks depict man and beast, from the blue-eyed devil that was Cortez to a few that are as comic as those found on hot-sauce bottles.
There is a cathedral in the center of Zacatecas that was begun in 1752 and is one of the most elaborate examples of Spanish baroque architecture anywhere.
Zacatecas is a very friendly, spotlessly proud city of about 300,000, although it feels much smaller and cozier. The air is clear and sweet, and the low-rising, pastel-colored buildings are inviting. The Pope came here two years ago, and the white canopy that shaded him from the sun stands like a new monument.
There is an amazing place here, the Quinta Real, once a bullring that has been converted into a hotel with an absence of hoke in the process. At center ring, where the bulls once charged, is the outdoor dining area of a restaurant. We stayed at the less pricey Paraiso (now a Radisson) across from the cathedral, an elegant old-world hotel whose rooms look down onto a quiet courtyard and where anything does not go.
Arriving that evening at the edge of town, we stopped at a carwash and met the owner, Roberto Gonzalez, who once worked in the restaurant business in Texas but was drawn back to Zacatecas, where he is now an entrepreneur. He suggested a restaurant, and we invited him to join us. It was a huge, elaborately decorated, fountained-and-creeked place that was, for reasons never made clear by Roberto, occupied the entire evening only by us.
Afterward, Roberto offered to take us to a disco called the Eden Mine. We thought for a moment that Roberto, who gets almost no chance to practice his English, had said it was actually located down in the played-out silver mine. We drove to what looked like a subway station, paid $6 each, and took seats on a miniature choo-choo-type train. And then began a ten-minute ride down into a narrow, damp tunnel, its edges jagged and close, where 400 years ago Indians slaved like human ants for gold. Deep down, the train stopped. We stepped through a dim passageway and into a kind of holding room—it was a barely lit room cut by hand tools and shaped like a teardrop, wide at the bottom becoming narrow higher up. A disco floor occupied the center, with music pounding, and low couch-type seating ringed it, all the dark color of the unaltered mine walls. The deejay sat suspended overhead on a mine support, an eerie light cast onto his face, giving him the look of the museum masks. A dark bar stood at the rear. To get to it, one has to walk over a steel sidewalk grate that covers a deep, dark mineshaft; drop a coin down and listen for it to hit the water far, far below. After a couple hours of this—and a paltry tab that ran us $10 each—we returned to the Earth's surface.
The next morning, we headed out of town reluctantly. We had only scratched the surface of Zacatecas. Now it was 350 miles north toward the Sierra Madre and Ciudad Victoria.
Highway 54 north is two lanes, basically good asphalt, with straightaways that go on forever.
When the day was over, two lessons had sunk in: first, it's astounding how quickly great distances can be covered when you're setting the speed limit, and second, maybe this business about people killing people instead of guns doing it is true.
The first lesson you know about. The second lesson came sailing into my head about 2:30 that afternoon. In Mexico, the theory of natural selection seems to be at work on the highway: vehicles that are held together with bailing wire tend naturally to go slow, and better cars go faster. The function of police—we passed only two of them in four days, and they were not interested in our rate of propulsion—is to referee ex post facto. Hence, it is perfectly acceptable to pass at the century mark if your ride is capable of it.
1st Place: BMW 325is
During our zoomy journey through Mexico, every so often at a driver change someone would emerge from the 325is and gush that he could live happily ever after—and monogamously—with this car. We rarely fawn so much over a single car, so what is it about the 325is that causes these seemingly adolescent palpitations? And when it comes to the palpitating subject of price, what makes the BMW a third better than the fourth-place Thunderbird SC ($31,490 base price versus $22,525)? The answer lies not only in the what, but also in how the 325is goes about it.
Heading the list of truly impressive attributes are the engine and the transmission. Both earned perfect marks in the editors' rankings. The engine, a DOHC 2.5-liter inline six, is a masterpiece of power and refinement. It pulls strongly yet smoothly to redline—there's no lurching about—and all the while it dazzles the driver with a symphony of mechanical sounds. Equally masterful is the Getrag five-speed manual gearbox. Its shifter has those wonderful short throws, and there's a delicate yet precise feel as it slips easily from one gear to the next.
In the list of prized 325is attributes, ride and handling are not far behind the drivetrain. Whatever the road surface, the suspension transmits every nuance back to the driver without whacking him around in the process. Even when you're tearing up the asphalt, the BMW never departs from its stable and composed profile. Yet it has a light, nimble feel.
And how about looks? Yes, yes, its lines are crisp and clean, and its raked wedge shape is aggressive, but there's one word that says it all: sexy. At a glance there's the familiar three-series form of its four-door sibling, but a second look reveals that the hood is longer and lower, the windshield and back window are more steeply raked, and the rear decklid is also lower than the sedan's.
HIGHS: Clean looks, great road manners, musical motor.
LOWS: Austere interior, premium price.
VERDICT: Everything we love about the sedan but with two fewer doors.
Inside, the BMW at first seems somewhat austere and less inviting than the living rooms of the other three coupes. But first impressions are deceiving. The seats are firm, comfortable, and supportive, and they seem to place the driver in a pay-attention position for the driving tasks that lie ahead. In designing this cockpit, BMW put the driver above all other bean-counting considerations, and it paid big dividends. Passengers and parcels get the same consideration—there's room for two in the back seat, and the generous trunk can accommodate long bulky items using the split folding rear seatbacks.
That Thunderbird is a fine car. It's less expensive, and it has a handsome profile. But truth is, it just doesn't make out like this BMW. There is just nothing like a late-afternoon run down the mysterious Sierra Madre in Mexico behind the wheel of this beauty, the engine wailing in your ears. The value of this car has to do with the heart—its and yours. —André Idzikowski
Which is what I was doing in the Thunderbird SC on a vast stretch of straightaway with Idzikowski riding shotgun. The semi-truck I had begun to pass was pulling a flatbed trailer, and both were new and shiny. A moment arrived when Idzikowski became convinced that the trailer had decided to occupy the left lane, which I was in. He suddenly shouted so loud—"WATCH OUT!"—that my two hand reflexively attempted to move away from the source of this sudden unpleasant screech. Which put my left front and rear wheels off the asphalt and onto the sand and scrub, from which return is but a dream. Now it was straight off into the weeds and ohmigod keep the wheels straight and pray for an absence of large impediments. The car seemed to launch and remain an inch off the earth, airy as a glider, but held steady until I brought it to a standstill, knees shaking. I'd put up a dust cloud registering 7 on the Mount St. Helens' scale that was no doubt picked up by the weather satellite, causing consternation among orchid growers in Tampa, Florida. I have always loved the shape of this car. Now I love its insides.
Had things turned ugly, some might have blamed everything but the true source of my problem: the guy in the other vehicle. (Letters to the contrary should be addressed to: The Eden Mine, Down Deep, Zacatecas, Mexico.)
Coming into Ciudad Victoria, we were treated to perhaps 30 miles of sweeping mountain switchbacks, the kind seen on TV commercials selling performance cars. This was part of the Sierra Madre, and I kept thinking of Walter Huston in the movie, sprawled in the dirt, laughing as the gold dust is blown away by the wind. Anything goes.
Victoria is to Zacatecas what Merced is to San Francisco: a farm town, sensible but dull. I had insisted over the gripes of a few that we stay in the center of Victoria, next to the town plaza, hoping for a Saturday-night gunfight or some sort of insurrection, rather than at a resorty place we'd passed outside town that promised a TV in every room. Csere seemed to understand this in terms of story material, explaining to the gearheads: "We need to be someplace where our personal safety is in jeopardy."
This turned out to be an old hotel called the Sierra Gorda, where English is as welcome as credit cards at Pemex stations but rooms cost only $42. And Dewhurst provided a truly interesting dinner anecdote by claiming to have bludgeoned a pair of roaches to death—only to find upon his return that their corpses were gone. The stipulations for entrance to the dark and spooky El Nocturno bar are spelled out over the door:
No armed men.
No inebriated persons.
No women without masculine companions.
Deducing this to be just lip service by an establishment that in all likelihood offered these amusements, we went. Let history record that the singer Blas Amaro performed that night to an audience of six, four of whom were us, briefly; the fifth being Blas, who sat at the bar prior to his gig; the last being a guy who's in need of serious social advice. This is what happens to business when somebody starts making rules in a place where anything is supposed to go.
At breakfast that Sunday morning, in the dim old Spanish dining room that was almost empty except for us, people suddenly appeared out the window on the main street, marching to protest something—a strike? What was odd was that the streets of Ciudad Victoria were empty, except for them.
It was a short, straight-line drive back to the States that morning and a crossing at Matamoro into Brownsville, Texas—just 165 miles, half of which passed in the shroud of a strange fog. We crossed the border about two o'clock—and looking the way we did, every car was searched by U.S. Customs hardcases, who seemed disgruntled that we had no contraband. Although a huge, frightening Bowie knife I'd purchased for $7 did disappear.
We had one last night before we were due back in the Michigan Frigidaire. Those members of the staff closer to the age of 21 than to 50 threatened to mutiny if they did not get an overnighter at South Padre Island, just twenty miles up the gulf. They said it was spring break and became so glandularly excited they confused a noun for a verb: "Hey, let's party, man!" Ah, well, we drove to South Padre Island at posted speeds, a bleeding crawl. We were back in the land where nothing goes. (And, as it turned out, a week early for spring break.)
Specifications
Specifications
1993 BMW 325is
Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 2-door coupe
PRICE
Base/As Tested: $31,490/$31,952
ENGINE
DOHC 24-valve inline-6, iron block and aluminum head, port fuel injection
Displacement: 152 in3, 2494 cm3
Power: 189 hp @ 5900 rpm
Torque: 181 lb-ft @ 4200 rpm
TRANSMISSION
5-speed manual
CHASSIS
Suspension, F/R: struts/trailing arms
Brakes, F/R: vented disc/disc
Tires: Pirelli P600
205/60HR-15
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 106.3 in
Length: 174.5 in
Width: 67.3 in
Height: 53.8 in
Passenger Volume, F/R: 47/35 ft3
Trunk Volume: 14 ft3
Curb Weight: 3087 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 6.5 sec
1/4-Mile: 15.3 sec @ 92 mph
100 mph: 18.5 sec
120 mph: 31.2 sec
Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 7.3 sec
Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 9.7 sec
Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 10.0 sec
Top Speed: 129 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 176 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.79 g
Interior Sound
Idle: 43 dBA
Full Throttle: 77 dBA
70-mph Cruising: 72 dBA
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 22 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City/Highway: 19/28 mpg
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1993 Ford Thunderbird SC
Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 2-door coupe
PRICE
Base/As Tested: $22,525/$26,028
ENGINE
supercharged and intercooled V-6, iron block and aluminum heads, port fuel injection
Displacement: 232 in3, 3797 cm3
Power: 210 hp @ 4000 rpm
Torque: 315 lb-ft @ 2600 rpm
TRANSMISSION
5-speed manual
CHASSIS
Suspension, F/R: control arms/control arms
Brakes, F/R: vented disc/vented disc
Tires: Goodyear Eagle GA
P225/60ZR-16
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 113.0 in
Length: 198.7 in
Width: 72.7 in
Height: 52.7 in
Passenger Volume, F/R: 55/46 ft3
Trunk Volume: 15 ft3
Curb Weight: 3894 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 6.8 sec
1/4-Mile: 15.4 sec @ 90 mph
100 mph: 19.5 sec
120 mph: 29.1 sec
Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 7.1 sec
Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 12.4 sec
Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 11.5 sec
Top Speed: 139 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 177 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.81 g
Interior Sound
Idle: 52 dBA
Full Throttle: 85 dBA
70-mph Cruising: 74 dBA
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 16 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City/Highway: 17/24 mpg
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1993 Lexus Sc300
Vehicle Type: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 2+2-passenger, 2-door coupe
PRICE
Base/As Tested: $35,643/$38,613
ENGINE
DOHC 24-valve inline-6, aluminum block and head, port fuel injection
Displacement: 183in3, 2997 cm3
Power: 225 hp @ 6000 rpm
Torque: 210 lb-ft @ 4800 rpm
TRANSMISSION
5-speed manual
CHASSIS
Suspension, F/R: control arms/multilink
Brakes, F/R: vented disc/vented disc
Tires: Goodyear Eagle GA
215/60VR-15
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 105.9 in
Length: 191.1 in
Width: 70.5 in
Height: 52.4 in
Passenger Volume, F/R: 55/30 ft3
Trunk Volume: 9 ft3
Curb Weight: 3526 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 6.6 sec
100 mph: 18.6 sec
1/4-Mile: 15.3 sec @ 91 mph
120 mph: 32.0 sec
Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 7.2 sec
Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 9.2 sec
Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 10.0 sec
Top Speed: 140 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 173 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.82 g
Interior Sound
Idle: 38 dBA
Full Throttle: 74 dBA
70-mph Cruising: 67 dBA
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 17 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City/Highway: 18/22 mpg
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1993 Subaru SVX
Vehicle Type: front-engine, all-wheel-drive, 2+2-passenger, 2-door coupe
PRICE
Base/As Tested: $29,824/$30,191
ENGINE
DOHC 24-valve flat-6, aluminum block and heads, portfuel injection
Displacement: 202 in3, 3317 cm3
Power: 230 hp @ 5400 rpm
Torque: 224 lb-ft @ 4400 rpm
TRANSMISSION
4-speed automatic
CHASSIS
Suspension, F/R: struts/multilink
Brakes, F/R: vented disc/disc
Tires: Bridgestone Potenza RE71
225/50VR-16
DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 102.8 in
Length: 182.1 in
Width: 69.7 in
Height: 51.2 in
Passenger Volume, F/R: 53/31 ft3
Trunk Volume: 8 ft3
Curb Weight: 3614 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 7.9 sec
1/4-Mile: 16.0 sec @ 87 mph
100 mph: 22.1 sec
120 mph: 38.8 sec
Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 7.1 sec
Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 4.7 sec
Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 5.2 sec
Top Speed: 139 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 170 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.86 g
Interior Sound
Idle: 40 dBA
Full Throttle: 75 dBA
70-mph Cruising: 71 dBA
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 18 mpg
EPA FUEL ECONOMY
City/Highway: 17/25 mpg
C/D TESTING EXPLAINED