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fuel to the fire: 16v's are BAD!
At 07:56 PM 10/5/2003, Bradley Peet wrote:
>As you can see, almost everything this guy Robert Collins said is either
>severely dated or questionable altogether. It would be awfully silly for me
>to call him up and offer my unsoliticed opinion.
I'd have to agree with Bradley on this one. But just to add some more fuel
to the fire. (Because it's fun.) :)
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Select quotes from the original Scirocco 16V road test in Car & Driver's
08/1986 issue.
By Csaba Csere, now the Editor in Chief of same magazine.
"Volkswagen Scirocco 16V. An amazing transformation. With one fell swoop,
the wizards of Wolfsburg have transformed the ho-hum VW Scirocco from an
also-ran into a supercoupe to be reckoned with. The principal element in
this metamorphosis is a new twin-cam, sixteen-valve, four-cylinder engine..."
"The sixteen-valve Scirocco has enough punch to... provide as much pleasure
going up a mountain road as the eight-valve Scirocco can provide going down
one. "
"...The 123-hp engine is no less willing at any speed than... the base
Scirocco... In fact, we could discern absolutely no penalty or loss of
refinement as a result of the additional 33hp."
"The 16V label is this car's ticket from the back of the pack to the thick
of the supercoupe battle. "
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Road & Track, 08/86:
"This Scirocco is quick. How quick? Quicker than a Porsche 944 or Mazda
RX-7. It accelerates to 60mph... fully 3.0 seconds quicker than the last
Scirocco we tested... This is stunning performance. It does this without
excessive noise, with no turbo lag, and with only 1.8 liters. "
"To achieve such high peak power, the engine has large enough ports that
it's low rpm airflow is nothing to write home about. To compensate, the
long intake runners are tuned to provide a ram effect, though there's still
just the tiniest flat spot in acceleration off idle. Obviously this is no
ordinary engine."
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Motor Trend, 09/85:
"The new aluminum alloy head has a 20% higher flow rate than its 2-valve
counterpart, and the tuned, venturi-type inlet runners ensure optimum
delivery of air to the cylinders. The basic design is unique in that it
locates the exhaust valves in a vertical plane and inclines the intakes 25'
with the spark plug in between. This allows for a relatively narrow head
and also yields an internal combustion chamber layout relatively
insensitive to detonation. "
"...there's no question that the 16V goes a long way toward rectifying
nearly all of the complaints people raised about the Scirocco's marginal
performance."
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So now it's 3 versus 1; the Big Three of automotive journalism against some
dude who got fired from Drake 20 years ago.
Anyone care to counter? :-)
Jason
PS: For the full articles, see http://www.scirocco16v.org and click on
"Press"...
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1987 Scirocco 2.0 16v
1994 Golf 4dr VR6
1990 E30 325iT
1997 E39 528iA
http://www.scirocco16v.org
"In the olden days, a good flame war could go on for weeks or months, with
hot invective flying around like rhetorical shrapnel. It was high art, high
entertainment. Though tempers flared hot and professional bridges were
sometimes irreparably burned, ultimately it was a game ? a participatory
sport in which the audience awarded points for felicitous disparagements,
particularly well-worded putdowns, inspired squelches." -- Christopher
Locke, "The Cluetrain Manifesto".
"So yes, the LSD works, sort of like ABS in forward without the foot
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