The Airflite looks muscular without being cartoonish, the front end shares a family resemblance to the Crossfire, the wraparound windshield is reminiscent of '65 Imperial, and the pillarless four-door design is something the world desperately needs. We're also growing fonder of the sweeping Marlin-like roof too-despite our best efforts to continue mocking it.
Our advice to DaimlerChrysler is to drop out a couple of doors, toss in a 5.7 Hemi, and call it Barracuda.
If Lincoln Had Had This Car, He Wouldn't Have Been Shot[Photos 116-0306.SCUP 8 on disc]There are great forces out to get you. Everybody knows it but-and this is the sinister part-no one will talk to you about it. Sure your doctors are dismissing your thoughts as delusional paranoia, but they're in on the conspiracy too. How will you be safe? How will you be safe?
What you need is the new Lincoln Town Car Ballistic Protection Series (BPS)! It's an armored vehicle that will protect you from small arms fire whether it comes from black helicopters or that grassy knoll over there. It's not perfectly impregnable, so you'll still have to look in the shadows for agents of the CIA, KGB, and AARP, but it offers some protection.
To fortify the Town Car, Lincoln has employed five basic technologies. Advanced ceramic composite materials are used as a bulwark along most of the vertical surfaces and they work by breaking up bullets and dispersing their energy. Ballistic steel is used on other surfaces and supplements the ceramics in others. Ballistic transparencies make up the windows, which, at nearly twice the standard thickness, can stop rifle shots. An interwoven Aramid blanket insulates the bottom of the BPS to keep shrapnel from intruding from below. Polymer inserts allow the tires to keep rolling up to 30 miles at 30 mph after they've been shot out.
"About 300 OEM tests will be performed on Town Car BPS, including crash tests, which will make it one of the most thoroughly tested armored vehicles in the world," said Lauren Schafer, director, Lincoln Special Engineering Operations. "Additionally, we've conducted extensive ballistic testing at independent labs to validate the ballistic performance of our materials."
Despite the armor, the BPS Town Car is designed to appear to be any other Town Car clogging the Hertz lot. Because when you've been targeted (and you have been) anonymity is your only friend. The irony that you're driving a car designed to protect you from assassination that's named after someone who was assassinated is just something with which you'll have to live.
Colorado High, Canyon Deep [optional][Photos 116-0305.SCUP 9A through 9C on disc.]Fullsize trucks are among the best products Detroit builds. Smaller trucks aren't.
At the Detroit auto show, GM showed it's plan to reinvigorate the compact pickup market in the form of the '04 Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon. The two trucks replace the achingly deficient S10 and Sonoma.
With styling swiped from its big brother, the Silverado, the Colorado is obviously a Chevy truck. The big advance comes in the form of a much stiffer ladder frame, but the suspension itself is straightforward and conventional pickup stuff: A-arms up front and a solid axle in the back on leaf springs. Of course it should have a much more refined suspension, and the inclusion of rack-and-pinion steering should make for more precise directional control.
Power for the new trucks comes from either the new 175hp Vortec 2800 2.8L, DOHC, 16-valve four or the 220hp Vortec 3500 3.5L, DOHC, 20-valve five. Both all-aluminum engines feature variable valve timing and other advanced technologies derived from the Vortec 4200 4.2L straight-six installed in the Trailblazer SUV. The thick output of the 3500 may even help people overlook the fact that no six-cylinder or V-8 will be offered. Both two- and four-wheel-drive models will be offered (of course) with familiar transmission choices.