This week’s episode of Big Muscle features a 1969 AMC AMX whose owner, Jimi Day, lovingly refers to as AMX-Cess. It’s a car that he fell in love with while working at a body shop as a kid. The host of Big Muscle, Mike Musto, says the hardcore AMC guys are going to be initially excited that they featured an AMC but then they’ll get mad when they realize there’s not much of the original car left. The AMX-Cess is powered by a GM Poerformance Parts LS3 under the hood with a Keisler 5-speed transmission, Ford 9 inch rear end and Ridetech suspension system. Jimi built it this way because he wanted a car that handled well and would be fun and reliable for track day thrashing. Mike ends up liking the car so much that he says it’s in the Top 2 of cars that he’s driven for the show.
It’s looking like Ford has built something special with their new Focus ST. All of the reviews I’ve read so far have picked the ST over the standard benchmark of the hot hatch class, the Volkswagen GTI. The new Focus has a 2.0 liter direct injection EcoBoost engine that puts out 250 horsepower and 26 mpg combined. With a base MSRP of $23,700, the new ST achieves a phenomenal balance of sportiness, practicality and frugality that defines all hot hatches. Chris Harris’s latest video puts the Ford Focus ST up against a couple of Europe’s best hot hatch offerings, the Renaultsport Megane RS and the Vauxhall Astra VXR. He mentions that the test is a little unfair to the Focus because the other two cars are halo models more appropriate for the Focus RS. It ultimately works out for the ST because it manages to hold it’s own while punching above its weight class. The review starts out with seeing how the cars perform on British B-Roads and then ends with a lap around a pretty technical track. All of the driving was down in wet conditions.
The most useful bit of footage is watching Harris throw the cars around the track. All three cars dance around the turns without ever pushing into understeer which is a prominent problem with high power front wheel drive cars. The overall chassis balance on all the cars is well done with “mobile rear axles.” The key to great front wheel drive grip is a stiff rear anti-roll bar. This lifts the inside rear wheel on corner entry which drives the outside front wheel into the tarmac giving it a bit more grip and preventing dreaded understeer. You can really see this working in the Focus ST since it has more of a daily driver soft suspension when compared to the other two track focused cars. I’d say the Focus ST is the Ford product that I’d be most likely to buy new until they come out with a Mustang with the 3.5 liter EcoBoost V6.
Big Muscle is back on the DRIVE channel with this feature of the fastest 0-100 mph American production vehicle of 1978, the Dodge Little Red Express. This was the first real Muscle Truck with Dodge taking advantage of a loophole for trucks in the smog regulations of the time. The result was this pickup with a hot rodded version of their 360 police car engine, side stack exhaust and wood paneling. What an amazing crazy oddball piece of American automotive history.
Somebody at Porsche must have heard that Chris Harris sold his 911 GT3 RS 4.0 liter for a Ferrari 599 and decided to win back his heart. They invited him to the Porsche test track to drive the Porsche 962 that won the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1987. As part of the deal, they also let Harris pick the mind of the man who designed the 962, Norbert Singer. Not only do we get to see the car in action, the interview with Singer really brings the significance of the car into perspective.
It still baffles and frustrates me that most of the American consumer population does not like station wagons. This is made worse by the fact that most European car makers produce some serious high performance versions. From what I understand, when men in Europe go through a mid-life crisis they buy really fast autobahn annihilating wagons to get their mojo back. That’s why there are cars like this one, the Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG Shooting Brake. It’s got the new 5.5 liter twin turbo V8 that powers all of the AMG cars except for the C63 (the engineers thought the C63 was too light for the torque of the turbo engine so they stayed with the snarly 6.2 liter NA V8). The wagon / shooting brake body style is more aerodynamic, offers better utility for hauling stuff and I think it looks way better. The fact that somebody can look at this car and still want a lumbering SUV makes me die a little bit inside.
