The best cars idle with a kind of blunt drum beat that telegraphs power deep into your chest cavity. It’s the same raw star quality of purr you get from an angry leopard.

Their growling authority has the hard edge of an Alabama hanging judge. They generate the same kind of danger-tinged anxiety. The cell walls of your eyes resonate hearing them. In Detroit’s cloistered engineering community, the secrecy normally surrounding such factory-built cars is motivated by two important desires: Don’t let the competition know what your rocket scientists are up to; and don’t let the cat out of the bag before all the bugs are engineered out of the systems. Fortunately for us, the nature of secrecy is quite similar to a vacuum, and we all know that nature abhors a vacuum.

Detroit is famous for its black-budget Skunk Works projects. Almost all of them never get beyond the factory test track perimeter fence, and we certainly make it a point to hardly ever go peeking in for ourselves. Aware that some hot toys were being displayed or demonstrated at press events, we got Barry Gibson to give us a day rate for Michigan International Speedway and asked a few of our friends to come out and play with the automotive equivalents of Stealth fighters. To paraphrase the Joker in the ‘Batman’ movie…. ‘where do they get these wonderful toys?’

  Begging the pardon of the Pistons, but these are Detroit’s new Bad Boys. Pontiac brought out a twin-turbo 5.7L V8 Trans Am. Herb Fischel’s factory Raceshop supplied two Chevrolet Camaros, one with an optimized 5.7L V8 and the other an ‘88 chassis retrofitted with a 454-ci big block. Ford gave us the original next-generation Mustang mule - a short-wheelbase Thunderbird SC with high-output V8 power, and courtesy of Ford, Jack Roush trailered out his twin-turbo 5.8L V8 Mustang, built originally as a proposal for a commemorative 25th-anniversary model. Ours is the first test by journalists ever conducted on the Roush Mustang.

Their hasn’t been a lineup of hard guys of this caliber since the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. With our cast and crew on-site that foggy morning at 0-dark-30, the MIS paddock and garages looked as busy as a NASCAR weekend, cluttered with 18-wheel tractor/trailers and exotic automobiles. Almost all these engineering toys are no more than what-ifs, but should everything click, at least one of the hybrids could get slotted for production.

The search for extra horsepower is often less understandable than the search for extraterrestrials. In each case, there may be no way to reach a successful conclusion. An increase in ultimate street horsepower needn’t even be the engineer’s goal, though we certainly hope it is; such research frequently aids in the development of improved fuel economy for applications in a variety of platforms. And if we can get into high-horsepower playtoys along the way to improved gas mileage, well then… playtoys for everybody.

Remember the GTO? Car guys remember it vividly. The truth is that it wasn't a sophisticated car, didn't handle worth a squashed peach in today's terms, but was fast and sexy, and a star was born. In Detroit, both inside and outside the individual car divisions, hope springs eternal that another GTO lurks in someone's dusty backroom. A victory for one company is ultimately a high-five vindication for them all.

These cars represent a wide spectrum of answers to the same basic question, which is, how much horse power can be made to work in a given platform? None of them has the level of production-spec detail present in a Hyundai Excel, but at this stage in their development, nice ties like air conditioning, power window lifts, and sound deadening just serve to confuse the performance issues with extra weight. These are raw cars driven by raw engines. They're experiments, works in progress. Don't even look for EPA fuel economy figures. When I asked one company for such a figure, he responded, "Just put down that 'he laughed!'"

Our sole goal was to take them up to their redlines to see what happens. The test results are listed in a chart elsewhere in this story, but in summary, we found all these programs have enough juice to bring a flush to your cheeks. The fastest car of the day, the twin-turbocharged 5.7-liter Pontiac Trans Am, could have gone under 4 seconds in the 0-60-mph timing if it had only had the right octane gasoline. And it's set up with a top-speed rear end ratio, not one better suited for dragstrip-style runs.

The Jack Roush Mustang was the most interesting piece in the litter. This is a car with a 351-cubic-inch Ford V-8 and two turbos churning to 8 psi. This engine is among the most famous displacements ever to turn a wheel in combat. Roush’s engineering group built the car in 1988 as a suggestion for a 25th-anniversary Mustang model. Ford declined the commemorative proposal, but ever since has held a gentlemen‘s agreement with Roush that the car would never, ever, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die be tested by the ink-stained wretches of auto buffdom. That’s us and those like us, by the way. Guess we just asked at the right time .

The two Camaros are noteworthy for the fact that they aren‘t new cars. The white 5.7-liter is an ‘89 model and the red 454-cubic-incher is an ‘88. What qualifies them to be in this select group of honkin’ hot dogs is that they each have been retrofitted by the factory with low-cost, high-performance engines. Chevy in tends these engines for off-road use or in pre-'72 cars not subject to current exhaust emissions standards. Complete exhaust systems for them are also available, including catalysts, which in at least one 5.7-liter installation resulted in a car that passed a state's tailpipe emissions test. That couldn't have been California.

These are light-money, heavy-duty, virtually pay-one-price power-packs that turn a worn-out Camaro into a warrior. Here's a chance for bracket racers, street rodders, and the stealthy at heart to have Corvette-sized go-power on a Camaro-sized budget. Experienced mechanics can have the engines bolted into most Camaro chassis in a weekend. Amaze your friends.

Our favorite of the bunch is the short-wheelbase Thunderbird SC, and it's the slowest of the group. At 6.4 seconds 0-60 mph in rough form, how ever, we'll take our chances with a finished car. This product is so right right now that it should immediately replace the long-wheelbase car. It's more nimble, better balanced, and, frankly, more in tune with the kind of high-performance attitude traditionally legendary cars with V-8 power have enjoyed. Better still, it's a natural evolution of the Thunderbird SC (one of which donated its body to science for this experiment, doctor). On the other hand, one observer at MIS on test day was heard to say, "You know, if that thing was sitting on the roadside in State Police blue, you'd swear it was next year's Mustang police car."

Is there another GTO-like success story among this brace of guesses? Neither Pontiac, Ford, nor Chevy has any concrete ideas about that just yet. The Camaros certainly aren't aimed in that direction by the factory. In this end of the future-think business, perfecting the engineering to make a program viable is the day's work. Other people make the inexact marketing decisions. In the engineering community, every experimental program doesn't end up a GTO. You win some and you lose some, and some get rained out. But you dress for every game.

ROUSH MUSTANG TWIN TURBO V8

  As we said, this arrest-me-red Mustang was built in 1988 as Roush's offer to Ford of a special 25th-anniversary Mustang. We even published spy pictures of the car at that time. Its power is derived from a 5.8-liter V-8 (351 cubic inches) making about 375 horsepower with non-intercooled turbos. Roush admits a reserve is available, one he left untapped; the current output is the same as a normally aspirated but "GT-ized" 351 V-8 would offer. Power could be upped beyond 400 horsepower with production-intent development and intercooling. The legislative climate seems too chilly for anything like that to happen. "That's at the outer limits of what we could get [Ford] people to put out for the buying public," Roush said.

In addition to the original engine tweaks, Roush has in stalled rear disc brakes with anti-lock and a four-pole driver-selectable adjustable suspension scheme. The Roush ride control uses the same philosophy of shock firming as the factories do, which forces oil through a series of different-diameter holes. Each setting of the four is supposed to change the ride quality from full-soft to full-firm, but the Roush car is old now and the system isn't working up to its nominal best. In a production car, the scheme would be restored to effectiveness.

Roush also ordered suspension control-point changes to eliminate the Mustang's characteristic rear axle hop, and they work. The front caster values and the tire scrub radius were revised for better turn-in and cornering, too.

Nonetheless, this is a temperamental little pony. The boost comes on between 3500 and 4000 rpm with the subtlety of a shotgun blast. The Roush car ran like a watch on the MIS road course. It felt especially stable under hot cornering. It stayed flat and tranquil no how hard it was hammered. Despite occasional detonation, which we attribute to gasoline intended for lesser cars, and an anti-lock light that stayed on all the time, the Roush car is an accomplished piece. We could make it go quickly, but it was scary to do so and we sometimes were risking the engine. Production-specification will nail that down in the first week.

This was the roughest toy in the experimental box but it shows intriguing promise. We'd rather see a GT-ized 5.8-liter engine than turbocharging, but if turbos are in the cards, intercooling and other refinements should let them work better, especially at high altitudes or sustained high-speed operation. Ford spokesman Chuck Gumushian later asked, "What would you guys say if I told you we were thinking about putting the Roush car into production?"

 

PONTIAC TRANS AM TWIN TURBO

  We met the predecessor twin-turbo 5.7-liter V-8 Pontiac Trans Am more than two years ago at one of our top-speed events. This awesome powerplant is now further re fined and bolted to the same ZF six-speed manual trans mission installed in the Corvette ZR-1. It's been dropped into a new Firebird featuring a freshly engineered independent rear suspension also adapted from the Corvette. Climbing into the cramped driver's seat is to relive the Mercury space program. No tin-can space capsule could be tighter. I'm surrounded by the thick steel tubing of a full rollcage. The stock seat is enhanced by a five-point Simpson safety harness. Hemmed in by bars and restraints, I feel as if I'm in jail. Soon it will feel like an in sane asylum. ( ADMIN NOTE:  I do believe that the seats pictured above are, in fact, Recaro buckets, not the factory ones. The car had the same seats when I saw it in person in 1998.)


The car's twin turbocharging provides 640 horsepower at 4500 rpm and 765 foot-pounds of torque at 3200 rpm. We're talking IMSA GT territory, and engaging the clutch confirms it. I do a lap of familiarization, but this is only time enough to recognize how alien this platform really is. The car is quite settled as speed increases. It carries a rear gear ratio intended for top-speed testing, not the sprints we've been doing with the instruments. Consequently, it eats up the skidmark-stained MIS asphalt without a burp. I am fervently hoping not to put down any new skidmarks of my own.

When I floor the accelerator for the first time at the ex it of MIS' fourth turn, I feel my face being pulled back like the astronauts in a bad '50s science fiction movie. Wouldn't you know it, my G-suit is at the cleaners. On the front straight, I spool up through the gears without a problem until I have to fool with the stick to secure fifth and sixth. I hold my throttle position in the sudden second turn and concentrate on repeating a heartfelt mantra of don't lift - don't lift - don't lift. I'm suddenly aware that two outlet nozzles for the full fire suppression system are staring me down like Cobras. The car doesn't feel as flighty with the independent rear suspension, though, and takes the bumps without adding worry to my steering arc.

Centrifugal force in the high banking tugs me up and right. Exiting Turn Two, I nail it again and the Trans Am leaps forward like a Texan at a Moon Pie. The experimental car shakes and rattles with the intensity of a paint shaker, and the engine/exhaust noise is tantamount to watching a space shuttle launch in a lawn chair from 100 feet away, but I can't get the lopsided grin off my mug. This bright-blue Pontiac is the fastest, most-powerful street car I've ever driven.

Pontiac folk won't do anything more than smile wryly when the term "production" is used. It keeps them from frowning.

 

CHEVROLET RACESHOP 5.7-LITER CAMARO / CHEVROLET 454 CAMARO

One popular image suffered by car makers is that they're callous. Yeah, boy, once you get out the door in
 their cars, they forget all about you.

 Au contraire, more frere.

The Chevrolet service parts organization now offers the kind of after-sale attention you can get behind. These test cars are an '89 Camaro chassis retrofitted with a carbureted 5.7-liter V-8 and a five-speed manual, and an '88 Camaro powered by a 454-cubic-inch V-8 turning a four-speed automatic transmission. Presto-chango—0-60-mph times of 5 seconds are only a weekend away. The complete 5.7-liter engine lists for only about $3100, but Chevy says dealers often have sold it for as little as $2700. The average mid-range home computer costs more than that.

Both are fast automobiles, but where they shine like lasers is in torque values. The 5.7 produces 380 foot-pounds at 3600 rpm, and the big-block 420 at 3600.

Around the big oval, the 5.7 roared appreciatively each time a shift was made. This engine loves to rev. Though both cars are meat-eaters, the lusty automatic big-block is our favorite of the two by a nose. When you put your foot into the gas of an automatic 454 Camaro, that brawler takes off like an F/A-18 catapulted from the flight deck of the Nimitz. This is what big-cube American V-8s are all about, with the kind of throttle response that interfaces with the driver's nerve endings. The deeper you drop the accelerator, the more the jolt is transferred to the central nervous system. Everyone should own a big Chevy V-8 sometime in his life, and now everyone can..

 

FORD THUNDERBIRD SC SHORT-WHEELBASE

When Thunderbird drivers pull abreast of the short-wheelbase Thunderbird SC, they stare at it in obvious confusion. This engineering oddity is the ultimate what's-wrong-with-this-picture puzzle.

It's called liposuction. It removes fat.

Ford auto architect Arch Cothran was given the task to take weight out of the T-Bird power car, and he did this, as an engineer would, by charting the shortest distance between two points—the front end and the rear end. With a handful of Thunderbird photographs, he began cutting apart cars. He kept cutting and pasting until he had a composite photo of the red short-wheelbase car you see here. Cothran took 15 inches from between the door and the rear-wheel opening and another 7 inches from the rear overhang. The wheelbase was also trimmed by 15 inches.

  A 400-pound weight-loss program is made thrilling by the built 5.0-liter Mustang V-8 engine now under the hood. It's a regular short block and stock cam, but the rocker arm ratio is bigger and is assisted by a bigger mass air meter and larger fuel-injection throttle body, boosting air flow. Aluminum SVO "AR" heads also optimize flow— and save 48 pounds, too. Output is pegged at about 300-plus horsepower with the mufflers on, about 350-plus with them removed, which is how we tested it. A six-speed Borg-Warner T5-6 manual transmission is installed.

The Bird almost sounds like a Funny Car with the mufflers off, so naturally we drove it that way for a couple days. This was a loud and unusual sight in the neighbor hood, which on our street of retirees and laid-off auto workers tended to draw some attention. A Ford exec in a Town Car followed us home one morning, drawn like a victim of the Pied Piper to the T-Bird's mellow bellow.

Around the big MIS oval, it shrieked like a demon from a Stephen King movie, but its actual performance was intimately manageable, perhaps surprisingly so. It drives like a real car, one whose shortness and 315/35ZR17 Goodyears return crisp steering. Its new 54/46 percent balance and a slightly lowered ride height befit a plat form that was once a gleam in someone's eye as the next-generation Mustang chassis. This particular program, however, was deemed too expensive.

All the better for our proposal, which is to develop the short-wheelbase T-Bird as a salable 2 + 2.

TEST DATA

VEHICLE         0-30 (SEC)         0-60 (SEC)         ¼ MILE (SEC / MPH)         BRAKING (30-0 / 60-0)

454 Camaro         2.4                     5.5                     14.0 / 102.0                     26 / 130

5.7L Camaro         2.1                     5.2                     13.7 / 103.3                     32 / 154

Roush Mustang         2.3                 5.8                     14.5 / 100.7                     34 / 127

Trans Am             2.2                   4.6                    12.7 / 116.9                  34 / 156

SWB T-bird            2.3                     6.4                     14.8 / 93.1                     31 / 127

TECH DATA

CHEVROLET 454 CAMARO

Body style:             2-door, 4-passenger
Vehicle configuration:             Front engine, rear drive
Engine configuration:             V8, OHV, 2 valves per cylinder
Engine displacement, ci / cc:             454 / 7440
Horsepower, hp @ rpm, SAE net:             400 @ 5600 rpm
Torque, ft. lb. @ rpm, SAE net:             420 @ 3600 rpm
Horsepower per liter:             53.8
Weight to power ratio, lb / hp:             8.8
Redline, rpm:             6000
Transmission:             4-speed automatic
Axle ratio:             3.27:1
Wheelbase, in. / mm:             101.0 / 2566
Length, in. / mm:             192.0 / 4877
Curb Weight, lb:             3650
Weight distribution, f / r, %:             59 / 41
Fuel capacity, gal:             15.5
Suspension, f / r:             Independent / independent
Steering:             Recirculating ball, power assist
Brakes, f / r:             Vented discs / vented discs
ABS:             Not offered
Wheels, f / r:             16 x 8 in, cast aluminum
Tires, f / r:             245/50ZR16, Goodyear Eagle

CHEVROLET 5.7 LITER CAMARO

Body style:             2-door, 4-passenger
Vehicle configuration:             Front engine, rear drive
Engine configuration:             V8, OHV, 2 valves per cylinder
Engine displacement, ci / cc:             350 / 5735
Horsepower, hp @ rpm, SAE net:             345 @ 5000 rpm
Torque, ft. lb. @ rpm, SAE net:             380 @ 3600 rpm
Horsepower per liter:             60.2
Weight to power ratio, lb / hp:             9.3
Redline, rpm:             5800
Transmission:             5-speed manual
Axle ratio:             3.45:1
Wheelbase, in. / mm:             101.0 / 2566
Length, in. / mm:             192.0 / 4877
Curb Weight, lb:             3201
Weight distribution, f / r, %:             N / A
Fuel capacity, gal:             15.5
Suspension, f / r:             Independent / independent
Steering:             Recirculating ball, power assist
Brakes, f / r:             Vented discs / vented discs
ABS:             Not offered
Wheels, f / r:             16 x 8 in, cast aluminum
Tires, f / r:             245/50ZR16, Goodyear Eagle

PONTIAC TRANS AM TWIN TURBO

Body style:             2-door, 4-passenger
Vehicle configuration:             Front engine, rear drive
Engine configuration:             V8, OHV, 2 valves / cylinder, twin- turbocharged and intercooled
Engine displacement, ci / cc:             350 / 5735
Horsepower, hp @ rpm, SAE net:             640 @ 4500 rpm
Torque, ft. lb. @ rpm, SAE net:             765 @ 3200 rpm
Horsepower per liter:             111.6
Weight to power ratio, lb / hp:             5.3
Redline, rpm:             5000
Transmission:             6-speed manual
Axle ratio:             3.31:1
Wheelbase, in. / mm:             101.0 / 2566
Length, in. / mm:             196.0 / 4978
Curb Weight, lb:             3380
Weight distribution, f / r, %:             53 / 47
Fuel capacity, gal:             19 (fuel cell)
Suspension, f / r:             Independent / independent
Steering:             Recirculating ball, power assist
Brakes, f / r:             Vented discs / vented discs
ABS:             Not offered
Wheels, f / r:             17 x 9.5 / 17 x 10.5 in, cast aluminum
Tires, f / r:             275/40ZR17, Goodyear Eagle

ROUSH MUSTANG

Body style:             2-door, 4-passenger
Vehicle configuration:             Front engine, rear drive
Engine configuration:             V8, OHV, 2 valves / cylinder, twin turbocharged
Engine displacement, ci / cc:             351 / 5752
Horsepower, hp @ rpm, SAE net:             375 @ 5200 rpm
Torque, ft. lb. @ rpm, SAE net:             390 @ 3500 rpm
Horsepower per liter:             65.2
Weight to power ratio, lb / hp:             7.5
Redline, rpm:             5800
Transmission:             5-speed manual
Axle ratio:             3.55:1
Wheelbase, in. / mm:             100.5 / 2553
Length, in. / mm:             179.6 / 4562
Curb Weight, lb:             3435
Weight distribution, f / r, %:             58 / 42
Fuel capacity, gal:             15.4
Suspension, f / r:             Independent / live axle
Steering:             Rack and pinion, power assist
Brakes, f / r:             Vented discs / vented discs
ABS:             Standard
Wheels, f / r:             17 x 7, 17 x 8 in, cast aluminum
Tires, f / r:             274/40ZR17, Goodyear Eagle

FORD THUNDERBIRD SC

Body style:             2-door, 4-passenger
Vehicle configuration:             Front engine, rear drive
Engine configuration:             V8, OHV, 2 valves per cylinder
Engine displacement, ci / cc:             302 / 4949
Horsepower, hp @ rpm, SAE net:             350 @ 5500 rpm
Torque, ft. lb. @ rpm, SAE net:             345 @ 4000 rpm
Horsepower per liter:             70.7
Weight to power ratio, lb / hp:             10.2
Redline, rpm:             6000
Transmission:             6-speed manual
Axle ratio:             3.31:1
Wheelbase, in. / mm:             98.0 / 2469
Length, in. / mm:             183.7 / 4666
Curb Weight, lb:             3570
Weight distribution, f / r, %:             54 / 46
Fuel capacity, gal:             16
Suspension, f / r:             Independent / independent
Steering:             Rack and pinion, power assist
Brakes, f / r:             Vented discs / vented discs
ABS:             Not offered
Wheels, f / r:             17 x 11 in, cast aluminum
Tires, f / r:             315/35ZR17, Goodyear Eagle