Camira sure to be a winner

Press, 20 August 1982, Page 21

Camira sure to be a winner

BEHIND the WHEEL with

Peter Greens lade

If any car is going to shake up the highly-competi-tive Japanese-dominated 1600 to 2000 cu cm market in New Zealand it must be the Australian version of the General Motors J-car, the 1.6 litre Cortina-sized Holden Camira which was publicly launched this week. Over the last couple of years, new transverse-en-gined. front-wheel drive models have been introduced as second-generation versions. If that is so. the ■ Camira must be the first of the third generation of such cars. It is the only car of this type that I have driven so far that displays all the virtues of front-wheel drive and virtually none of the vices. It is a car with a very strong Opel strain in its pedigree. Adam Opel is the West German offshoot of General Motors. However, the American strain is there also, as well as that of the GM Japanese affiliate. Isuzu. The Australian strain is dominant and it manifests itself in the Holden Commodore styling and typical General JWotors-Holderi ruggedness. Powered by a 1598 cu cm. four-cylinder. five-bearing crankshaft engine, which was a cross-flow alloy head and a single . overhead camshaft which, with the water pump, is driven by a toothed belt, the Camira heralds CM-H's return to the medium car market here and in Australia. It is a market that has reached a stage in its life where it needs stirring, for the Japanese cars that dominate it have been able to rest on their laurels for longer than is healthy. Against that background the Camira must make an impact, for it is a brand spanking new car in this part of the world and it. can almost be guaranteed to become a family favourite in New Zealand. It might find the row a bit harder to hoe in Australia, where there are apparently a lot of people who believe that Ford’s Cortina replacement, a frontwheel drive 2-litre saloon originating from Toyo Kogyo, will be more suited to motoring conditions than the smaller-engined Camira. Time will tell. The Cortina replacement will be launched about next March. Three Camira models — SL, SL/X and SL/E - with

differing levels of equipment and pricing will be offered in New Zealand, although the SL/E will not be available until later in the year. In that version a five-speed manual gearbox will be fitted and this gearbox will be offered as an option on the SL/X model also later in the year. The manual transmissions are being manufactured by Isuzu, while the excellent three-speed automatic transmission system, which is an option on the SL/X and SL/E versions, is of American origin. These cars are roomy and well appointed with good quality upholstery and trim and comfortable but firm seats. Instrumentation is well arranged and adequate and. in fact, all models have some very practical features in their cabins. However, most importantly, they will comfortably accommodate four large people and five without too much of a pinch. Also, they must have the biggest luggage boot of any car in their class. Because the Camira looks so much like the Commodore. I doubt if it will attract as much attention as new models generally do, but those who drive the car should be delighted with it. Front-wheel drive cars tend to understeer or run wide in corners. They also tend to telegraph the fact that it is their front wheels and not their rear wheels that are doing the work. The driver gets the message through the car's steering wheel and, on occasions that message can come through loud and clear as- the front

driving wheels fight the man at the wheel in an attempt to gain control. It is not unknown for drivers to experience some difficulty in controlling front-wheel drive cars while they continue to apply power to’ the road. I am happy to report that the Camira does not display any of those unpleasant characteristics. GM-H builds a fair degree of understeer into all its cars, in the widelyheld belief that the average motorist would prefer to drive a car that runs wide in corners than one that tailslides around them. However. the degree of understeer that has been built into the Camira is so little that the car displays virtually neutral steering and handling characteristics.

That is something I can state quite categorically. While testing a Camira on Queensland outback roads a few weeks ago. I mis-read a corner .on a dust-strewn rutted track and shot off into a grove of tightly spaced and substantial tree’s, all of which I managed to avoid as. swinging the car from lock to lock. I slalomed between them with what seemed like millimetres to spare.

If that Camira >had understeered, or oversteered for that matter, someone else would have been telling you about this third generation front-wheel-drive car. Medical services are pretty thin on the ground in that particular neck of the woods! That excursion into Queensland’s outback also impressed upon me that the Camira is a well-balanced and suspended car. McPherson wet struts — the same as those used on the Commodore — are fitted at the front end and the rear suspension is based on what GM-H calls the trailing compound crank concept. This comprises two trailing control arms, connected by a beam mounted through big rubber bushes to the rear body rails. The connecting beam, unlik' some employed to locate tie rare wheels of front-drye cars, is not solid and .vill twist, so it not only serves to / locate the trailing c«ntroF arms but also acts as /_

torsion bar. / The system works in n? ctl the same manner as/ ear independent suspensio’ and * as I was able to/ ec by closely following o r t ' ler Camiras on th l " .Surfers Paradise Racew?> works , most effective'’- Normally production saF ns driven m racing tend to lift one wheel / r another in faster corn/S and bends on race tract/ but the wheels O f the zamira remained

' firmly / the track at all s times /hough there was a S fair sree$ ree °f body roll. In this/Ogard the Gamira is ? Tat/ hke many French '• ’ C a? which are excellent r ffdholders, even though the • /iount of compliance designed into their suspension /systems is rather more than would be considered acceptable by more orthodox suspension engineers. By now readers will have gathered that the Camira is a rather unusual front-wheel drive car in that it handles so well. Part of this excellent

recipe is. of course, the steering ingredient. It is Aus-tralian-designed variableratio rack and pinion and,' unlike straight rack aiy pionion, it is quite light A low’speeds. It is extreme precise and the only tions I have about it co\ crr) tyre widths. I found it-ather heavy on the road in ae case of Camira SL/E/ Versionswhich are fitted tyres of wider section used on the SL and versions. However, eve on the SL/E models the steering was quite acce iable even lf the response' as n °t s 0 g°°d The Ay other point of criticP that I could determjne.n two days of driving Capras on the race track an ,in Queensland’s outback jyated to the gearshift. It /as imprecise in most of the cars I drove and it was not always easy to select the chosen ratio. In one particular’car I had extreme difficulty in finding a frequentlyiPeded second gear, although z At no time did the cars I drove jump out of gear, a fault that caused a colleague to complain. Gear linkages

/an prove tricky'to adjust in /front-wh<el drive cars and / maybe that was at the root of the trouble. Also, it should be forne in mind that these ca-s were subjected to some ,iery hard driving on the racing circuit and in the outback where more than 400 kilometres of bone-jolting tracks were covered. In summary. I believe that the Camira may well prove to be the best car to be produced by General MotorsHolden. And, coming as it does after the Commodore, I that is saying something! It is certainly not the fastest car in its class, but its mid-range performance is so lively and its steering and general handling characteristics are so good that it is. as I found, a highly efficient, safe and lively point-to-point car. More and more motorists are beginning to realise that a car does not need to be exceptionally fast to cover distance’s quickly. Steering, cornering ability, brakes, general all-round comfort and so on are more important.