Neil
Permanent resident
Posts: 1322
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« Reply #9 on: 08 October, 2011, 08:48:36 PM » |
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Lancia get a second mention this week in the Times today in Weekend sub section, review of the Chrysler Ypsilon I have pasted in, it scores 3 stars out of five.
"The US carmaker has a long history of utterly batty vehicles - but none are more surprising than this trim runabout
Chrysler certainly has history. Too much history, probably. A bit like the Baltic. It took the American company only 12 years from its foundation in 1924 to become the second-largest car manufacturer in the world after Ford. Some 70 years later it was on its arthritic knees begging for billions of dollars in government bail-out money. Talk about performance: from 60 to nought in a little under a century.
But look at the cars along the way — finned, straked, chrome-hung and, more than occasionally, gloriously barking. Like the CU Airflow 8 Sedan of 1934, for example. The result of a brainwave by a Chrysler engineer who grew convinced that American cars were more aerodynamic going backwards than forwards, this liveried behemoth looked, from the front, the way it probably ought to have looked from the back and, accordingly, appeared to be in reverse as a matter of course.
To demonstrate the car’s impeccable fortitude, Chrysler released a film of one being pushed sideways off a sheer hill, whereupon the Airflow 8 (which was, bear in mind, on a scale that we would be more likely to associate these days with bendy buses) bounces, performs not one, but two perfect somersaults, rights itself and is driven away as if nothing just happened.
Or how about the Town & Country “Barrel Back” Station Wagon from 1942, which seated nine, featured extensive use of polished wooden panelling in the door regions and demanded the same levels of maintenance as an ocean-going yacht? They don’t make them like that any more. They didn’t make them like that then either.
And now here’s the Chrysler Ypsilon, a bubble-bodied urban spin-about for downsizers, at the very notion of which it is next to impossible not to emit a hearty, Detroit-inflected: “What da f***?” A supermini? From Chrysler? Historically, Chrysler customers would have sneered at the idea that something this size could even claim to be a car’s spark plug, let alone the whole car.
But then, to what extent is the Ypsilon a Chrysler? If you live on the European mainland, you will be calling this car a Lancia, and it will have a different badge on the front to indicate as much. In the UK and Ireland, though, it must lead the way for some critical “brand repositioning” under Chrysler’s recently formed and backside-saving alliance with Fiat of Italy (who also own Lancia). In other words, it’s a Chrysler because someone in an office says so. It has about as much in common with the Motor City as Venice, and is no more American, fundamentally, than Silvio Berlusconi’s wardrobe.
Still, if it gets the cars made ... And at least the Ypsilon is smart and perky. If you have coveted a cute Fiat 500 but have been put off because they have only three doors and four seatbelts, then this car could call to you. (The Ypsilon’s rear doors are cunningly concealed, with “secret” door handles up at the window line.) It’s even available with Fiat’s great and garlanded 0.9 TwinAir engine, although the driver is that little bit more protected from its entertaining buzz by distance and insulation.
Its Chrysler-inflected claim to unusual levels of luxury look a little forced in a couple of places. The gear diagram appears to have been scratched into the top of the gear shift with a Biro, and the door to the glove compartment is not much thicker than a cereal packet, and probably only marginally more durable in the long term, depending on how frequently you tend to compartmentalise your gloves.
Yet there is one way in which the Ypsilon connects seamlessly with its badge’s storied legacy. Whatever else you want to say about the Airflow 8 Sedan, it wasn’t boring. Neither was the Town & Country “Barrel Back”. And neither is the Ypsilon. I wouldn’t fancy its chances coming off a hill sideways, however. On the positive side, though: no wood to maintain. Some things do get better.
Chrysler Ypsilon .09
Price from £10,695
Top speed 109mph
0-62 11.5 seconds
Average consumption 67.3mpg
CO2 emissions 99g/km"
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