Word: horizons
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Chrysler Corp. Chairman John Riccardo boasts that 25 years from now, when automen look back on 1978, they will remember it as the year in which his company introduced the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon. The cars (or car -they are identical except for trim) are the first subcompacts to be made in the U.S. with front-wheel drive, and are supposedly the forerunners of a new generation of gas-stingy little autos that are surprisingly roomy inside and handle well. Early results seemed to justify Chrysler's optimism. Motor Trend, a magazine for auto buffs, named the Omni...
...last week Omni-Horizon faced some of the most serious safety charges ever hurled at an American car. Consumers Union, the influential nonprofit, product-testing group, announced that four Omni-Horizons it examined had failed two tests for stability and handling at expressway speeds (about 50 m.p.h.). The organization produced a 43-second film, rerun on several TV news programs, showing the Omni-Horizon careening terrifyingly. Consumers Union's conclusion: the average person might not have the skill to handle the car in a driving emergency. In the July issue of its magazine, Consumer Reports, C.U. will rate...
...first C.U. test, the driver suddenly tugs at the steering wheel, then lets it go while keeping the gas pedal down. The wheel, says C.U., is supposed to spin back quickly to its original position-but in the Omni-Horizon, wheel and car swung violently from side to side. Chrysler's manager of automotive safety relations, Christopher Kennedy, says that Chrysler itself performed this test on Omni-Horizon with inconclusive results: "Some do, some don't" perform the same way as the cars that Consumers Union examined. But, says Chrysler's chief engineer, Sidney Jeffe, the test...
Chrysler ordered a canvass of its zone managers, service managers and dealers around the country. The results, says Jeffe: "Absolutely zilch. Not a single complaint from a customer about the handling of the car." Motor Trend Executive Editor Chuck Nerpel said that in tests run by his magazine, Omni-Horizon stood out as "an agile car." Consumers' Research, a rival of Consumers Union, tested the Omni-Horizon under normal road conditions, rather than on a special track; it passed...
...argument goes now to the Government's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which was surprised to get the Consumers Union findings; it had received no previous complaints about the Omni-Horizon. Deputy Administrator Howard Dugoff says NHTSA "cannot yet explain" how Consumers Union and Chrysler got such diametrically opposed results on the critical second test. Determining whether the first let-go-of-the-wheel test has any real relation to the auto's performance, says Dugoff, "will be tough-we will have to do some rather extensive analysis." Should Omni-Horizon fail NHTSA tests, the agency could order...