Period Road Tests

In their June 1977 issue of Car and Driver, the editorial staff labeled the Porsche 928 as “the best Porsche ever.” That was a lofty claim even at the time, even if Yates had labeled the Mercedes 450SEL 6.9 “the best car” just a year prior. In this piece, entitled Porsche Re-Introduces the Sports Car, David E. Davis, Jr., L.J.K. Setright, and Brock Yates each gave their respective take on the new front-engined V8 Porsche during an early 1977 press launch. Today is 9/28, so what better day to revisit?

Click above to open the article in a full-window viewer, or hit the “share” arrow to download the PDF. Individual pages can be viewed in the gallery below.
First code-named 911 H, the 928 was conceived in 1971; by 1974, 200 million Deutschmarks had been committed to the project. This came at a time when most big manufacturers were struggling. Porsche chairman Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann put it thusly:

“In 1974, mind you…nobody would give you a penny for the future of the sports car. There was an energy crisis, a recession, and most of the people running car companies had—I don’t know how to say this nicely in English—uh, brown in their underwear. But we went ahead. We couldn’t look back.”

In their June 1977 issue of Car and Driver, the editorial staff labeled the Porsche 928 as “the best Porsche ever.” That was a lofty claim even at the time, even if Yates had labeled the Mercedes 450SEL 6.9 “the best car” just a year prior. In this piece, entitled Porsche Re-Introduces the Sports Car, David E. Davis, Jr., L.J.K. Setright, and Brock Yates each gave their respective take on the new front-engined V8 Porsche during an early 1977 press launch. Today is 9/28, so what better day to revisit?

Click above to open the article in a full-window viewer, or hit the “share” arrow to download the PDF. Individual pages can be viewed in the gallery below.
First code-named 911 H, the 928 was conceived in 1971; by 1974, 200 million Deutschmarks had been committed to the project. This came at a time when most big manufacturers were struggling. Porsche chairman Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann put it thusly:

“In 1974, mind you…nobody would give you a penny for the future of the sports car. There was an energy crisis, a recession, and most of the people running car companies had—I don’t know how to say this nicely in English—uh, brown in their underwear. But we went ahead. We couldn’t look back.”

“Like Rick in Casablanca, who arrived to take the waters and learned there were none, we showed up to test a new Pontiac and found we’d been misled.”

-Peter Egan, Road & Track Senior Editor

With the Fools’ Day upon us, we high-tailed it to the archives to resurface one of Road & Track’s delightful gag road tests, this time from the April 1986 issue on the subject of the Pontiac O-77 Excitement—written by vehicular polymath Peter Egan, accompanied by R&T‘s ever-astute Engineering Editor Dennis Simanaitis, and complemented by wonderful photography from none other than Jeff Zwart.

Click above to open the article in a full-window viewer, or hit the “share” arrow to download the PDF. Individual pages can be viewed in the gallery below.
Many automakers have made things other than cars: Peugeot cranks out pepper mills, Bugatti built trains, Buick gave the US Army the M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, and Toyota manufactures prefabricated homes in Japan. But despite the Pontiac branding, the hot air balloon tested by Road & Track wasn’t built by the boys on Baldwin Avenue. Instead, it was built by an outfit based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who constructed their craft under license from Cameron Balloons in the UK.