Pugs, Cits & Other Sports

[Will Owen <nashwill912@domain.elided>]

Mr. Welty said -

"my friend Dick's interest is inspired by a couple of interesting specials
that have shown up. one is a maserati engined sprint car, and the other
transplants an entire hydralic Puegot suspension into a tube frame chassis."

I think he got his frogs mixed up there - surely it should have been Citroen
suspension, not Peugeot. Anyway, that could be an interesting experiment. The Citroen's
magical ride qualities are based on extreme suppleness and very low unsprung weight,
plus a near-perfect balance of damping (via a non-compressible fluid) and springing (by
a compressible gas). The suspension arms look impossibly wrong, being these bent,
untriangulated steel things, but they work just fine in some rather heavy cars, so they
might work here...BTW, does anyone remember another adaptation of a passenger car's
fluid suspension to competition use? That was Joe Huffaker's BMC Liquid Suspension
Special, using the suspension media from the MG1100 sedans.

Which brings us (he insisted) to the Sports Sedan thread. My take on that elusive
definition is that it's like trying to define what's sexy. There were the "sports
sedans" on Bentley and "baby" Rolls chassis in the Thirties that were never meant to be
used as sports cars, but as owner-driven adjuncts to a well-heeled sporting life. There
were the postwar cars of that same sort, built on chassis of prewar design, such as
Alfa's Freccia d'Oro, the Bugatti Type 101, and the Delahayes and Delages. The modern
variety, it appears to me, had its genesis in the cars that various factories entered
in international rallies, as well as the tendency of car nuts everywhere to race
anything they can get their hands on. Whenever someone built a car that actually seemed
to encourage such activity, but which could also be used on a daily basis for the
shopping and trips to Grandma's, we all (YOU know who you are!) bought them by the
boatload, with very little regard for class or pedigree. Those of us who have been
around for a bit will remember when any local sports car club had a few VWs in the
ranks; Your Correspondent has campaigned such thoroughbred machinery as the Hillman
Husky and the Triumph Herald in his time...

I'm sure most of us could spin out a list of cars we would define as Sports Sedans, and
that we'd probably have doubts about a lot of each others' choices. I'm content to let
it apply simply to any closed car with a meaningful back seat that I can enjoy driving
with verve and gusto. In other words, if I'm driving a sedan down the road, and I see a
yellow sign with a wiggly arrow, and underneath it says "Next 10 Miles," and I get a
great big grin on my face...THAT'S a sports sedan.

Will Owen
'87 Milano (YES!!)
'72  Citroen DS21 ('fraid not)
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