The car news from 30 years ago – Out of the Old Box

One young Chinese manufacturer after another is bombarding the European car market with competitively priced models, various manufacturers are betting on paying monthly for options in cars, the Mercedes-Benz G-class is getting an electric brother and an old Soviet brand is getting a second life because of the isolation from Russia. Just a selection of this week’s car news. These are special times, shall we say. A look at the AutoWeek ‘journal’ pages from exactly thirty years ago is almost a kind of refreshing in that context. Back then, completely different things dominated the news.

Sporty Skoda Favorit

At the very top of the news pages we find an article about a new version of the Skoda Favorit. You know, that legacy of Czechoslovakia from behind the Iron Curtain. After the fall of the Wall, Volkswagen got a firm hand in Skoda and improved the Favorit on numerous points. However, the Favorit got a little more impetus thanks to the arrival of a sportier version: the Sport Line. You can see it above. It was a bit of an awkward combination, a Favorit with things like alloy wheels, a rear spoiler and tinted glass. Nothing happened under the hood, this sportier Favorit also had the 54 hp version of the 1.3 on board. Only with the arrival of the injection version of that engine, two years later, would the Favorit also become a bit sportier in that area, although ‘sporty’ remained a relative concept.

‘Downsizing’ at the Volkswagen Golf

With ‘downsizing’ you undoubtedly immediately think of the rise of the small turbo engines earlier this century. However, this was already the case in the 1990s. Thanks to, among other things, the rise of injection, sixteen-valve engines and other improvements to the engines, it turned out that you could already have enough power with a smaller cylinder capacity. For example, Volkswagen deleted the lightest 1.8 in the Golf range thirty years ago and brought back a 1.6. The 75 hp 1.8 (which, incidentally, was still available in combination with an automatic transmission) was replaced by an equally strong 1.6. The 1.6 needed a bit higher compression than the 1.8 to achieve that power and revved a bit more at high speed. The maximum torque was also a bit lower (125 Nm compared to 140 Nm with the 1.8). The profit was in consumption; that went from 7.4 l/100 km for the 1.8 to 6.9 l/100 km for the 1.6.

Top version for Renault 21 Nevada

Renault’s battle weapon in the middle class was still Laguna predecessor 21 thirty years ago. The station version, the Nevada, got a new (Dutch) top version at the last minute, the TXI. The TXI got a smaller engine than the previously most expensive version of the Nevada, the TXE, which had a 110 hp 2.2. The TXI did it with a 2.0, but a copy that was clearly stronger with 136 hp. It also made the Nevada a bit smoother: 0 to 100 km / h went in 10.2 seconds and the top speed was around 200 km / h. With the 2.2 it needed 10.7 seconds and the acceleration stopped at 186 km / h. Also a nice piece of downsizing, so. In addition, the TXI came with some luxury items as standard, such as central door locking, an on-board computer, roof rails and a sports steering wheel.