Rear-End Rumble

Ever since plans for the new compact cars got around Detroit, competitors of General Motors Corp. have been kicking at the rear engine G.M. will use in its Corvair. Chrysler Corp. President Lester Lum Colbert announced that Chrysler's small-car offering, the Valiant, would have its engine "up front, where it belongs." Ford Motor Co., whose small Falcon will also have a front engine, launched TV commercials demonstrating that an arrow weighted at the back end will fly erratically and miss the target, but that a "properly weighted" (i.e., heavy at the front) arrow will go straight to the mark.

Last week Chrysler's fast-selling import from France, the Simca, joined the critical chorus. Aiming at foreign rear-engine cars as well as Corvair, it launched a massive ad campaign proclaiming "the advantages of front-engine cars over rear-engine cars.'' Among them: "Cornering is better . . . more luggage area . . . greater driving stability ... To relax your grip on the steering wheel [of a rear-engine car] at highway speed would be dangerous."

For once, the glacial calm of G.M. was cracked. Summoning reporters to a hastily called news conference, G.M. opened a trunkful of evidence in defense of the rear-engine car. Declared Maurice Olley, a retired G.M. director of research and development on suspension systems: "Some makes of front-engine cars are nose-heavy, even with a normal passenger load. To compare a car to an arrow is a complete fallacy." In a rear-engine car, said Olley, "the engine and its parts are more accessible. You people who know the Volkswagen know that when you open up its little rear end, there is all its little machinery sitting there staring at you."

If the rear-engine car is so much better, Olley was asked, why hasn't the industry adopted it? His reply: "It should have happened quite a while ago."

To drum up interest in the new, low-priced Dart series that Dodge will introduce this fall, Chrysler Corp. unveiled an "idea" Dart built by Italy's Ghia, with obvious adaptation of Dodge lines. The crisply styled, U.S.-built, front-engine Dart will bear an overall resemblance to its Italian forerunner but will downplay Ghia's racing-car motif for the sake of greater passenger comfort.

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