Storm over the Omni-Horizon

"Car of the year "or too hard for most drivers to handle?

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-Horizon "car of the year," and since it went into showrooms in January, dealers have sold more than 91,000 (at roughly $4,000 each), equal to almost 18% of Chrysler's total auto sales.

But 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 the car "not acceptable"--a judgment it has not pronounced on any other auto since the American Motors Ambassador in 1968.

In the 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 has no "validity in the real world of driving"; a motorist who actually had to swerve suddenly at high speed would let up on the gas pedal, and moreover would certainly hang on to the wheel. Consumers Union concedes that point, but says the way an auto behaves in the trial "can point to problems in the car's basic design"--if confirmed by further tests.

Which makes the second test the crucial one. In it, a driver tries to swing a car around an obstacle, then pull back into lane--supposedly simulating the maneuvers a motorist would have to make to avoid a child suddenly darting into the road, say, or an object falling off a truck. When C.U. drivers tried it, the car fishtailed alarmingly and failed to recover. When Chrysler re-created the test for an audience of reporters at its proving grounds in Chelsea, Mich., the company's driver threaded the car flawlessly through a slalom course around pylons.

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.

The 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 Chrysler to recall all autos sold in order to correct the trouble. And if, as Consumers Union suspects, the flaw is "an inherent design defect," the agency could require redesign and replacement of the whole steering system.

The publicity hits Chrysler at a time when it is peculiarly vulnerable. The company lost $120 million in this year's first quarter, and expects at best to break even for the rest of the year. Its share of the market for U.S.-made cars is down to about 13%, vs. a recent high of 16.2% in 1974. It has been counting on the Omni-Horizon to increase its market share, haul it into the black and help persuade investors and lenders to put up the $7.5 billion that it must spend over the next five years to bring out new cars and modernize its factories. Chrysler says a $150 million preferred-stock and warrant issue, due to go on sale this week, is oversubscribed.

GM and Ford also have an interest in the uproar: if Omni-Horizon sales should be flattened by the C.U. warning, it would not be a good omen for the front-wheel-drive cars that they are preparing to bring out over the next two years. Americans already are buying hundreds of thousands of front-wheel-drive cars imported from abroad, including Volkswagen's Rabbit, Honda's Civic and the Ford Fiesta. Consumers Union found no fault with these cars, which it says passed the same tests that the Omni-Horizon flunked. Nor did Consumers Union express any doubts about the concept of front-wheel drive; indeed, it said a properly designed front-wheel-drive car can handle better than a conventional one on snowy or icy roads. C.U.'s fire was concentrated entirely on the Omni-Horizon.

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