Coupe GT

[Fisher, Scott]

Ian Klass asks:

> hat type of performace capabilities does a 1980 to 1987 Coupe
> GT have, and how reliable are they? It has been added to my
> list of cars to get into so any help would be apreciated.

Performance is modest to middling, by modern standards -- 100 bhp (at intro)
to 130 bhp (in the 87.5 model year) in U.S. trim, slightly more in the
homeland, in a car of about 2500 pounds.  Not a neck-snapper, but a good car
for long highway cruising.  The last generation, the 87.5, feels more like
what the car should have had; the earlier ones, like my '83, fall somewhere
between wishing it had more power and grudging acceptance of how nice the
car is even with so little oomph.

Handling is another story altogether.  I've got the issue of Road and Track
when, in 1981, they chose the CGT as one of the "Ten Best Cars For The
Eighties," and (in the same issue) did a full on road-test/review.  On 1981
tires of 185-60 x 14 dimensions, the car was one of only about half a dozen
cars (out of the 70 or 80 included in the Road Test Summary) that broke into
0.8g territory, with a 0.81 IIRC.  This put it in the company of cars like
Lamborghini, Ferrari, a couple of Porsches, and the like -- pretty heady
competition for a five-passenger FWD based on a modest sedan.  With modern
tires of even modest dimensions (I'm running 15 x 7" rims with 195-50 series
rubber), the car feels as though it's painted to the road.  Which is nice,
of course, but it does tend to underscore the lack of power.

There is essentially zero aftermarket performance gear for these cars, of
course, because the newest one is almost 15 years old and there weren't that
many of them made to begin with.  Couple this with the state of the
electronic art in the mid-Eighties compared to today's chipped turbo cars
and the only way to get power out of the stock I-5 is the old fashioned way:
with a stop at the machine shop for some porting, polishing, and compression
work, with cam, induction and exhaust modified to match.

However, there's a comparatively easy path that a lot of listers have taken:
drop in a turbocharged I-5 from a 5000/100/200 series car and have all the
power the front wheels can handle.  

Either way, the point is that you either need to commit to spending the time
and money off the bat to build or install a performance engine (knowing that
the chassis can easily handle it, unlike many cars), or you need to resign
yourself to the car's available performance.  As someone who's taken that
route (I have other cars that I spend too much money on :-) with the CGT, I
have to say it's still a very enjoyable car to drive, and it always makes me
feel that it's surprisingly fast for such a slow car.

Fortunately, one thing that makes this easier is that the CGT is possibly
*the* enthusiast's bargain of the century (for some value of century,
anyway).  They're incredibly cheap, and very rewarding to drive even in
stock trim, as long as everything's running right.  They offer a blend of
comfort, practicality, and ruggedness with great looks (IMHO), superb
handling, and almost adequate power, while providing a great deal of
exclusivity -- in most major markets, I'll bet a nickel you see more S4s
than CGTs on a daily basis.  Certainly I see more TTs.

Reliability: the hard stuff lasts forever.  The I-5 is an incredible old
boot when it comes to durability; mine has, I don't know how many miles on
it (the odometer has long since failed to meter amy odos), upwards of 150k,
and still cranks 150 psi on all five cylinders (the '83 has an 8.2:1 CR, the
later ones are higher) and pumps out 5 bar of oil pressure on the highway.
There are some don't-miss maintenance activities, like the timing belt --
even more crucial on the later cars than the earlier ones, as the later cars
(don't know what qualifies as "late", but it's after my '83) have
interference engines -- meaning if the pistons move and the valves don't,
they WILL meet.  The water pump is inside the engine, more or less -- you
have to remove the front cover and thread it out through the timing belt,
which is a miserable fiddle if you don't know what you're doing the first
time you have to do this.  It's probably best just to put in a new pump when
you change the belt every 60,000 miles, as what I like to call pre-emptive
maintenance -- replace it before it goes bad, as long as you have 3/4 of the
job done.  With decent care, you can easily consider 250k to 300k to be the
interval for rebuilding the engine.

The soft stuff, on the other hand, goes out from time to time.  Switchgear,
electrical connections, odometers, etc. are not up to the standards of
durability of the engine, but they're largely easy to work around or have a
well-known fix.  (There are some who say that one of the chief advantages to
the Coupe are that it has only two door handles, for example...)  There are
some quirks, such as the fuel-pump relay which is ALMOST interchangeable
with the (much less expensive) relay for 4-cylinder VW/Audi cars -- except
that the relay has a built-in rev limiter which counts ignition pulses and
shuts off fuel when it hits the limiter.  And there are 20% more ignition
pulses in an I-5 than in an I-4.  And (as we've been discussing recently)
the cooling system flows backwards from many cars, which isn't necessarily a
bad thing but it can make shade-tree diagnosis difficult if you tend to
extrapolate from what you're used to.

Other pluses: REALLY big trunk, deceptively large (oh, and it's NOT a
hatchback).  REALLY big back seat, too -- we've used ours as the family
vacation car, two big adults and three kids of varying size, and every time
I get into the back seat to clean it, I'm amazed -- it has almost as much
knee room as our family-hauling '93 100csq.  Terrific exhaust note from the
I-5 -- my 4-year-old son says, "Wow, Dad, it sounds like a race car!"  Lots
of interior volume without much exterior volume.  

That'll give you a flavor for the cars, I think.  They're cheap to acquire,
not inordinately expensive to maintain, rewarding to drive for such modest
power output, and stylistically unique.  Only you can decide whether it's
got enough or too much of the things you're looking for in a car, but
that'll give you some background against which to measure your own
responses.

Best,

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon