Your first turbo car

[The Champ]

Well the Mustang 2.3L turbo was the first I remember being heavily advertised and reviewed in automotive journals.

Being born in 1954, I was a little young to be reading the automotive journals back in 1962...

But I was in my 20's when the Indy 500 Pace Car in 1976 was a Turbo Buick Century - which was extremely well publicized:

The Turbo wasn't put into a regular production Buick until 1978, but that was also well promoted by Buick:

I don't know how I forgot this one in 1979 - which was promoted much better than the little Mustang 2.3L Turbo 4 cylinder that year:

The fact that my dad sold Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, Cadillacs ad GMC trucks might have some bearing on my recollections of the GM Turbos...

 

[Lazza]

The Champ, thanks for those ads. Brings back memories!

Regardless, I still maintain Ford marketed the 2.3L turbo Mustang in a big(ger) way. I would also guess that it outsold the Buick and Pontiac turbos combined, not due to merit but because Mustangs sold better in general and it was a less expensive vehicle. And even then they probably didn't sell all that well.

Yet all this was LONG ago. My interest in sporty cars back then was minimal because I couldn't afford any of them (I drove a VW!).


_Lazza

 

[The Champ]

Ford sold 369,936 Mustangs in 1979, of those, only 5,763 were Turbo's which is about 1.5%.

In the first year of the 301 Turbo V8, Pontiac sold a total of 50,896 Firebirds, of those, 22,176 came with the Turbo which is about 44%.

And what about the 1978 Buick Turbo? Well they only sold 30,507 of them...

I guess that Ford Mustang Turbo wasn't near as well marketed as you thought...:banana:

The Ford Mustang traditionally was sold with low powered 4 and 6 cylinder engines. Only a small percentage of Mustang sales over the years were sold with "high performance" (and I use that term loosely) engines. It was a car that was targeted at housewives and school teachers, because as you pointed out - they were cheap cars.

I guess that's why I was never really interested in the Mustang - it was a cheap, low powered car. The standard engine in 1964 was a 170 ci 6 cylinder with 101 HP, the next optional engine was the 260 ci 2bbl V8 with 164 HP and the top of the line was the 289 ci 4bbl with 210 HP.

My first love was the GTO and the base engine in 1964 was a 389 ci 4bbl V8 with 325 HP, with the option of a 3 deuce setup with 346 HP. I was 10 when my '64 GTO was built - and by 10 I was reading the automotive journals and I remember reading the Car and Driver magazine article where they "compared it" to a 1964 Ferrari GTO...



A few years ago I replaced the original 389 ci 500 cfm Carter 4bbl (now in storage) with a 30 over 1974 455 (462 ci) with 1971 # 96 heads (9.5-1 compression), 1969 stock intake, Crower 60243 cam and an 800 cfm Quadrajet.

 

[Lazza]

Wow. Perhaps the 1979 Mustang turbo was a late model year arrival? If its sales were that bad I don't understand why Ford would continue with it. I would have assumed at least 10% of Mustangs were sold with the turbo.

Where did you find these sales figures? I'd like to check them out myself(, no I am not doubting your word. I would like to check on sales data on other vehicles).

Makes me wonder how well the 2015 Mustang turbo will sell? With low-ish gas prices it might underperform sales of the v6 and v8.

Thanks for the info, Champ. You know, I don't look about at vehicles from 35 years ago with fondness. Quality was crap, driveability was poor. Although MUCH more expensive I find modern cars to be more appealing in every way. It's just a shame standard transmission vehicles have become relative rare.


_Lazza

 

[Rschmidt]

2004 Lancer Evolution. I had it prepped for AutoX, so no big power adders. It did do 300hp and 310tq to the wheels, it put down 220hp and 250tq when completely stock.

 

[The Champ]

Lazza

The Turbo Mustang was only available on the Pace Car replica in 1979, and I think that is the peak year of the 2.3L Turbo. Here's the link to the #'s:

Mustang Production Numbers 1979-1986

They really weren't very good cars - lot's of problems.

By far, the most interesting '79 Mustang was the pace car replica. A special run of 10,478 Indy pace car Mustangs were assembled to commemorate the specially prepared Mustang chosen to lead the pack at the Indy 500. Although the actual pace cars (of which three were built) were all powered by higher-output-than-stock 5.0 V-8s, the replicas could be had either with a 132hp 2.3 turbocharged four-cylinder or a 140hp 5.0 V-8 with a two-barrel carburetor. We'd recommend the 5.0 V-8 rather than the 2.3 four-cylinder on a car that is loaded with options. The four-cylinder had reliability issues and was pulled from the Mustang line in 1981.

Read more: Historical Mustangs - Fox Mustang Production Numbers, Part 1 - Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords Magazine
Follow us: @ModMustangs on Twitter | ModMustangsandFords on Facebook

These were the engine options in 1979:

2.3L 2V 4cyl 88hp
2.3L 2V 4cyl 132hp (Turbocharged)
2.8L 2V V-6 109hp
3.3L 1V 6cyl 85hp
5.0L 2V V-8 140hp

From the first site linked, we already know that 5,970 were Turbos and that 47,568 were the 140 HP 5.0L 2bbl V8. So that leaves over 350,000 Mustangs with very anemic 4 and 6 cylinder cars.

 

[Lazza]

Champ, thanks. Well that's pretty pathetic. But thankfully turbo cars have come a very long way since then. And those horsepower values are amazing. The 1.4L turbo Sonic has almost the same horsepower as the 5.0L Mustang (1979).


_Lazza

 

[Kurisutofa]

My first car was actually my first turbo vehicle. It was a 1992 Dodge Stealth RT/TT. Still one of my favorite cars and one of the best communities in my opinion of any car group I've seen.

 

[sonic_braaappp]

first turbo car was a boosted r32 gti. precision 5758, to much boost for the motor and pop... great first turbo car though. i miss it like crazy lol was a great learning experience car, made me learn more about internals and all that with my following boosted cars

 

[Kurisutofa]

Do you mean golf r32 or just a gti? Or vr6 gti? Sorry I'm a little confused.


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[carsNskis]

Do you mean golf r32 or just a gti? Or vr6 gti? Sorry I'm a little confused.


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Technically, the R32 is a Golf variant (not a "GTI R"... it maintained all the suspension and braking goodies that turned a Golf from a bland car into a fun car just like the GTI, but had more power

Now the Golf R (no # since it's no longer a 3.2L) is it's replacement.

You could turbo or supercharge the R32. It was very agreeable to boost but a thicker cometic head gasket is a wise investment to drop the cylinder pressure and save the head from "popping" as it were. Also the timing system didn't like the new find power, and neither did the DSG trans...

.....it's not the size, it's how you drive it

 

[Kurisutofa]

That's what I'm saying. We had both a GTI and a R32 before so I was confused as to why he was calling it a GTi R32. The Golf R is a downgrade in my opinion. It takes to tunes VERY welcome ,being a 11 second car with just bolt-ons and a tune but I would of much rather seen the 3.2 VR6 have a turbo model.

 

[carsNskis]

That's what I'm saying. We had both a GTI and a R32 before so I was confused as to why he was calling it a GTi R32. The Golf R is a downgrade in my opinion. It takes to tunes VERY welcome ,being a 11 second car with just bolt-ons and a tune but I would of much rather seen the 3.2 VR6 have a turbo model.

Idk, the VR6 sounded cool but was a dog in stock form compared to the EA888 (and a total nightmare for maintenance over 75k miles). I think they should have dropped the turbo 5cyl into the current gen to get closer to the TTRS performance wise

.....it's not the size, it's how you drive it

 

[Kurisutofa]

In the end though big displacement will always produce more power. I mean the most powerful 4 cylinder ever is the lnf out of the cobalt. 4k hp in a dragster. Top fuel dragsters are 10k and there are even more powerful engines out there. I would of much rather had a better sounding vr6 and have a bigger displacement to make the power more easily. I would of gladly sacrificed the gas mileage. We had maybe 100k in ours with 0 issues minus some common dsg issues. But of course everybody has their on likes and opinions. I was just always a fan of vrt builds.


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[Swordsmith]

My 2012 Sonic is my first turbocharged car. I've always been a bit of a hippy, preferring a car with sufficient power and good mpg over one with lots of unnecessary power and lousy mpg. For 20 years I owned F150s with the smallest V6 engine, because I needed the cargo space but didn't need the power of the bigger V8s.

Turbochargers and superchargers, as far as I knew, were up power options on sports cars, cars I was never going to buy in the first place, only with even worse mpg at a higher cost. I'm not sure that was how it really was, it was just my perception.

The Sonic turned the equation on its head; instead of taking a big gas guzzler which already had more power than it needed and adding a way to get even more power, it took a tiny anemic underpowered engine, turbocharged -that-, which lets me get great mpg most of the time and yet have Moar Powah when I want it.

Every mod I've done since to increase power has not cost me any mpg (when I drive gently... they have all allowed me to get much much worse mpg when pushing it, of course)

In fact I picked Sonic precisely because of the turbo; it was down to the Soul and the Sonic, which were about neck and neck in the base model. The upgraded engine on the Soul gave you worse mpg, but the upgraded engine on the Sonic gave you better mpg.

I don't know that I'll ever go back to an NA engine again.

 

[RMinNJ]

.."I don't know that I'll ever go back to an NA engine again."

No, my last cars were Saabs..very hard to go back to NA.

 

[Kurisutofa]

For me it's all about the engine. Got a '02 trans am that's still N/A and still very fun to drive.


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[Lazza]

.."I don't know that I'll ever go back to an NA engine again."

+1

 

[greentib]

First turbo car for me started 7 years ago with a 94 300zx tt. I enjoyed it for 2 years, but would smoke here and there from turbos. So my winter project of putting in built engine turned into 5 years later and still sitting in garage.

 

[wingnut]

My first turbo car was an 88 Saab 9000. When that turbo finally spooled up you had to hold on to the steering wheel for dear life cuz the torque steer was a force of nature. You would have thought you were on a moon shot. Miss that car but I don't think the tranny could handle all that torque.