1986 Konvertible Ad; Rareness Validated

by Paul Niedermeyer

Updated: March 9th, 2010 Published: December 12th, 2009

My wild guess that today’s Kurbside Klassic Konvertibl e had a degree of rarity has been confirmed. According to Jamie who has his ’86 ragtop posted at cardomain, only 4,759 of these un-Grosser 600’s were made. And he also found a period ad for our car. Now we know that the little buzz-bomb 2.2 turbo was a real sleeper, and could whip the 600ES to sixty in…wait a minute! I just looked at it a again. It says zero to 50 in 5.8 seconds. And I thought (wrongly) that the pathetic 0-50 bragging rights era had ended by 1986. Full ad after the jump (too big):

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Paul Niedermeyer

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Porschespeed on Dec 13, 2009
It really is one of the more remarKable auto stories of the post-war era. RemarKably bad. The K helped steer a whole generation right into the showrooms of Honda and Toyota. Never to return. The celebration of mediocrity is how the 'Big 3' lost the market. The K was as mediocre as mediocre can be. Especially compared against a then new Accord, Celica, or even Civic.

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Andybuzz2u on May 25, 2010

This is funny reading about it now. But in 1986 ANY car that went zero to 50 mph in 5.8 seconds was big news. For those out there who are to young or wore not born then, the Federal speed limit was 55 mph or the "double nickel" as it was called by many...On every intersdtate hightway and all state roads. The majority of the Asian cars took like 75 seconds to get to 50. As did a lot of the Big Three econo boxes. You know the Ford 5.0 V8 mustang made, if i remember right, only made around 175HP ditto for the Camero/Firebird and these cars did the 50 jog in around 5.4 seconds..And still had 70's era gas mileage to go with it..somewhere around 7 or 8 mpg in town, if you were lucky 14 on the highway. The Prices for 80's Vettes are still the lowest. At that time they turned out around 215 hp and should have been let die in 79. The Price, or bang for the buck wasn't there, even the mighty Vette and Porsche of the times managed 6.2 seconds zero to 60mph for them. Point being, Performance had died in 1974 for the Big Three and would not return untill the last 5 or 6 years for them. The turbo 4 cylinder engine, GM, Ford and of course Chrysler saw that as a way to improve performance and keep the EPA happy.

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