The best year for new cars? Driving 1994's greatest models

Here we come to the rather more controversial side of my argument: it’s not just that 1994 saw the maturity of the car and the removal or curing of most flaws, but it marks a point in time when cars were simpler, less cluttered with technology and, most importantly, had realistic performance, before matters started to get out of hand. The ‘E34’- generation (1989-1995) BMW M5’s straight-six engine produced 315bhp. Today, that power output is exceeded by several hot hatches. It weighed 1650kg and was 1750mm wide. The current BMW M5 has 591bhp, weighs 1855kg and is 1903mm wide.

For me, this isn’t progress.

Am I a luddite peering through rose-tinted spectacles? To find out, we’ve gathered two other old-timers who, like me, drove 1994’s cars when they were new. You know Andrew Frankel and Richard Bremner well. Each of us has chosen two cars from 1994 (that were available in that year, not necessarily launched in it) as our favourites from that period which perfectly illustrate the points I’ve made above. These six cars will also be driven by Autocar’s current road testers, several of whom were in nappies when the cars were built. It will be interesting.

Will the youngsters be appalled that these cars will be unable to give them directions to the nearest curry house? That their phones won’t sync or, more crucially, that they just feel slow and old-fashioned? Or will they fall in love with their simplicity? Let’s see.

Richard Bremner: Peugeot 405 Mi16 & TVR Griffith:

You might wonder what a French fleet car is doing among all this high-performance machinery but, believe me, this was one of the most polished driver’s cars you could buy at the time. The 405 was born into Peugeot’s golden period – if you value driving satisfaction over freedom from squeaks – and the Pininfarina- designed three-box saloon handled like a bigger 205. So why not pick the 205? Because the 405 had the better ride: its controlled fluency over mid-bend troughs and crests were sometimes breathtaking and as satisfying to experience as its balance, grip and throttle-adjustability.

This I discovered during a comparison test among the Alpes-Maritimes. The 405’s combatant was the third-generation Volkswagen Passat B3, the one that did without a grille and whose innards were based on the Golf’s. The Peugeot had the VW licked within a few kilometres with its feedback, enthusiasm and fabulous body control. And yes, it was roomy, comfortable, practical and well-equipped too.

On mountain roads, you could get into a fantastic groove with this car: the pedals are well-spaced for deft footwork, the brakes are dependable, and the obedience of its steering and front-end grip allow bends to be scribed with virtually no understeer. If you felt some scrabble coming on, just lift a little, and the back end would shift the car more tightly into the turn, and you were away. And without as much lift-slide-spin risk as the 205 GTI threatened.

You were away, particularly if you revved the Peugeot’s 1.9-litre 16-valve engine – its best work, by far, done beyond 5000rpm. That’s when it would mount a hard, unrelenting charge and sustain it almost to the 7200rpm redline – an experience simply unavailable in the 205. That’s why so many 405 Mi16s were gutted for their twin-cam engines, and so few survive today. Another reason is that, like plenty of French cars of that era, the 405 was not of especially robust construction, as the creaking, squeaking plastics of our otherwise pretty fit car confirm. That was one area where the Passat won. Easily.

A VW versus TVR fit and finish comparison, incidentally, would have descended to the laughable. But the Griffith is here as a celebration of effective crudity, and the pleasures of driving, and hearing a car that places you front and centre of a machine. The Griffith was the first modern-era TVR with look-twice styling. Voluptuous curves, doors whose forward edges tucked behind the front wings, a sexy mouth of a grille, smooth flanks uncluttered with door handles, a long bonnet and a pert, rising rump – suddenly, TVR was taking on the big boys.

Imaginative design continued inside: TVR milled levers, switches and buttons from aluminium rather than raiding the spares trays of the corporates (although they did bag some Vauxhall tail-lights) and had fun with the unexpected locations of door handles. The engine came from elsewhere, but the Rover V8 was beefed up to deliver appropriate power and a bellowing wall of eight- cylinder sounds. TVR would offer 4.0, 4.3, 4.5 and 5.0-litre Griffiths during the car’s life, each slightly more excessive than the last given that this car weighs little more than a tonne, and all the more glorious for it. Best of all is probably the 4.3-litre, which does without the muting effects of a catalytic converter.

You’ll relish the TVR’s deep bass, staccato air shufflings even at idle – the swelling crescendo of its revving V8 firing excitement through spines. Surprisingly, this vertical confection of bones will not find itself crushed by the ride, which is unexpectedly pliant, underlining how unyielding most moderns have become. Don’t expect languid behaviour from the steering, though – just two eager rotations take the front wheels from lock to lock, a rate likely to have you turning too keenly at first. It’s a measure of the Griffith’s grip, in the dry at least, that these razor reactions don’t dislodge the back tyres.

Rain and a little too much throttle will, though – this car being bereft of electronic safety systems. It’s also airbag-free, making corrective skills of your own all the more necessary. Which only adds to the sense that this car was a technical (and throwback) rebel, just as its maker was. It’s a reminder that even when a car is not always dynamically competent, this matters less when you’re directly connected to its activities – a pleasure that’s all the greater during the 21st-century dominance of the automotive algorithm.

Richard Lane: modern opinion:

If you’re accustomed only to ‘sanitised’ modern sports cars, I think it’s impossible not to be blown away by the Griffith. Compared with something like a Porsche Boxster, so intense are the initial sensations that there’s almost a slight malevolence about the whole thing. As there should be. You rattle the key down the barrel, depress a reassuringly weighty clutch and then the cabin — which is a bit claustrophobic owing to TVR’s quirky topography — simply resonates with sound. After that, the mere act of nursing the car into motion is accompanied with an anticipation you don’t get in the new stuff. Certainly not unless you’re talking about a Caterham Seven (which is essentially ancient anyway) or the very top end of the performance car market.

Two things stand out on the move and those are the unassisted steering, which is totally lank off-centre but quickly finds heft and with it unusual feel, and the atmospheric engine, which in terms of its bellowing ferocity seems to discover another gear shortly before such a thing is actually required. Both are wonderful and, sadly, anathema to new-timers with comparable performance, though so is the languid body control. I didn’t spend long enough with the TVR to start probing its limit-handling, but the undercurrent was that this spectacularly over-powered car would prove a challenge to gather up should it let go at the rear. To an extent, I like that, but I also appreciate the liberties a well-calibrated contemporary stability control system permits us to take in a range of road conditions. One should be comfortable exploiting a performance car and yet the privilege of doing so is earned with experience and practice. There’s a sweet spot somewhere but the debate certainly isn’t as simple as old-school and hairy- chested equals best.

I can’t deny the 1994 boys their misty-eyed supposition, though. The variety in handling dynamics and powertrains way back then seems extraordinary compared with the cars of today, and there’s so much exploring to be done at practical speeds. I’d do terrible things to get my hands on that Porsche (overleaf). 

Andrew Frankel Ferrari F355 & Porsche 993:

To understand why we feel the way we do about these cars, it helps to understand where we stood at the time. Which, in 1994, was one step back from the edge of a precipice. The recession that had gripped the world since the start of decade was over.

We were starting to feel good again. And what better expressions of those feelings than these two, the 993-generation Porsche 911 and the Ferrari F355? Again, context is everything: look at them only in terms of what they are and you’ll see only two really impressive mid- decade sports cars. You have to look at where they came from too. The similarities are striking.

For a start, neither was a new car, each being a heavily revised version of a model introduced five years earlier. In the 911’s case, the 964-generation; for Ferrari, it was the 348tb.

Most important, though, is that both earlier cars were among the poorest of their kind their manufacturers had ever produced. The 964 was meant to be a modern 911 but contrived merely to trade much of its forebears’ charm for the ugliest styling to visit the world’s greatest sports car. It was still tricky on the limit so they introduced an all-wheel-drive version, which just made it understeer. Everywhere.

By contrast, the Ferrari 348 wasn’t ugly at all, but those gorgeous lines concealed a dark secret: get it wrong and you were off. A mate was once driven around Fiorano by Ferrari test driving legend Dario Benuzzi and literally didn’t make it out of the first corner. And if he couldn’t hang onto it, what hope for mere mortals. Did I mention it had a horrid gearbox too?

And then came 1994 and the 993. Its looks were improved, but it was the driving experience that was transformed. About a decade later than it should have, Porsche introduced a rear suspension that could properly control the back of the car. Out went trailing arms, in came a multitude of links and at once here was a rear-engined car you could hoof around on the throttle yet would stay stable when you had to have a big lift on a wet road. It brought the most precious commodity any fast car can provide its driver: confidence.

Confidence to drive this 911 the way you’d always wanted to drive a 911. But it was better even than that, because it was also quieter and more comfortable than the 964, so playing to that other eternal 911 strength: its day-to-day usability. Which is why, today, 993s are far more desirable not only than the 964s than came before but the 996s than came thereafter.

If anything, the F355 was an even bigger step forward over its predecessor. Ferrari, recognising the threat posed by the Honda NSX, realised it could sit on its laurels no longer and reacted. The F355 looked quite like the 348, but everything was different: it had more power, a slick six-speed gearbox, lovely steering and suspension that made it as indulgent and rewarding to drive as the 348 was, well, bloody terrifying at times.

I remember as if it were yesterday the sense of trepidation I felt as I headed to the hills above Maranello in a yellow F355 to do the obligatory oversteer shot required for the cover of the mag. My fear stemmed from an exercise we’d conducted with the 348 that we’d taken to a big safe test track to see if it could be made to behave. It could not: beyond a certain modest slip angle, the back would go and stay gone. But the F355 would have skidded contently all day, or at least until its tyres were down to the canvas. Its engine, with its 8500rpm redline, was fabulous and even all the old Fiat bits had gone from its interior.

It was wonderful to become reacquainted with two of my favourite cars not just from the mid-1990s but the 30 years I’ve been doing this job. And while neither feels remotely modern any more, both retain that power not only to thrill the driver but reassure too. And I love their clean looks, modest dimensions, superb visibility, naturally aspirated engines and manual gearboxes.

These cars serve to provide further evidence, as if it were needed, that while there has been immense progress in the near quarter-century that’s passed since their introduction, not all of it has been uniformly in the right direction. 

Matt Prior: modern opinion:

I’m pretty old for a young bloke in this company because when I started in this game, in 1997, some of the cars were still on sale.

I’ve also cheated by driving the 993 before, so I’m aware of just how responsive, light and compact it feels. Relatively comfortable, too, and strong, with a very tidy exhaust. You probably wouldn’t, but you could, drive it daily.

But it’s the F355 — which I collect from, and return to, Slade’s Garage — that I spend a serious amount of time in and which makes a bigger impression.

And it’s a beautiful one. By modern standards, yes, you feel like you’re sitting on, rather than in, the F355 because of its low scuttle and window line. They help visibility become terrific, but better than that is the fact that the body is around 1900mm wide, and the mirrors protrude only 70mm more than that. A modern 488’s body is still under two metres, but throw in the mirrors and it’s a 2.2m-wide car. The F355 is a good 300mm shorter too, so despite slower steering and a kerb weight not quite so different to a modern car, it feels incredibly wieldy and easy to place. Confidence giving.

The manual gearbox is fabulous too, the pedals and control weights all perfectly linear and adjustable, and the engine makes the ‘right’ amount of power, in thrillingly responsive fashion.

It’s slower, less grippy, perhaps less adjustable and quieter than any modern Ferrari, it’s true. But on a good road, I might just take an F355 over any of them.

Colin Goodwin: Honda NSX & Porsche 968CS:

In 1994, Porsche was in the middle of a recovery plan that would save it from going under and that would result in the creation of the Boxster. Meanwhile, at the sales counter, Porsche was depending on the ageing 928, the new 993 and the 968, which had been launched in 1992. The latter was a simple development of the 944, a good car with great handling but not really special – still the poor relation to the 911.

And then, in 1993, Porsche invited journalists to come and drive a version of the 968 that it called the Clubsport; a name previously used on a special version of the 911 produced in small numbers from 1987. It was a low-key launch without the fanfare and anticipation that surrounds the arrival of a new Porsche GT model today.

The 968 Clubsport was a stripped- out machine aimed at the track. The rear seats were removed, door cards from the 944 were used with wind- up windows, a radio was optional, and because there was less electrical equipment (the rear wiper was gone too), the wiring loom was made simpler and therefore lighter and the standard battery was replaced with a smaller unit. The suspension was lowered by 20mm and wider wheel rims were fitted. The 3.0-litre four-cylinder was untouched and produced the standard car’s 237bhp. Its plastic covers were removed, however, to save weight. A proper Porsche approach to slimming, then, with a resultant 100kg weight saving over the standard 968.

I can’t remember the geographical details of the car’s launch (it was in England somewhere), nor what month in 1993 it took place. What I do remember is my, and the other journalists’, reaction to the car at the bar after we’d been driving it for a day. We hadn’t seen this coming, a four-cylinder Porsche that was one of the finest-handling sports cars that any of us had driven. Perfectly balanced, easy to slide and recover (the term drifting hadn’t been coined back then). The engine was rather agricultural but the car’s stunning handling made up for it. And here’s a fact that someone only familiar with Porsche’s recent history will find almost beyond belief: the 968 Clubsport, with all its attention to detail and low-volume allure, was the cheapest 968 model that you could buy. Today, when Porsche takes bits out, you pay more.

The Honda NSX could not be more different to the 968 Clubsport. Totally different technically, but as much so in philosophy. The Clubsport was lean, aimed at hardcore enthusiasts who would probably head to a circuit as soon as their car was run in or even take it racing. The NSX was designed to be the everyday sports car: as reliable as a Honda Civic and as easy to own. Not quite as easy to fix if you bent it, as every pranged NSX had to go to Belgium to be fixed. And here’s a thing: many were put into the scenery. Trouble was, it was easy to be overconfident in the NSX. It had lovely handling and a great chassis, but it was a Honda so it wouldn’t hurt you. I managed to not crash an NSX but luck was involved on several occasions. A number of colleagues were not so fortunate.

Gordon Murray and John Cooper both owned NSXs and that summed up the car for me. Ayrton Senna had a hand in its development and that meant something too. Sadly, nothing Honda could have done would have got over the problem of the NSX wearing the ‘H’ badge. The interior looked horrendously plasticky next to a Ferrari F355’s. The 3.0-litre V-TEC V6 produced a modest 270bhp that even at the time felt a bit measly. But it sounded good and was matched to a five-speed manual gearbox with a lovely action. Honda made an automatic version that was unspeakably poor and that also had the world’s first electric power assisted steering, which also spoilt the car.

I got the NSX. I liked the fact that being seen in one implied that you were not obsessed with badges and brands. But more than that, I loved the view out over the bonnet, the flat- topped wings that made the narrow car easy to place and that made me think I was driving a Can-Am car or a ’70s Chevron sports racer.

I thought at the time, and think it still, that Honda should have been far bolder with the NSX’s mechanical specification. This was the company that put a motorcycle into production that had an engine featuring oval pistons. A company that had made racing engines that revved to more than 20,000rpm in the early 1960s. The NSX should have had an engine that no other car manufacturer could have produced.

When I fired up this yellow 968 Clubsport, I was taken aback by the engine’s harshness. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven one. What will the youngsters think of this, I wonder? Wind-up windows and no radio. When they drive it, I’m pretty sure they’ll feel the same way about it as I do.

Their take on the Honda NSX is harder to predict. It split opinions when new – I suspect it will now. 

Simon Davis: modern opinion:

I won’t lie, these cars felt old. They looked old. They even smelled old in that musty, almost acrid kind of way that older cars do. Their cabins felt cramped by the standards of today, and neither the Porsche nor the Honda really ‘did’ adjustability past offering the option of moving your seat backwards or forwards. But to whinge about such things is to miss the point of their existence entirely because, to drive, they felt pretty damn special. Well, the 968 Clubsport did, anyway.

The NSX — with its sluggish, power-sapping, slovenly automatic gearbox — was a disappointment; a prime example of why meeting your heroes isn’t always a good idea. The steering had an incredibly strange elasticity to it, which felt as though it was trying to tug the wheel back to centre as soon as you added any lock on, and when you put your foot down, nothing really happened. As much of a let-down as it was, though, my colleagues did reassure me that an NSX with a proper manual transmission is a far more exciting machine that’s entirely worthy of the hype. Given they’ve been testing cars for longer than I’ve been alive, I’m inclined to believe them. Still, it did leave me cold.

The Porsche, on the other hand — what a machine. While not outrageously quick, the tactility of its steering, the precision of its six-speed manual and the manner in which it went about the business of changing direction was really rather incredible.

Compared with the cars of today, it felt like a far more characterful, organic and engaging machine, one that you have to understand and work with to build a rapport before you can truly get the most out of it. Cars don’t really feel like this one any more, and that isn’t necessarily for the best.

This article was originally published on 23 September 2018. We're revisiting some of Autocar's most popular features to provide engaging content in these challenging times. 

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