The American Dream Machine

The West was won by the Stars and Stripes, apple pie - and the V8. But things ain't what they used to be, reports Alastair Sloane

Coca Cola, Levis, Johnny Cash, Budweiser beer, pickup trucks, Wyatt Earp ... American to their cotton-pickin' socks, right?

You better believe it. Same with V8 engines. Bigger than Texas, they were. Hundreds of cubic inches of oomph. Hell, son, America was built on them. Best things since the Pony Express.

They still are. But they have changed. The thumping old pushrod engine which bubbled away like a hillbilly's still is giving way to fancypants multi-valve things that are smaller, cleaner and lighter. They don't even sound like V8s.

The exhaust note is so muted that Billy-Ray and Bobby-Joe brewing moonshine in the backwoods can't hear the revenue boys sneaking up on them anymore. America's gone to hell in a handcart again.

BMW, for one, wouldn't necessarily see it that way. Since it bought Rover in 1994 it has found out just how important the original 3.5-litre Buick V8 has been to the success of the Range Rover over nearly 30 years.

Pushrod V8s concentrate most of their mass low down around the thumping great crankshaft. Lighter, modern V8s with multi-valves and cams have most weight around the cylinder heads, higher in the engine.

This, of course, meant the centre of gravity in the Range Rover was lower. Combined with its ladder chassis and long-travel suspension, that gave it such a great reputation on and off the road.

The original 3.5-litre Buick motor has been bored and stroked over the years to 3.9-, 4- and 4.6-litres, but its pushrod design and consequential low centre of gravity remained. So did its reputation, although the reliability of its electrics was often questioned.

But in designing the new Range Rover - to be unveiled next year - BMW has found that doing away with a weighty ladder chassis and equipping the vehicle with a lighter high-tech V8 or V12 affected its centre of gravity.

Costs and safety requirements that penalised intrusive ladder chassis design, especially in the United States, forced Range Rover to switch to a unitary platform, like that upon which the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Mercedes-Benz M-Class are built.

So Range Rover had to rework things like suspension dynamics to keep the sweet chariot swinging low. It says it has succeeded.

Chrysler, too, has used a high-tech V8 in its new right-hand-drive Grand Cherokee, which is being built in Graz, Austria, and will be launched in New Zealand in June.

But the American carmaker says it has always kept the roofline of its unitary-designed Cherokee low to aid the vehicle's centre of gravity.

The only other V8-powered luxury off-roaders on the market here are the Lexus LX470 and the Mercedes-Benz M430. The M430 is also expected in June, where the initial shipment of 30 vehicles has already been sold.

Both vehicles use high-tech engines, the Lexus powered by a 4.7-litre derivative of the saloon's 4-litre engine, and the M430 by a reworked version of the 4.3-litre powerplant found in the E- and S-Class models.

The LX470 is based largely on the Toyota Landcruiser and, like the current Range Rover, uses a ladder chassis. The M430 and Grand Cherokee are of unitary design, like a passenger car

The new Grand Cherokee will be the first right-hand-drive Jeep to be equipped with a V8 engine. Left-hand-drive models have used V8s for some time but the position of the steering box stymied conversions. The V8 would have basically had to be turned on its side to sit in the engine bay of a right-hand-drive.

Not any more. The new Grand Cherokee has been redesigned to take advantage of demand for V8 power in right-hand-drive markets.

The Cherokee was launched in the United States late last year. It is bigger, more luxurious and sophisticated and comes with a new "intelligent" four-wheel-drive system which British testers said gave the vehicle even more ability off road.

The range includes a reworked version of the mainstream six-cylinder unit and, next year, a five-cylinder turbo diesel. But it is the 4.7-litre V8 which is fuelling interest.

Chrysler dealers have been taking orders for the V8 since February. Sales in the United States of the V8 Grand Cherokee are up 23 per cent over 1998 figures.

Chrysler New Zealand chief David Cumming isn't talking price yet. But he believes the V8 option opens up a whole new market.

"We haven't even begun to promote it and already interest is high," he said.