Battle of the Diesel Beaters


By now you are all aware that a "beater" is a car in which the fuel in its tank is more valuable than the sum of all its parts. As you may recall from two previous investigative reports—"Battle of the Beaters," October 1997, and "Battle of the Winter Beaters," May 2003—this magazine has spent untold thousands on your behalf testing the handling mettle and ditch worthiness of cars that some dweebs dare deem worthless.

We now turn our attention to diesels. When Europeans ask why Americans don't drive them, we point to the diesel cars of the early '80s. The high-water mark of diesel sales in the U.S. was 520,788, in 1981. A few years later the clatter car had all but disappeared, a victim of notorious unreliability and gasoline that cost 75 cents a gallon.

We wondered: How bad were these oil burners, and could we convince Mr. Csere to let us buy three to drive across the country? Would it be amusing to race three of them cross-country? It would.

This time our budget was $1500 per car (vs. $1000) because diesels, even old ones, have become a somewhat hot commodity as gas prices surged past $3 a gallon last fall. The extra dough increased the odds that the rides we purchased would be capable of making it out of our parking lot and on across the United States, from Ann Arbor to Redondo Beach, California, 2400 miles and change.

We rounded up a 1983 Datsun Maxima diesel, a 1982 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham diesel coupe, and a 1980 Mercedes-Benz 300SD. We were shocked when they all made it through our normal battery of tests. Tech major-domo Larry Webster's Mercedes did start leaking black gold at a rate that would have had Jed Clampett dancing a jig, but it survived.

We had another problem. Our art department was concerned that a straightforward run to California would not provide any rewarding photo ops. So the trail boss, associate editor Tony Quiroga, added a scavenger hunt to the contest, which, of course, one of the teams ignored. The items on the scavenger list (budget, $333) ranged from "team photo in truck-stop shower" (200 points) to "blowup doll" (100 points), and—for those willing to take a detour—the course guide from the Nashville Auto-Diesel College was worth an enticing 1000 points. To ensure that each team would scavenge, we made overall victory worth 10,000 points, a small amount over a second- or third-place finish—9012 points vs. 9011.99.

Here was the scene at the start of the race on Saturday morning, December 17: Up on a ladder, photographer Aaron Kiley is finishing work on a group shot. Quiroga and his crew innocently meander over, pile into the running Olds, and bolt. Minutes slip away before Webster discovers what has happened, and he and his crew hurriedly take off. Getting the latest start is technoid Aaron Robinson in the Maxima. While his colleagues are leaving him behind, he's off picking up a prescription for a yeast infection.

We felt a bit like so many excited but wary explorers and pioneers before us—not sure we could make it to the distant ocean or if we'd be able to forage enough points from the land. Either way, we were on a mission to reeducate the nation on the merits of Rudolf Diesel's invention. Sort of.

1983 Datsun Maxima

At pitch-black midnight on the Nebraska plains, by the green glow of our dials and using logic well lubricated by Vivarin, circus peanuts, and RC Cola, we hatch a plan. The others have gone south. We'll cross paths if we turn for Denver and attempt the Rockies. But if we stay north, following the trail of the Donner party through Salt Lake City and across the Bonneville Salt Flats, then hang a left into deepest, remotest Nevada, we have a shot at Beater Death Race glory.

For in Nevada, below the ice-dabbed peaks of the Monte Cristo Range on the edge of the Great Basin, lies the town of Tonopah, population 2627, and its Central Nevada Museum and nearby Tonopah Historic Mining Park. According to a spiffy Web site (, it's the only place you can buy the two-ounce mostly solid silver year 2000 centennial town coin of Tonopah.

It's the Hail Mary bomb, worth 1000 points on our scavenger hunt list. The museum, reached earlier by cell phone, has turned up just one of the $35 coins. However, the doors shut at 5 p.m., fancy-dancy car-magazine story or no. With the Wyoming border still hours away, we press on in a burst of soot and salt spray.

Wearing 235,704 miles, our Datsun Maxima diesel looks like an old Hotpoint stove rising out of an Iraqi oil fire. A bilious black fog trails behind it, and its tailpipe farts a sooty skid mark on the pavement wherever it is idling. The Maxima's encrustation of white paint barely conceals the gouge marks of hastily sanded Bondo. The interior is the color of Ovaltine, the glove-box door has been liberated, and the center console was replaced long ago by a sort of wood-shop calamity made from balsa, black vinyl, and Elmer's glue.

The guy we bought this heap from lives in "the 909," Los Angeles area-code code for what guidebooks call the Inland Empire and Angelenos call the Valley of the Dirt People. A diesel Maxima is almost as rare as a diesel Ferrari, and this one actually drove pretty well. Best of all, Nissan HQ in SoCal offered to take in this thoroughly forgotten son for a look-over and then ship it to Ann Arbor. They asked only that we mention that Nissan, which sold cars here as Datsuns until 1983, making our Maxima one of the last Datsuns, now builds clean, sophisticated diesel cars and trucks, some of which may someday be for sale in America.

We were late off the starting line, thanks to a last-minute pharmacy dash for medication.

Datsun's luxury flagship of 1983 is about the size of a current Sentra. Crew member Paul Wright works for Roush Performance Products and is six feet one. Crew member Jared Gall is a C/D road warrior, six feet seven. Your humble narrator is five feet eleven. Merging onto the freeway, we're a sagging meat sausage with bad ball joints and a wicked shimmy. The Maxima is capable of just 70 mph.

Coiled up like a garden hose in the back seat, Jared organizes the list of scavenger items. This pink-cheeked, church-going assistant somehow knows the location of every sex shop between Ann Arbor and Chicago. At the Velvet Touch near Parma, Michigan, our inquiries for a blowup sex doll are answered with the question, "Man, woman, or other?" We leave with the only sensible choice: the $19.95 Inflatable Party Sheep.

Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa whiz by with the Datsun returning 28 mpg. Our C/D hood sticker is flapping in the wind, so we rip it off. Mileage rises to 30. At the "World's Largest Truckstop" near Davenport, Iowa, we shop the world's best selection of fridge magnets, bullet-hole decals, and beef jerky (200 points would be awarded later for the largest beef stick). Heading into a frigid, snow-swept dusk, Paul suddenly jumps on the brakes and starts backing up on the freeway. He's spotted a mattress in the ditch, and it's worth 250 points — and our lives — to photograph it. (Later, Paul will claim to have seen a live bobcat by the road, Jimmy Hoffa's car keys, and a group of Pygmies playing shuffleboard.)

The Great Salt Lake is invisible in the morning fog, and heavy, wet snowflakes fall at Bonneville. The old Datsun lists in turns and waggles down the endless straightaways of Nevada Route 6. Paul is running continuous time/speed/distance calculations to Tonopah. Coming downhill out of Ely our arrival time suddenly drops to 4:47 p.m. Chugging through the 6257-foot Black Rock Pass, it stretches to 5:26. It's going to be close.

We squeal into the museum's parking lot right at 5:00, half expecting to see the taillights of our nemesis, the Oldsmobile, fading into the darkness. The museum's doors are still unlocked. Team Datsun is wasted, the car's interior is full of trash and smells like bilge water, and the party sheep is losing air. But the last coin, sealed in a plastic case and picturing the "Queen of the Silver Camps," the local Mizpah Mine that made a boomtown out of Tonopah at the turn of the century, is ours. — Aaron Robinson


PRICE AS TESTED: $12,199 (purchase price: $1500)

ENGINE TYPE: SOHC 12-valve diesel inline-6, iron block and aluminum head, mechanical direct fuel injection
Displacement: 170 cu in, 2793cc
Power (SAE net): 80 bhp @ 4600 rpm
Torque (SAE net): 148 lb-ft @ 2000 rpm

TRANSMISSION: 3-speed automatic

Wheelbase: 103.3 in Length: 183.3 in Width: 65.2 in Height: 54.5 in
Curb weight: 3083 lb

Zero to 60 mph: 17.4 sec
Zero to 80 mph: 38.2 sec
Street start, 5-60 mph: 17.5 sec
Standing 1/4-mile: 21.1 sec @ 65 mph
Braking, 70-0 mph: 223 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.75 g

EPA fuel economy, city driving: 28 mpg
C/D-observed fuel economy: 29 mpg

1982 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham

In the dark, at 5 a.m., after some 23 hours on the road, a hot flash of nervousness swept over me. We'd been driving through a wicked ice storm that had left a glaze over everything, slick and dangerous—like the goo on a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Jackknifed trucks and spun-out cars dotted the moonless landscape of west Texas. We'd gone 1000 miles and had about 1400 in front of us. I was in zombie mode. Creeping ahead at anything above 40 mph only caused ice to spread over the windshield and exponentially increase the chances of pirouetting into the candy-coated desert and ending our—ha-ha—fun. It was 12 degrees below freezing. Worse, there was fog out there thick enough to excite Jack the Ripper.

By 6:30, after hallucinating innumerable underpasses that didn't exist, I'd had enough. I needed to stop and let the light of day give the team psyche a good scrubbing.

With apologies to the residents of Adrian, Texas, we were in the middle of nowhere, and I was reevaluating my silly notion to race an early-'80s diesel across the continent in winter. With our $29.95 doll deflating in the back seat, it seemed the idea that had us doing spit-takes back in the office was now depressing and decidedly unfunny.

Crew man Chris Mellow, a 32-year-old former raver and now a marketing maven in Beverly Hills, California, had driven the night shift through much of Oklahoma and into the ice storm. Mellow mimics his name. He's a smooth, attentive driver, and we've been friends so long that he was there when I had my first beer. Our other crew member was C/D road warrior K.C. Colwell, a mustachioed 26-year-old college student with a head so large he's actually convinced women that he's a Kennedy cousin.

Earlier, on the first day, we'd cut a southwesterly swath through Illinois and Missouri on I-55 in hopes of finding warmer temperatures. In Dwight, Illinois, about 290 miles from home, the Olds quit unceremoniously in single-digit cold. The wavering gas gauge indicated we still had a quarter of a tank, but we believed our huge 27-gallon tank had run dry. The more likely culprit was one of the many Achilles' heels of a GM diesel: In cold weather, diesel fuel produces a kind of wax that clogs the fuel filter and starves the engine. We threw in a two-gallon can of diesel and a half-bottle of diesel conditioner in hopes of lowering the waxing point. Then we listened, over 15 agonizing minutes, to the sound of the 11-hp starter motor. But just as the two batteries the Olds came with were about to peter out, the engine caught and fired, creating a noxious cloud of black smoke that would have raised eyebrows during the Industrial Revolution.

We didn't turn off the engine again in the ensuing 37 hours. We'd in fact used only 15 of our 27 gallons. Still we weren't convinced that the fuel had waxed. Perhaps the fuel pickup was set too high. Chris floated the theory that half the tank was full of leaves, or underwear, or maybe gold. From then on, we stopped every 250 or so miles to top off the tank.

I'd limited my beater search to a GM diesel. Driving through the Land of the Free, I wanted big, luxurious Detroit iron. I'd gotten lucky and found an 84-year-old gent in Gibsonburg, Ohio, who was selling a 1982 Olds Delta 88 Royale Brougham diesel coupe with 119,847 miles. During World War II, owner Kenneth Fork had been a B29 turret mechanic. Now he's a farmer, struck blind, and stuck with being chauffeured about. For $750, he parted with his well-cared-for diesel; I had to promise I wouldn't convert it to gas power. I asked to see the car immediately, but Fork's dialysis schedule meant I'd have to wait a few days.

For those who don't remember, Oldsmobile's diesel engine was plagued with enough issues since its introduction in 1978 that it wound up in a class-action suit which GM eventually settled. All of GM's brands used the 5.7-liter diesel. Despite its problems, the diesel actually sold quite well. But even in its last year, 1985, the engine still had a tendency to snap head bolts. When people search for a reason why Americans resist diesel cars, the Olds diesel inevitably receives the blame.

And yet I fell in love with the old car almost immediately. It was spotless, the burgundy velour seats offering a living-room feel missing in modern cars. The dashboard sparkled like new, the headliner had not a sag, and the body was free of rust. Everything worked—the A/C, the power windows, the cruise control. I almost felt guilty. For $750, the price of a set of tires, I'd clipped a WWII vet of a terrific car.

Back in Texas, the rising sun began to illuminate the scratchy landscape, and Colwell took the wheel. After 150 miles and a few hours, we emerged from the storm in the middle of New Mexico. We knew we were hours behind the Benz, so it was time to stop babying the Olds. Colwell kicked it up to a steady 80 mph. That doesn't sound very fast, but the Olds at that speed felt like 130 in a modern car. When we heard that Webster's steamy pile was stranded in Flagstaff, a surge of adrenaline spurred us forward.

New Mexico was a memory by early afternoon, Arizona hung around until sundown, and finally the edge of California arrived with nightfall. At this point, we dared the fates by pegging the speedo at 85 mph for the final 235 miles. Interstate 10 into Los Angeles unfolded as we waited for our mobile phones to ring with news from one of the other teams. —Tony Quiroga

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 6-passenger, 2-door coupe

PRICE AS TESTED: $11,471 (purchase price: $750)

ENGINE TYPE: pushrod 16-valve diesel V-8, iron block and heads, mechanical direct fuel injection
Displacement: 350 cu in, 5737cc
Power (SAE net): 105 bhp @ 3200 rpm
Torque (SAE net): 205 lb-ft @ 1600 rpm

TRANSMISSION: 3-speed automatic

Wheelbase: 116.0 in Length: 218.1 in Width: 76.3 in Height: 56.0 in
Curb weight: 4037 lb

Zero to 60 mph: 17.8 sec
Zero to 80 mph: 38.1 sec
Street start, 5-60 mph: 17.6 sec
Standing 1/4-mile: 21.2 sec @ 65 mph
Braking, 70-0 mph: 312 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.71 g

EPA fuel economy, city driving: 23 mpg
C/D-observed fuel economy: 23 mpg

1980 Mercedes-Benz 300SD





















—Larry Webster



Displacement: 183 cu in, 2998cc
Power (SAE net): 120 bhp @ 4350 rpm

TRANSMISSION: 4-speed automatic

Curb weight: 3744 lb

Zero to 60 mph: 18.1 sec
Zero to 80 mph: 39.0 sec
Street start, 5-60 mph: 17.8 sec
Standing 1/4-mile: 21.7 sec @ 65 mph
Braking, 70-0 mph: 384 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.64 g

EPA fuel economy, city driving: 24 mpg
C/D-observed fuel economy: 25 mpg

So, who won?

Half-past 7 p.m. on the West Coast, a grueling 37 hours and nine stops after they departed C/D's offices, the Dream Team arrived at the Portofino Inn, scoring 10,000 points. Aside from a minor mechanical issue in Arizona, the fetid-smelling old Mercedes had gone the distance with the hammer down. Unfortunately for Webster, he didn't pick up many items on the scavenger-hunt list, nor did he snap many pictures. In a stroke of genius, at the end of the run Robinson lied to Webster so the Benz team would believe the Maxima was ahead. Robinson hoped the Benz would expire or Webster would finish as quickly as possible and ignore the scavenger hunt. In reality, Robinson was happy to settle for a second- or third-place time and went out of his way to collect high-point scavenger items. Quiroga, who throughout the drive was chronically nervous at the prospect of being stranded by the infamous Olds diesel, stopped often (13 times) and decided to make up the time by collecting as many points as he could. This is a good time to point out that Webster knew what was required to win the challenge, and he only started whining about the scavenger hunt after he realized he had lost because he ignored it.

Nearly three hours after the Benz clattered up to the Portofino, the valet slipped behind the wheel of the silt-covered Delta 88 festooned with 32 refrigerator magnets (over $80 worth) and filled with enough scavenger-hunt items to more than make up for the second-place finish (9012 points). More than an hour later, at midnight, Robinson's Maxima, after traveling the most miles (2578), and filled with assorted detritus, made it to the finish line with the legendary centennial coin of Tonopah, Nevada, and a handsome inflatable plastic sheep that Jared had grown quite attached to. His third place was worth 9011.99 points.

Scores were totaled. Naked-lady playing cards were accounted for, digital photos of state signs were added up, and all truck-stop shower pics were tallied. Webster's team ended up in third, despite being first to finish, with 10,700 points. Robinson, confident that his 1000-point coin would put him over the top, found to his chagrin that 12,482 points were not enough to take the big prize. Quiroga, who amassed 2200 points in fridge magnets and restroom marital aids, became king of the diesel beaters with 12,562 points, making for one proud farmer in Gibsonburg, Ohio, and a sort of vindication for the GM diesel.

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