Superexpensive Tune-Up

During the first few months of each year, Detroit's auto manufacturers stage a strange and well-guarded ritual at their test sites. Using cars equipped with the following model-year's engine, test drivers go through an endless automotive pentathlon of starts and stops, cruising and idling, turning and backing up. Even so, company engineers must wait four months to get the results they want: a series of cars that have clocked 50,000 miles each of simulated commuter driving on Los Angeles freeways with almost no repair work. Only after the exhaust emissions from vehicles thus tested have been measured can the automakers know whether the engines scheduled for introduction the following September will meet federal antipollution standards.

Last week Ford Motor Co. announced that the whole tortuous testing program on its 1973-model engines had been invalidated by an incredible staff bungle. During the course of the 50,000-mile trial runs, the company said, Ford employees performed "unscheduled, unauthorized maintenance" on the test cars, presumably including engine tune-ups and replacement of points and plugs. Since the tests are specifically designed to measure emissions from cars that have been kept in less than topnotch condition--as will often happen when they get into buyers' hands--the unscheduled repair work threw a monkey wrench into Ford's results. Earlier the company had quietly withdrawn its application for engine approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, and last week it announced that four testing employees were being "reassigned." Growled an angry Henry Ford II: "It is fair to say we are in one hell of a lot of trouble."

Precisely how much trouble remained to be seen. Legally, the EPA could force Ford to begin a new round of tests, delaying production of its '73 models for as much as two months. But since some 170,000 Ford employees would be thrown out of work during the wait, EPA Deputy Administrator Robert Fri said that it would be "cruel" to go that far. Instead, the agency might let Ford produce and ship new cars on schedule but force it to withhold them from the market until final certification; that would preserve jobs but could badly hurt Ford financially because it would be unable to sell cars during the early weeks of new-model introductions. Sales during those weeks go far to establish each automaker's share of the market for the model year. Another possibility is that computer data on the faulty engine tests may be reprogrammed to compensate for some of the maintenance violations, allowing Ford to start selling some of its 1973 models on schedule in late September.

Passing Muster. The crowning irony is that Ford's engines might well have passed muster if the tests had been properly performed. As far as emissions go, the engines differ very little from those in current models. The only new federal requirement is installation of a device designed to limit oxides-of-nitro-gen emissions to 3 gm. per mi. or less. The same system is already required on cars sold in California, though the emissions limit there is 3.2 gm. per mi., and Ford's 1972 engines met that standard --indicating that at worst the engines for the 1973 models are very close to satisfying the federal requirements too. That thought can only gall Ford executives further as they try to calculate the cost of what must have been the most expensive tune-up in auto history.

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