THE ROADSTERS ARE BACK

By WILLIAM A. MCWHIRTER/DETROIT

Mr. Mitty, your car is ready. It's got wire wheels, a sloping hood, wooden steering wheel, oversize head lamps, oval gauges, a high-rise back end and low-slung seats--just two of them.

The roadster is back. After years of declining sales, and against the Boomer vanguard of minivans and sport utilities, automakers such as Jaguar and Porsche have rediscovered and updated a vintage class of sports cars that have virtually no reason for being except the sheer wind-in-your-face joy of motoring.

Some bifocaled Americans remember the days when passing MGs, Alfas and Spyders--the then fashion models on cardom's runways--winked their lights at one another in acknowledgment of their superiority. The new crop of roadsters aims to revive that kind of auto envy. Among the hot new machines:

--Boxster, Porsche's six-cylinder $39,980 speedster, its first new sports car in 19 years. The car is being sold with throwback-apparel options such as goggles and a racing hood.

--Chrysler's Prowler, the only American entry in the class--a convertible designed to hot-wire the Plymouth brand's low-watt image. Tom Gale, the Chrysler design chief who oversaw the $35,000 two-seater, says with a smile, "I remember when I was a kid thinking that convertibles were faster than other cars."

--The Mercedes-Benz SLK. The initials are German for sporty, light and short [sportlich, leicht und kurz]. Price: $39,900. The SLK goes on sale early next year, but good luck in trying to buy one--Mercedes already has more orders than cars.

--BMW's Z3, unveiled on celluloid last year in the James Bond flick Goldeneye. It's the first time a prop may have been as fetching as the star. BMW is adding a $35,900 six-cylinder model to give some American-style muscle to the pretty four-cylinder job now available.

--Jaguar XK8. Undoubtedly the queen of the pack, the XK8 is a sumptuous work of art whose engine is the first V-8 ever produced by Jaguar and only the fourth engine in its history. The price is for royal bloods too at $69,900 for the convertible model. It is the only one of the new models to offer a backseat--though just big enough to cart home the groceries in leather. It's the British company's first sports car since the showpiece--and mechanically damned--XKE ended production 22 years ago.

The Europeans have spent more than $2 billion to develop these cars, hoping not only to rekindle the glowing embers of nostalgia but also to jump-start their sagging sales in the U.S. The past decade has not been kind to European companies like BMW and Mercedes, which have had their U.S. revenues run over first by a bad economy and then by Japanese luxury models. "It was not just accidental sheer desire to build a vehicle," says Rick Ford, a senior vice president of Porsche, USA. "With this company we can ill afford an error." Porsche saw its U.S. sales nose-dive from a high of 30,471 in 1986 to a low of 3,700 in 1993.

Jaguar needed a home run badly, and in the XK8 it got one. Showroom traffic tripled last month when the model was launched, and the company sold more cars in North America than during any other month in its history. Says Jaguar's Mike Dale, head of the company's U.S. operations: "We need a great sports car to keep the magic around the name. There has been very little excitement around for almost a decade, and we have been selling into a stagnant market. A sports car has always been the soul of Jaguar. The roadsters are only about 25% of our sales, but they quicken the sales pace of everything else." Mercedes-Benz's SLK has helped push sales up about 25%, while BMW's little machine is credited with moving sales ahead 14.4%.

The roadsters represent a return to a simple elegance not seen since before the car began doubling as an office. There are few if any cup holders, and cellular phones should be left at home. (Compact-disc packs and four-speaker sound systems are, of course, required.) The design emphasis is on stylish flourishes such as burled-walnut paneling and cozily fitted gauges and knobs. In another claim to heritage, the carmakers will revert to their national racing colors for their flagship images: silver for Germany, white for Italy, red for Britain.

That doesn't mean the engineers didn't get to play. Porsche's Boxster has a flared rear spoiler that extends for aerodynamic balance at 75 m.p.h. and retracts at speeds below 50 m.p.h. Mercedes' SLK has twice as many airbags (four) as seats, and a trio of electronic braking, traction and skip control systems that would keep even a Bertie Wooster out of trouble. It also has a BabySmart sensor that automatically disconnects the passenger-side airbag whenever a child seat is installed. The SLK also features a fully automatic retractable steel top, an industry first, which the company says sniffily "distances the SLK from mere rag tops."

There's one characteristic of the classic roadsters that the designers have taken pains to eliminate: cranky engine behavior that frequently rendered the cars roadside as often as they were road-bound. Some were a garage mechanic's dream. Admits Jaguar's Dale: "People lusted after a Jaguar but wouldn't trust themselves with one. We're the only manufacturer who has to convince a large portion of the auto-buying public that we're respectable again. It's a make-or-break product for Jaguar."

To address such concerns, Jaguar invested $530 million in its XK8, $230 million alone to develop a V8, 290-h.p., 32-valve engine. The sum is far more than any of its rivals have put into their roadsters. It's a stupendous outlay for a model that will sell only about 12,000 units in its first year. But Jaguar now has the first 100,000-mile maintenance-free engine in its history. BMW, also aware of the sports-car stigma, is offering a three-year program of free scheduled maintenance. "We would like our customers to have all the pleasure and none of the pain," says Victor Doolan, BMW's chief executive in the U.S.

Chrysler is really going full tilt: its Prowler includes a six-cylinder engine, a keyless remote entry and small-in-the-front and giant-in-the-rear tires. The company is also making an even more souped-up, hot-rod version that comes in only one color: retro purple.

It's difficult to figure out who'll be happier with the reintroduction of these new roadsters--consumers or automotive-design engineers. For the latter it's as if they have been given a new erector set to play with. "The desire for all this never went away," says Chrysler design chief Gale. "It was our own fault that we made cars that looked like appliances. Who is ever going to remember what a 1970 anything looked like? Shame on us. But these are the cars that you are going to collect years from now." And judging by the early reaction, it might take a year or two to get one.