11/12/2022 0 Comments Vector w8 for sale![]() ![]() That was as close as we ever got to testing a Vector.īuilding a car is hard, and big promises make the nearly impossible even harder. It may have gone faster, but the trans wouldn’t shift into top gear, the engine was hitting a rev limiter short of its indicated 7000-rpm redline, and reverse disappeared. The red Vector ran strong, stayed cool, and managed 60 mph in 3.8 seconds and a 12.0-second quarter at 118 mph. We headed to Pershing Drive, a north-south road between LAX and the beach. We told him to call if he got the car sorted.Īt 2:30 a.m., the phone rang. Wiegert desperately wanted a successful run. With a flight the next morning, it appeared that we would not be testing the Vector. We got in it again, and the engine started frying during the five-minute evening drive to an unofficial test venue, the nearby Terminal Island Freeway. Vector mechanics worked on the car the next day. After cooling it for a few hours and adding water, we tried an acceleration run, which overheated the car and led to heavy engine knock. We jumped into a gray prototype to head over to our desert test site, but even the tests that are easy on the engine (braking, top-gear, and skidpad) spiked the water temperature to 250 degrees. But after we completed a few passes for photos, the red engineering prototype ground to a halt, its three-speed GM transmission having decided to stop sending torque to the rear wheels. With a claimed 625 ponies from its twin-turbo 6.0-liter small-block V-8, the car indeed felt strong. The company trucked two W8 TwinTurbos, which is what Vector called the production version of the W2, to our photoshoot. ![]() But the ’80s passed without the car coming together.Īnd then, in early 1991, we got a call. ![]() Wiegert was a gifted designer who had drawn a remarkable shape, and his creation employed top-drawer components. The publicity that ensued made us Wiegert’s best friend, but we never got a test car. Arty shots on a dry lake bed helped make a car years away seem real. It started with a story in our December 1980 issue in which then associate editor Larry Griffin heaped praise on the car and its creator, Gerald Wiegert. C/D was guilty of helping to foster that image. Vector struggled to build a production car in the ’80s, but the W2 prototype enjoyed supercar mystique and street cred nonetheless. ![]() That’s the thing about vaporware-it’s all too easy to be seduced by a great-looking body and assurances that it works as advertised. The promises were big, the styling jaw-dropping, and a drivable production car elusive. From the December 2017 issue of Car and Driverīefore the word “vaporware” existed, there was the Vector. ![]()
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