CORRADO BRAVADO

Tooling about between gigs, Branford Marsalis gets a grip on the new VW

MARK GINSBURG

Cars

'My parents couldn't afford to get me a car, so I never was into them, and I went to a Catholic school where a lot of people bought hotrod mags and that turned me off to such a degree," recalls Branford Marsalis, the saxophonist. Now twentynine and a man of means, Marsalis has given up touring with Sting to travel with his own band. On the street he still wears sneakers, a cap, and a baseball jacket—Spike Leestyle—but onstage he dresses in suits by Versace and Armani.

We are sitting in his brownstone apartment in Brooklyn's Clinton Hill, in front of his Apple Mac, which takes musical notation, acts as a Filofax, and serves up mystery games for his three-year-old son, Reese. On a shelf are an answering machine—Marsalis "screens"—and a fax both operating nonstop. "Man, I'm from Louisiana, and back there everybody was into American cars, and I hated American cars," he says emphatically. "I hated the way. they looked. I hated the way they drove. But I like things that go fast. When I got into college, I started renting cars. And later, when Budget came up with the luxury line, I said, Shit, I never drove a Porsche before, so my old manager taught me how to drive a stick. That changed my perception of everything because it meant I could drive to gigs across Europe."

For a test drive between some local gigs, we lent Marsalis a pristine Volkswagen Corrado. "Already I can tell it has good handling in the turns," he reported. "This car doesn't have the instant takeoff that some cars have, but as it gears up you can tell there's a lot of power. In my Acura Legend, twentyfive miles per hour in first would really be pushing it."

The VW Corrado is a poor man's Porsche. It's Volkswagen's top car, and costs about $17,900, fully equipped. Volkswagen hopes that West German youths will buy Corrados the way young Americans snapped up Pontiac Firebirds and Chevrolet Camaros in the late seventies, when what they really hankered for was a Corvette. The tremendous gap between American and German automotive technology means that the Corrado has far more in common with a Porsche 944 than the Firebird Trans Am has with the Vette, America's only true sports car. "I knew you were giving me a Volkswagen, and I definitely didn't get what I expected," Marsalis admitted, "like a nice, generic, all-purpose car that doesn't break down—good-gas-mileage thing. But the Corrado's a 'bad' car. Brooklyn's good for testing a car because they really don't take care of the roads here," he added. "The Corrado's shock absorbers are set so that you feel the bumps more than not feel them. For me, that's not a bad thing; I like the feeling of feeling the road. I could have used more headroom on that bump just now..." Our Corrado had an optional sunroof, which limited the headroom somewhat, but since the seats were adjustable for height, this became an issue only when careening over those bumps. "These cars were designed in Germany, where the roads are smooth, so there wasn't the need to spend the money Mercedes spends on suspensions," Marsalis said. "German roads are, zoom, zoom, straight ahead. I think if you were living in California, Wyoming, or Pennsylvania, the Corrado would be a great car to have. In New York City, it's murder; the bumps are everywhere.

"My Acura Legend is like a yuppie luxurymobile with very good performance, but it's not necessarily a driver's car. This feels more like a driver's car. It has a bit of the Porsche feel, only with somewhat less control, partly because the gearbox is clunky," Marsalis added as we crossed the Manhattan Bridge.

So what does a Corrado compete with? There's Honda's upmarket sporty car, the Prelude, as well as the Nissan 240SX, the Toyota Celica, and the Mitsubishi Eclipse. But Marsalis finds Japanese cars of all sizes and shapes too light: "Japanese cars don't have any butt. They're always too light in the ass, which is one of the ways they can get such great gas mileage. My Acura is a smooth-handling car, and it's pretty quiet inside, but when you get into those fast speeds, past eighty, any little gust of wind comes by and the tail will start moving," he said.

"The Corrado seats are fine," Marsalis said, continuing his appraisal. In front, the ugly striped velour seats are formfitting and keep their occupants in place even on sharp turns. The rear compartment can hold two people reasonably comfortably. Standard features in the Corrado include air-conditioning; a tilt steering wheel; power windows, mirrors, and door locks; and a decent stereo.

"The seat belt got on my nerves after a while," he pointed out. "Simple things like putting a bag in the front seat became a chore," because the shoulder harness is motorized and glides mouselike up and down a track along the doorsill whenever the door is opened and the key is in the ignition. It's a foolish concession to the U.S. government's requirement for "passive restraint systems," because the lap belt must still be fastened manually. Many people forget to do so and therefore are in danger of "submarining," i.e., sliding out from underneath the shoulder harness on impact. To alleviate this problem, Volkswagen, like other manufacturers, has installed knee padding under the dashboard so that the body has less room to shift forward in a crash.

The Corrado was designed several years ago, before air-bag technology became commonplace. Production problems delayed its introduction until now, and apparently the technology involved in retrofitting air bags is too costly even for the world's fourth-largest carmaker.

The Corrado's "anti-theft" radio had a special code, but Marsalis was skeptical of that too: "I've lived in Brooklyn for six years and those radios are stolen here all the time. I don't think that most of the people stealing can read the antitheft sign, and even if they could they wouldn't believe it for a second. The Japanese do it best with those generic, all-purpose box radios that can't really work in any car but the one that it's in," he claimed.

MANUFACTURER'S

SPECIFICATIONS

Volkswagen Corrado

• Vehicle type: four-passenger, front-wheel-drive, front-engine two-door hatchback.

• List price: $17,900.

• Engine type: supercharged, in-line four-cylinder.

• Transmission: five-speed manual.

• Acceleration 0-60 m.p.h.:

7.5 seconds.

• Top speed: 140 m.p.h.

• Estimated E.P.A. fuel economy:

21 m.p.g., city; 28 m.p.g., highway.

The first thing you notice when you're driving the Corrado and putting it in gear is the sign below the stick shift that says 'Karmann,' " Marsalis continued. "I went, Yeah, Karmann Ghia. A friend of mine has one and he loves it." Karmann Coach works, in northern Germany, builds bodies for certain lowvolume BMW, Jaguar, and Porsche models. For Volkswagen, it has produced the Beetle Convertible, the Ghia, the Scirocco, and the Cabriolet. Karmann's coachbuilding results in exacting, custom-made quality, and items that might look affected if they weren't so carefully detailed include the rear spoiler, which rises when the car reaches 45 m.p.h., and fog lights integrated into the front bumpers. "The Corrado has the look; it's almost there," Marsalis decided. "I mean, just driving down the street, people go, 'That's a Volkswagen?' It looked good, man. The finish was good. And it had that VW-sounding engine, but I've never found that to be offensive. At least I know it's on. The Acura is so quiet. Sometimes it's already running and you try to restart it.

"Good suspension in this country is when you can't feel the road. The Corrado is a driver's car, period. There's gonna be people who get in it and not like it because they can feel every bump in the road. They don't even realize it's nice to have control." Once, when Marsalis was on tour with Sting, he rented a Lamborghini in Hamburg and drove it to Munich: "Whew! My life has never been the same since. I think that deep down in the hearts of all men, and I really don't know why, the sensations of flight and speed are insatiable. Which is why they resort to drugs, maybe. The euphoria I got in that car—there's no drug in the world that can supplant that," Marsalis sighed. I asked him if music could ever take him to the same plane. "Not like that," he replied. "You can get euphoria on a great gig when everything's clicking, but that's like a runner's high. This is better than a runner's high. When you start talking about 140 miles per hour, 150, the slightest miscalculation and you're a dead man. So everything becomes aroused. You can hear everything, and it all seems like slow motion. If I could be a baseball player on that level I would never miss the ball." What many Americans may never realize is that the Corrado, in a far humbler but still stylish way, is capable of supplying similar, Lamborghini-like adrenaline. Its supercharged engine will propel the aerodynamic body to 140 m.p.h. on the autobahn, rock-steady. That kind of sophistication is a first for a VW, and a rarity in an inexpensive sports car. The VW Corrado is cheaper in the United States than in Germany. If you enjoy driving, the Corrado is a steal.