OY, CHEVROLET!

Cars

Jackie Mason schmoozes in the new Chevrolet Caprice, a fancy version of the New York taxi

MARK GINSBURG

'I can't imagine a more comfortable car than this," Jackie Mason pronounced breathlessly, without a trace of irony. "It feels like a $90,000 car. And the view is fabulous. The tchotchkes in between the windows—whadda ya call that?—the pillars. They're narrow, so you have a circular view that's totally unobstructed." This sort of thing is important to Mason because he's not much of a driver. He's a passenger kind of guy—"half a car freak," as he puts it. A connoisseur of the car as observation platform. "Some people ride in a car just to get someplace. I ride in a car for pleasure, to study the universe, the scenes—to see what's happening in New York," he explained. Mason's vehicular laboratory at the moment was a redesigned Caprice, a big Chevrolet sedan we had given him to test out, and which he had been using principally for tours through Brooklyn and the Bronx. "The dullest part of New York is Manhattan," Mason said. "If you want colorful characters, you have to go to the outer boroughs." Mason grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His father was a rabbi, and his three brothers are rabbis, as he was, until he became a comedian.

The Caprice is a familiar part of the New York landscape, since it is the car of choice of New York City taxi fleets. But this year Chevrolet has attempted to transform it from a pumpkin into a gilded coach, giving it a new, more aerodynamic look. This "skin job," as it's called in the trade when sheet metal is changed but the chassis is held over, cost G.M. about $100 million. And it appears to have worked: taxi drivers and parking-lot attendants drooled over the new body. The usually acid-tongued Mason seemed delighted as he perched on the big, comfy front seat. "I don't think that there's any car on the road that feels more like a luxury car than this one does," he said. "I was shocked by the width of it. And the spaciousness of this chair, the way it's constructed, is absolutely great." Actually, when I queried cabbies about their old Caprices, a common complaint was that the seats were too soft for long days at the wheel. The marshmallowy furniture in the revised Chevy won't make them any happier. "It's strictly an individual matter," Mason remarked. "It's like a mattress: some like a harder mattress, some like a softer one. It's hard to judge for somebody else."

"I noticed that in the back," Mason went on, ''there's plenty of legroom, even if the guy in front goes all the way back with his seat. The trouble with most new cars is that when the front seats are pushed all the way back, you have to be a legless person to sit behind them."

Mason liked the feel of the car. ''It has a soft, light ride," he noted. And sports-car-like pickup. "It shoots out like a tiger as soon as you touch it—the power is unbelievable." But Jyll Rosenfeld, Mason's petite, energetic blonde manager, who did much of the driving, said she was a "nervous wreck" because of the car's hyperacceleration. I also found it too sensitive, especially in traffic. Mason had an explanation: "It used to be hard to move a car, so they got excited about moving it easier and easier. Now they're making it so easy that before you sit down the car flies away from you. The manufacturer thinks it's a limitless appeal."

The Caprice's styling will find the limits to its appeal rather more easily. Whalelike in proportion and shape, and similarly endangered, the Caprice is just the sort of "full-size" rear-wheeldrive V-8 that Americans have been staying away from in droves. And even though Chevrolet has built 38 million whales in various guises since 1946, there's no escaping the fact that America's most popular car last year was the compact Honda Accord. A number of Caprices will be sold as taxis, police cars, and rentals, but the majority will still have to capture the purse strings of Middle America.

The base price of the Caprice is $17,370. The charcoal-gray model we were driving was fully loaded and cost about $21,000. I asked Mason if it would be terribly out of place in a Catskills parking lot. "It depends on the weekend," he said. "If it's the Labor Day weekend, or the singles weekend, you'll see a totally different car than on the camp weekends, when all the parents go visit the children in the camps and stay at the Concord. The family weekend is 80 percent Mercedes, right? And the rest, Cadillacs, Lincolns, several Rolls-Royces, and Jaguars." Jaguars? "Yes, Jaguars have made a lot of inroads in the last two years among middle-aged Jews. The Jaguar has become, I would say, the second-most-popular middle-aged Jewish car now. Overall, from 90 percent Mercedes, 10 percent Caddys, it went to 60 percent Mercedes, 30 percent Jaguars, and 10 percent Caddy s." Mason felt that Chevy would have image troubles with the Caprice. "G.M. has a marketing problem here, because as soon as a person can afford $21,000 for a car, he's buying it for a nameplate that means big money. And Chevy symbolizes the middle-class car. The symbolism of success is ten times more important to people than comfort."

Talking to Mason about symbols is a little confusing, because his favorite shop is Hermes, probably the most expensive luxury-goods emporium on Fiftyseventh Street, if not in all of Manhattan, but his favorite coffee shop is in Hell's Kitchen. "Forty-fourth Street and Ninth Avenue. I like it because it's an all-night coffee shop. I like to stay out late, and I don't cook, so I like to have a cup of coffee and watch the action. Late at night, you're watching mostly muggers and murderers who are resting in between jobs," he said. "In this city, which is supposed to have such great nightlife, there's only about four coffee shops open after midnight. And there's no restaurants open after twelve. They call this the city of nightlife—'New York never sleeps.' New York never sleeps because they're afraid they'll get mugged."

Will the new Caprice, with its soft, Wonder-bread ride, take the edge off aggressive New York taxi drivers, I wondered? The version sold to taxi fleets costs more, and has a stronger suspension and firmer seats, but it's pretty much the same car, and there is something narcotic and magical about the way the new Caprice holds the road. It weighs slightly less than two tons, it's eight and a half inches longer than the best-selling Cadillac, yet it still feels sprightly, and handles its weight with aplomb—sort of like Roseanne and her TV husband, who manage to dart around the living room without undulating. The car turns on a dime, too, and standard anti-lock brakes help offset the obnoxious triggerlike acceleration. Our car even had a digital compass embedded in the rearview mirror, and headlights that switched on automatically when darkness approached. But Jyll, who is used to driving a Mercedes, felt that it was a bit gimmicky, and she was also unhappy about the way the car handled the pothole-riddled New York streets. "If this car is going to be a taxicab.. .1 mean, we went up and down Eighth Avenue, which is semi-paved, and that was more or less O.K. But go up Madison, you hit metal plates, then a pothole, it's a real roller-coaster ride." Jyll felt that the bumps were not fully absorbed by the car's suspension, which, even though reworked, is still part of a platform that was initially pressed into service in 1977. Mason vehemently disagreed. "If you blindfolded people, they'd never know the difference between a Mercedes and the Chevy," he said. "There is a difference in the ride, but it's always in favor of the cheaper car, because the cheaper-made American car has a soft, light ride that is much smoother."

I felt the Caprice suspension offered a fairly good compromise, allowing for the unique harshness and degradation of New York's roadways. But the car seemed too big for the city, where, according to The New York Times, traffic congestion is supposed to become 38 percent heavier in the next fifteen years. On the other hand, as Mason pointed out, with businesses fleeing New York because of deteriorating conditions, "how can they predict ten times as much traffic? There'll be nobody here in probably two weeks."

But then, as Jyll pointed out, "So, there will be room to drive this car."

MANUFACTURER'S

SPECIFICATIONS

Chevrolet Caprice Classic

• Vehicle type: six-passenger, rearwheel-drive four-door sedan.

• List price: $17,370 (includes driver's air bag and anti-lock brakes).

• Engine type: 5.0-liter V-8.

• Transmission: four-speed automatic.

• Acceleration 0-60 m.p.h.:

11.5 seconds.

• Top speed: 108 m.p.h.

• E.P.A. fuel economy:

17 m.p.g., city; 26 m.p.g., highway.