Imponte Dukes

The Imponte Dukes is the car that looks fastest standing still. The nose is impossibly long, the hidden headlamp doors give the front end a blank predatory look, and the roofline drops into a pair of flying buttresses that frame a recessed rear window. It is more dramatic than any of its contemporaries and it has aged better than all of them, which is why a clean Dukes in Leonida commands roughly double what a comparable Sabre does.

Imponte built it as a full-size performance coupe rather than a mid-size hot rod, and that shows in the way it drives. The Dukes is long, heavy and stable, with a wheelbase that makes it noticeably more composed at speed than the shorter muscle cars, and it will hold a line on a fast bumpy road where a Tampa would be skittering across the surface. It was, and remains, the best high-speed backroad car of its generation.

That characteristic gave it a specific reputation in Leonida that has never entirely faded. The long flat roads on the mainland side of the bay, the arrow-straight runs through Kelly County, the causeway approaches - these are Dukes roads, and the car's ability to cover them fast, stably and for a long time made it the definitive vehicle for anybody whose business involved getting a long way from Vice City in a hurry.

Modern Leonida has embraced it as an icon. The Dukes appears in the state's tourism material, on the walls of diners in Hamlet, and in the collections of people who own considerably faster cars and drive the Imponte anyway. It is loud, thirsty, imprecise and completely unnecessary, and there is a persuasive argument that it is the single most charismatic vehicle in the state.

The Dukes is defined by its length. The hood accounts for close to half the car and is entirely flat except for a subtle centre bulge, and the front is a full-width blacked-out grille with hidden headlamp doors that flip open to reveal quad round lamps. With the doors closed the car has no visible face at all, which is exactly the effect Imponte was after.

The rear is the other signature. The roof runs back and then splits into two buttresses that flow down into the rear quarters, leaving the rear window recessed in a tunnel between them. Below that the tail is a full-width panel with round lamps set into a blacked-out surround, echoing the front. A subtle ducktail lip finishes the deck.

Imponte offered a range of period high-impact colors and a bold hockey-stick side stripe that follows the upper body line and kicks up over the rear arch. Inside, the car is better appointed than most of its rivals - proper high-back buckets, a full-width instrument panel with real round gauges, a console-mounted shifter, and a general level of finish that reflects the higher price.

The Dukes accelerates hard but with a smoothness that its rivals lack, the extra mass and long wheelbase taking the edge off the initial lunge and turning it into a sustained heavy push. It is not the quickest off the line in the class, but from forty miles an hour onward it pulls with a relentlessness that will reel in cars that beat it away from the lights.

High-speed stability is genuinely exceptional and is the model's defining performance trait. The long wheelbase, heavy nose and relatively soft damping combine to produce a car that tracks straight over broken surfaces, crosswinds and expansion joints without needing constant correction. On the flat mainland roads at speed the Dukes is more relaxing than cars built decades later.

Cornering is limited by mass and by the sheer length of the thing. It leans, it takes time to change direction, and the front end will push wide if you ask too much. Braking is mediocre - better than the Tampa, worse than anything modern - and the Dukes' weight means the stopping distances from high speed are long enough to demand real anticipation.

The Dukes is the best long-distance escape vehicle in the muscle class. If the plan involves putting real mileage between you and Vice City on open roads, its stability, sustained pull and composure over bad surfaces make it a better choice than faster but twitchier alternatives. It will hold an uncomfortable speed for an uncomfortable length of time without ever feeling like it is about to bite.

Use the length deliberately in a chase. The long wheelbase makes the Dukes unusually resistant to being spun by a rear-quarter hit, and it will absorb contact from lighter pursuit vehicles and keep going straight. It is correspondingly bad at making tight turns, so pick routes with sweeping bends rather than right angles.

Brake in a straight line, always, and start early. The combination of mass, length and period brakes means the Dukes will not stop in anything resembling a modern distance, and trying to brake and turn at the same time loads the front tires past what they can deliver. Get all your slowing done before you turn the wheel and the car is enormously capable; try to do both at once and it simply ploughs on.

Rideout Customs offers the Dukes a full classic-muscle catalog with several model-specific items: hood scoop and pin options, a choice of blacked-out or chrome grille surrounds, ducktail and pedestal wing options, roll cages, and the hockey-stick stripe in the full range of period and modern colors. The wheel selection covers period steels, chrome slots and modern staggered sets.

Mechanically the shop pushes brake and suspension work ahead of engine upgrades, because the Dukes' chassis has more inherent ability than its stopping power can support. Full engine, transmission and turbo staging are available for those who want them, and the platform tolerates significant power increases well thanks to its inherent stability. Armor is popular on the Dukes for the same reason it is on the Gauntlet - it is already heavy, so the penalty is small.

Clean Dukes are among the most sought-after classics in Leonida and mostly move through the north marina classic dealer and the coastal auction weekends, where they routinely outsell their estimates. Project cars turn up in Port Gellhorn used lots and through private sale, though far less often than the more common models.

On the street it appears in the enthusiast contexts - the Vice Beach Sunday gathering, the east-side industrial meets, the collector garages on the mainland - and, distinctively, out on the long rural roads through Kelly County and the Grassrivers approaches, where people who own them still take them for exactly the kind of drive the car was built for.

Imponte positioned the Dukes above the ordinary muscle crowd - more expensive, better finished, aimed at buyers who wanted performance without the crudeness - and Leonida's coastal money bought them accordingly. It was the car of the successful, not the aspirational, and that has coloured its reputation ever since.

Its association with the state's high-speed criminal history is well documented and only partly exaggerated. Through the era when Leonida's contraband economy ran on long night drives between the coast and the interior, the Dukes was the vehicle of choice for the people doing the driving, and a handful of specific cars from that period are known by name in Vice City to this day. Two of them are in private collections. One is reportedly still in a canal.