On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 07:02:51 -0400, America the Beautiful
> wrote:

>> Admired and lusted over for it's van style suspension?
>>
>> Ever wondered why that despite being cheap and nasty, American cars
>> still don't sell?
>
>Somebody's buying them.....
>
>"The only sports car that matters"
>http://www.btinternet.com/~a.s.greenfield/

"But no; our fate is in the hands of a people whose IQ is generally
smaller than their waistbands. A people who’ve trawled their 263m
citizens and come up with Bush and super-chin as the alternatives. A
people whose soldiers wear sunglasses while trying to defuse trouble
on the streets of Baghdad. You’re not Jean-Claude Van Damme, you
idiots. Take them off. Let them see your eyes. Or are you like the
president? Do you only have one?"

"As a sort of protest about everything, but the sunglasses thing most
of all, my wife recently decided to purge everything American from the
house."

"At first, I suspected this would be a long and painful task that
would send us back to the Dark Ages, but do you know what? Most of the
electrical equipment is from Japan, or Germany. The furniture is
largely Italian or British. And pretty well everything else was made
in China."

"It’s billed, like all previous Vettes, as a sports car to rival the
best from Europe, and I hope you don’t mind if I s****** politely at
this point."

"America has never really made a sports car, because while we were
hanging it out to dry on Welsh moorland roads, or Alpine passes, they
were racing between the lights on Telegraph Road. And for that, you
don’t need a pin-sharp turn-in. You need muscle."

"And that, contrary to what you may have been told, is what the
Vette’s always been about: it’s a car so pumped up on steroids, it
would be unable to make a drugs test without falling off its
motorcycle. It’s a car with arms like Schwarzenegger but a penis like
a shrivelled-up little acorn."

"And so we arrive at the C6, expecting more of the same. It’s still
plastic. It’s still made in Kentucky. It still has the big V8. And —
stop laughing at the back — it still comes with exactly the same sort
of suspension that you get on a Silvercross pram. Yup. It has leaf
springs, which means it still rides like it’s running on wooden
tyres."

"Of course, 14th-century suspension has no bearing in the way the car
goes. What does have a bearing is the gearbox."

"Put your foot down and after a hint of wheelspin — and with tyres the
width of a tennis court, it is only a hint — the bruiser launches off
the line with what might fairly be termed much gusto. And then, at
around 30, everything goes horribly wrong because you have to select
second."

"There are levers at the National Coal Mining Museum that move with
more smoothness than the gearshifter in a C6 Vette. To get second from
third, you really need a second elbow. "

"Happily, you’re distracted from this most of the time by the HUD. I’m
not joking. This car has a head-up display, just like you get in an
F-16 fighter."

"It’s fantastic. Whole bus queues are hidden behind the digital speed
read-out, which is going to make for some wonderful insurance claims.
“The old lady was behind my rev counter so I never saw here until
she’d already bounced over the roof.”"

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/art...5587_2,00.html