You might take a ride, vicariously in a Corvette:
http://www.challengevideos.com/ You may buy a new Z06 for less than
fifty thousand, or about a third of what it would take to beat it:
http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/CorvetteZ06/
God Bless America, ßill O|||||||O
http://www.billhughes.com/

wrote:
>
> Poster wrote:
>
> Yes, it's like Ferrari, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, etc... Look back into
> 1970's
> at their products. They're far inferior in most ways to American
> counterparts of the period. Ferrari's were beautiful cars with kit car
> build quality. Mechanically they were unreliable. They weren't all that
> impressive performance-wise either. Sure, the snobby will call their
> performance "balanced", but a common Chevelle SS would outgun most
> Ferraris
> in an acceleration contest. The one on Magnum PI had a 0-60 time of
> something like 9 seconds! The original VW GTi was capable of that. Even
> the
> Corvette during those poor performance years could go faster. Porsche
> never
> even made a fast car until the 1978 911 Turbo was released, and its
> performance would have been laughed at between 1967 to 1971. Have you
> even
> seen a 70's era Bimmer or Benz? Most were nothing to look at... There
> was
> nothing special about Mercedes vehicles back then, but somehow in the
> 1980's we began a love affair with them and that funded them to improve
> their product to be where they are now. Same goes for Honda, Toyota,
> and
> Datsun (Nissan). Our need for fuel efficiency provided them with the
> much
> needed funds, combined with their ambitition, led to the admittedly
> good
> products they have now. But back then, there was nothing special about
> them. I remember reading an article about a Toyota 2000GT, where they
> were
> so unreliable that the engine needed rebuilt every 60K or something
> like
> that. They got the reliability later, after we funded it.
>
> Ferraris of the 50's, 60's and 70's were the performance cars of their
> generation overall, hands down.
>
> They were not dragsters, certainly. But who cares, except for a few
> stoplight losers? The Ferrari V12 engines were capable of putting out
> more power than all but the rumpiest musclecar engines-but they were
> turbine smooth and would make power from 1500 rpm all the way to
> redline. They would run a very long time and were highly rebuildable
> with cylinder liners and a hell-for-stout lower end. And the drivelines
> were rugged, the brakes first rate...sure, there were Cinzano wrappers
> for fuses in the early ones, but mechanically they were first class.
> Ferrari's real bread and butter was, and is, foundry work...and it
> shows.
>
> Corvette? No one takes Corvette fully seriously. Sure, the current one
> is a credible car on the Autobahn. But for decades they weren't, and
> besides, a guy who wants that kind of car doesn't want one made in that
> quantity, bought by secretaries. He wants beautiful mechanicals, not
> shared with pickup trucks, he wants race car tech (NASCAR isn't a race
> car-it's taxicab racing) and aircraft smells.
>
> Ford GT? It's a Corvette shaped like a GT40 road racer. Pure cheese
> for the gullible. The money is in the right ballpark, but the tech is
> Focus level.
>
> The sad thing is Detroit COULD do the job. They could build a real
> contender, in fact Ford could have made the GT a serious car for
> another ten grand per unit. But since Americans are (mostly) too
> ignorant to understand the difference, the status quo will continue.
>
> I guess the poster never heard of a Porsche 550RS, a 908 or a 917, or
> a Mercedes W196, 300SL, or 300SLR. Like I said, we're ignorant and we
> like it that way.