In Defense of Enzo, who loved Jeeps

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.