Trevor Boicey said
>> (not to mention it's in the best interest of the car manufacturer
>>to have them drive the test cars hard.)
Now are we comparing your own data from friends cars, or magazine data.
Magazine data is ALWAYS suspect. On one hand, you have the manufacturer
who may tweak the car a bit in the interest of extra sales. There are
some fairly well known cases of test cars that were much faster than
anything you or I could actually buy. At the very least, the test car
is bound to leave the factory after a very careful check to make sure it
is as good as they come. There is a pretty wide variation in the
performance of "identical" production cars, ask any showroom stock
racer. On the other hand, you have the magazines, some reputable, some
not, who may see it as being in their best interest to have a test time
faster than the other magazines. Some magazines routinely have better
numbers than others, if nothing else it gets the mag mentioned in the
manufacturer's adverts. It'll be a sad day when pull out the magazines
to determine who wins a race.
My car weighs just over 2300 lb. wet, what do the Mustangs and Camaros
weigh? If we use 3000 lb., I need 153bhp to keep up with a 200bhp
Camaro. Although I've never had the engine on a dyno, my mods are in
keeping with TR-6's that have dynoed in the 150-170 range. My own
performance data seems to support that. And you can bet that there are
plenty of 200bhp Camaros that would never actually show 200 on a dyno
due to production tolerances. Could you, or someone else, hop into the
V-8 car and clean my clock? Quite possible, but then I'd just have to
get Jacque Villeneuve to drive my car wouldn't I?
>> Yes, agreed, if we did the math and said "piece of crap muscle
>>car has 400 hp, you've got 1xxhp, muscle care wins".
First, I never called them pieces of crap. I actually like them, I've
owned a Plymouth GTX (440ci) and 2 AMC AMXs (360ci and 304ci), btw my
first TR-6 (ex-racer) could beat the GTX for about 100 yards before the
GTX came storming by. Second, at least in my neck of the woods the
average late model 5.0 pony car is bone stock except for wheels and
stereo and driven by someone who would wet himself if he ever found out
what the car could actually do. That doesn't equal 400 hp. Would I
beat one of the new 5.7 ram air Firebirds or a Mustang with a Paxton
blower whining under the hood? NOT!! Like I said, part of the game is
picking on the right opponent. They could probably all beat me for top
speed, but we don't generally race that far.
Anyway, results are what they are. I'd be surprised if there aren't
others on the list with similar experiences. On one occasion I beat a
mid 80's Z28 and the victory surprised my passenger as much as the other
driver, but it does happen. And then there's always the fun of
answering their question with "2.5 liter six cylinder... what have you
got?" :-)
Tom Gentry
Life is too short to drive boring cars!
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