>>>>>>I think the Japanese do them all better - but the U.S. car industry doesn't have anything to compete with the smaller cars so they don't lose sales there......
>>>>>
>>>>>We still make the Corvette. The Japanese sure don't do that better. (And neither does anyone else in remotely the same price class).
>>>>
>>>>Sorry, but in my opinion the Corvette ain't that much to brag about. Lots of cars can go fast in a straight line.
>>>
>>>Heretic! ;-)
>>>
>>>I had two of them in my younger days and don't seem to remember always driving them in a straight line. Would love to have another one but it would be a cliche at my age now, unfortunately.
>>>
>>>Ain't that much to brag about.... (shaking head)
>>
>>Hey, I cut my driving teeth on Detroit Big Iron, learned to drive in a 1970 Pontiac Bonneville affectionately known as 'Ralph the Baby Killer' for all the 16-and-a-day little boys that would come up on me at a red light (in their shiny Camaros, Mustangs and 'Vettes) and thought it would be funny to offer to race off the line. I kept wanting to point to the red '455' on the fender and tell them that wasn't a model number (it was the engine size - high compression to boot), but I didn't. I'd just wait for the light to turn green and leave them like they were sitting still.
>>
>>Did I mention that at that time, I was cutting reaction times of about .01 - .03 seconds?
>>
>>So no, Corvettes ain't that much to brag about when you can get better performance for 1/3 of the price and better looks 20 years ago.
>
>Interesting. The car I had before the first Vette was an '83 Trans Am. Cherry red with a big black firebird on the hood. It was a great car. No Corvette IMO, performance-wise or any other way, but it was a great car. A very nice imitation Corvette ;-)
>
>Differences of opinion make the world go 'round....


Yeah, but by '83 the heart had been cut out of the Firebird/Trans Am. My Trans Am was a '77 - with a 400 Cu In engine in it. Unfortunately, it had a casting void in the 2nd counterweight of the crankshaft. When that let go, we just happened to have a 455 out of a 68 Pontiac wagon sitting in the garage. Once we put that in, I had a car that would run 13 second 1/4 miles (@ 22 mpg, btw) and took me to school every day.