>>>>>>>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 ;-)
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>>Differences of opinion make the world go 'round....
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>
>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.

You are a redneck trapped in a woman's body! "Casting void in the 2nd counterweight of the crankshaft" -- well, yes, exactly, LOL. My level of engine expertise is more on the order of "It won't start" or "The engine light is on."

It's funny because half my family back in Maine either know their way around cars, race them, or are mechanics for a living. Obviously the gene skips a beat every so often, well, other than the gene that wants to drive fast.