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From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.auto
Subject: Re: Muscle_car != Sport_car
Message-ID: <1972@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 31-May-84 18:55:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.1972
Posted: Thu May 31 18:55:04 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Jun-84 11:15:28 EDT
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> > I am getting tired of people proclaiming Detroit muscle cars to be
> > great sport cars.   Those cars are good at one thing and one thing
> > only: going fast in a straight line.   That's fine -- there's nothing
> > wrong with neck-snapping acceleration, just don't try to tell me that
> > blinding straightaway speed is all there is to a well-rounded sports
> > car!

> > A true sports car must be able to stop and turn as well as it can
> > accelerate.   I certainly don't want to sell my soul for a car that
> > is always first off the line only to sink to its knees when the first
> > turn comes up!

> I hate to admit it, but the handling specs for the '84 Chevy Corvette
> are better than those for the Porsche 911, and the reviews (Road and
> Track - Car and Driver) confirm it.

What that says is that a Corvette is not (no longer?) a Detroit muscle
car.  (I've heard that the Corvette achieves its handling at the cost
of "refinement" - i.e., the ride is rather rough - and that detracts
somewhat from the "fun-to-drive" aspect of the car.  Chevy is supposedly
working on that...)  It's nice that Detroit realizes that straight-line
acceleration isn't all there is to a high-performance car.  Now that
European and Japanese manufacturers offer real competition in the marketplace,
if Detroit hadn't realized this they'd be in worse trouble than they are
in currently.  Now they're starting to realize that things like "build
quality" are important, too - too bad they didn't realize that until the
Japanese had already taken such a large share of the market.  It's a new
era in the auto business; I'd like to see the American auto industry
(management and labor) realize that it's "change or die" time (although
those wonderful wonderful trade restrictions are permitting the industry
to change more slowly - perhaps more slowly than they should).

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy