It's always been a source of wonder to me, just how you Merkins manage to extract so little power and so few mpg from your great gas guzzlers.
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No hard to figure out. Have you REALLY looked at the size of the land yachts that American car makers used to produce? Tons of wasted metal hanging on limp (soft) suspensions so your fat belly wouldn't giggle when you hit a bump. You needed a large displacement/high torque gas guzzler engine just to get the thing moving. And then the slippage of early automatic transmissions because fat belly was too lazy to shift it himself.
does any of this have to do with whether a Corvette is still a 'vette? Having driven all but the latest generation, and having owned an example of each of the generations that literally gave the vehicle its pedigree, I feel that the last 40 years have been spent getting further and further away from the original musclecar formula of light car/big motor/great honking gobs of torque, and trying to be a fucking EuroSedan on the inside & a sloppy third-hand copy of a Ferrari on the outside. Nothing in the new models has done anything to change that feeling, ESPECIALLY the styling, which is STILL like some disjointed fractal XEROX of a Testarossa.
If I wanted either of those things THAT IS WHAT I'D BUY.
I get the difference; I've owned Porsches and Beemers & Mercs and even had a dalliance with a Diablo for a while. I ENJOY driving a 30 MPH curve at 50... or more... But I still love the feel of huge displacement under my right foot. It just feels RIGHT.
Yes, I know the history... Duntov designed the car as a european-style sports car, and the first models had a straight 6. But that is NOT the Corvette that stalks the American cultural subconscious like some hungry predator; and neither is this latest generation. The fact that people will STILL walk away from a Corvette to look at a Viper is proof of that, even though in many cases, the Corvette can in fact outperform that V-10 beast.
And you know what...? That is how it SHOULD be. The Viper is more 'vette than a Corvette is anymore, and it has been pretty much since its inception.
mnem
*toddling off to ded*