Rice Vs Lamborghini Diablo

Actually, the thread was about a "rice" car versus a nice exotic car. It's just gone off topic a bit. :spank:

 

Man that site is old, I remember seeing that back in 1999. Ok here is what I don't get, take a early 1960's mopar and put torque thrusts on the front and steel rims with DOT slicks on the rear and everybody thinks it's badass, take a fast import put a really nice set of 18" rims on the rear and a set of stock rims on the front with the same set of DOT slicks and all of a sudden everybody says it looks like junk. Granted a lot of the no-go-showboats usually have stock rims on the front with stock tires, but a lot of junky muscle cars have mismatched rims too. Is the car world just so biased that a "performance" car only looks good to people if it has fat tires in the rear?

 

I'll throw out an answer to that. It doesn't look right. What do you associate with being a "fast" car? I think of top fuel, huge rear tires, skinny fronts. Do you think the first people that put out a fwd car ever thought of it as being for performance? There's a reason semis/dumptrucks/trucks/etc don't have fwd/are primarily rwd. If fwd was for performance, you'd see top fuel dragsters that looked pretty funny. IMO

 

I'll agree that rwd or awd is really the way to go building a performance car.

But some of the the old 4wd fueliers looked funny (Tommy ivo's 4 engine nailheaded buick was the only one that looked cool), and there were fwd rail cars and funny cars (the 455 olds tornado motors made it really easy to do) that didn't look anything but sick (think reversed topfueler with the driver sitting midship).

 

Well, the first RWD cars weren't made for performance either. Semis/Dumptrucks/Trucks/etc aren't fwd because they are performance vehicles? That doesn't make much sense to me, unless you are talking about towing performance due to weight distribution. I guess you can look at FWD as a performance layout as well - smaller and lighter tranny and better wet/icy weather performance. Not to mention a shorter path from the flywheel to the tires... less parasitic drivetrain loss. Unfortunately, FWD isn't too great for high powered cars on launches and the fact that handling is better (on newer sporty cars... not muscle cars) when the front wheels aren't busy powering the car, just pointing it in the right direction!

 

That's my point.

 

ATX, I personally have nothing against Import tuners. A fast car is a fast car. What I hate is the attitude of people who drive cars like that probe. Seems to me that a majority of them drive like they are in "the fast and the furious", and really believe that their stock car with a big muffler, and stickers is fast. I am Active duty Army, and around military posts there are an abundance of 2 foot tall rear wings, 18" rims, HUGE exhaust tips on 1.5" exhaust, and 1.21 gigawatt stereos. I s*** you not, I can not count on two hands the number of cars/trucks in each block that have 18-20" wheels. I have nothing but respect for modern technology. In fact, the 69 that I am building right now will have Multi-point efi, ATI pro-charger, and 200-R4 OD.
When it comes right down to it, define an import? some 80% of the parts on our modern american performance cars are made in Tiawan, Japan, China, ect... And Hondas are now being produced here in the US. To me it comes down to style. I see todays cars, and wonder where the pride went. 70% plastic, and no character.

 

Yeah, I totally agree with you... I just can't stand when people lump every import into the "ricer" category. Maybe it is different here in Austin, but we sure have a lot of FAST imports. By FAST I mean under 13 second 1/4's.

 

That celica was f-ing awesome! I think it would be very nice if one of the car makers would build a v-8 with the technology they put into those inline fours. I know that car makers are using that technology to an extent (although I'm not sure to what extent) but if you could have a boosted Sube motor making 300hp, I mean, wtf, why not do that to a v-8 stock. One of the companies could come out with a mid engined, four wheel drive, twin turbo v-8 as basically the ultimate performance car...you know, but for under 40k or so. I guess the ford gt kinda hits that mark, but I think it's only rwd.

Whatever, sorry got sidetracked. A fast car is a fast car. Blinged out imports are dumb, and clapped out muscle cars are worse imo. I think muscle cars just have more potential off the bat than a honda b-16.

 

I had a friend while I was stationed in Germany that had a Nissan 240 (SX maybe? I'm not to up on imports). He had a HUGE Turbo that he ordered for some Honda or something, and hand built his own downpipes, ect. That car had no ground effects, no spoilers, no hood scoops, the only giveaway was the 17" wheels. That thing was FAST. I had my 68 there (yup, 3 years of cruising the German Autobahn in a 68 Skylark) and his car whipped my a$$. My 68 was a 350 car, but ran a 13.6 1600meter (no 1/4 Mi. tracks in Germany). This guy was running a high 12.

 

So how many 100MPH+ runs did ya do???

 

I only raced twice in Munich, I ran a total of 6 runs, my best speed was 104. Sorry, no Supercar, just a mild 350 with peg leg 3.23 rear and B&M TH350.

However, The Autobahn as you may know has no speed limit in many places. I regularly had the speedo pegged for the 4 hour drive to Frankfurt. I was also a member of BCG (Buick Club of Germany). I had the honor of being the ONLY 68-72 Skylark in the country (as far as the BCG new). There was however, a 68 Custom Convertable in Salsburg Austria, and a 69 GS350 in Italy. Most of the BCG guys had 30's, 40's and 50's buicks.

And if you think Rice is bad, try a German car show. The judges won't even look at your car if you don't have strobe lights, neon, or stupid stick on plastic trim that says "street Machine". :spank:

 

Thats cool though. Id love to be able to just hold the pedal to the floor and not need to worry about cops.

 

Yea, You'll think you're real cool going 125mph, legally. Till some little s*** beater BMW blows by ya at about 140. You wouldn't beleive it unless you saw it. you'll see little Fiats and renaults doing 140+ on the open highway.

 

I'd be nice but unless we are talking a very small v-8 (like 200 ci or less small) it will never happen. Why? well for starters a v8 will never get the has mileage that a 6 or a 4 will. These days nobody will by a car that gets sucky gas mileage unless we are talking a prestige thing (mercedes, lamborghini, etc) or hauling capacity (SUV, pickups, etc.). Really what america needs to build as the next psuedo sports cars are cars like the subaru wrx sti and the lancer evo 7: awd, fast, power adders on fuel efficient motors (my buddies wrx gets over 25mpg when he babies is and runs low 13's), lots of timing and FI techniology and actually useable as a real car (I am 6'4" and fit comfortably in the back seat of a wrx, I've never fit in a camaro backseat). The SRT4 comes pretty close now that they put a quaiff diff in the front, but it is still a fwd car. There was a rumor that the new GTO was goign to be AWD for a while since there was a AWD monaro v6 being shown around last year, and that would have been awsome, sadly it never happened. Maybe when the bring the camaro back in 2007 (yeah right - it will never happen). Sadly the americans will never be able to buld cars as good as the japanese or germans because frankly no american car company has any idea what i's public wants or how to give ti to them. If I were GM and had the wrx drivetrain under license (which they do for the saab 9.3 awd) I would put that under every stinking car I could mated to everything from the ecotec to the ls2. There is already an adapter to mate chevy transmissions to wrx engines, so it isn't too far fetched to have an adapter made for chevy engines and subaru drivetrains. It's sad that 2010 will probably come and go before we see an awd perfromance compact sedan from the big three.

 

geeto - I agree with you totally...I was just kinda dreaming I guess. I'm actually going to get a 2004 STI when the price drops a bit...actually I'm going to get one regardless at the end of next summer after I get back from Europe. The american auto makers are all but clueless. They're trying very hard to bring back their glory days of the 60/early 70s when the muscle car was hot, but I just don't think it's going to work. If they swiped the Sube platform, kept it set up as a stock Sube but remade it into a pontiac or something, put some crap interior in it and sold it for under 20k, they'd make a nice chunk of change...imo. Mitsu now has how many verions of the Evo 7 out? Three? Something like that. Whatever. American car companies have become kinda stupid, I think.

 

I can't think of one reason why they call them cars rice???

 

Damn. Now I want some rice with parmesan and American cheese.

BTW, why get an STI? Why not get an EVO?

 

Tuner Cars

Its OK to do this kind of ting to a rice burner but I wish they would not drag american cars in to this kind of mess. AL :af:

 

The STI is the better car. Here in the states Subaru had enough foresight to use a 2.5 litre block for the STI engine while most of europe has to put up with a 2.0L STI block. A freind of mine works for the subaru dealership as their perf tuner and he tells me that they sell 1 sti a week to someone from england who ships it back over. One guy even shiped an esclade over. The same cannot be said for the evo, while the rest of the world gets the evo 7 (a real hot rod) the ?US gets a watered down version , the evolution 8. The american version has less hp than the STI, and is physically slower than the STI(it is slightly heavier). About the only thing the EVO has over the STI is the interior is slightly nicer and the car has oversteer vs. the STI's understeer (which a swaybar immediatly fixes for around $125). To be honest I would have bought an STI already if I was In the market for a new daily driver, but since I comute by train and I already own three cars there ins't much need there for a new car.

Now, the black 68-69 vette above, I don't see anything wrong with it, It just looks like a stock restoration (including redlines) that someone has stored for the winter. What am I suposed to be looking for?