Van Halen and the Shelby GT500

[ashstralia]

no hate here vain... the holden (gm) vs ford debate has raged here for 40 years +. the hemi blokes just laugh at us. one thing i've always thought was brilliant was having the dizzy at the front, not the back of the engine.

and windsors are far superior to clevelands imho.

[sadaist]

So, I am like rolling with this 82 Berlinetta

OMFG!

My Mom had a Berlinetta around...oh, 1987 or so? Anyways, went out middle of night with the girlfriend in it, put in Megadeth, and gunned it to see how fast we could get. Digital speedometer.

116

DAMN!

I slowed down & was scared to death but fun! Fastest I have ever driven. Was scary. Felt like we would fly right off the top of this small mountain we were going up.

Man, that thing was cool. VRRRROOOOOOOOOM!!!

Did I mention I went 116? That's miles per hour fellas. FAST!!!!

[Coyote]

Only thing I still can't understand about some US cars is the persistent use of the live rear axle...

[vanhalen1r2]

Only thing I still can't understand about some US cars is the persistent use of the live rear axle...

FORD Rustang tried the IRS deal for a little while 1999-2003/4 cobras they did wheel hop in the ones I drove, the new slowmaro and the unreleased ZL1 have an independent rear suspensions.

Now back in the day the Rustang the Slowmaro and the rest of the pony cars had solid axle rears.

[gbranton]

Only thing I still can't understand about some US cars is the persistent use of the live rear axle...

The new Boss 302 is proof that IRS isn't really necessary for great handling. Euro mags like Top Gear were prepared to trash it, yet they loved it and voted it one of their top cars.

Irs is heavy and in drag racing applications it's not durable. Many of the 2003 - 2004 Cobra guys have swapped their IRS rears for a traditional axle.

[gbranton]

Cannot say enough good things about today's Camaros Challengers and "Rustsangs" The vette is completely different car.

I just saw that, my best friend has a 2012 Challenger SRT-8. Black on black with a six speed, it is a REALLY cool car.

[vanhalen1r2]

I just saw that, my best friend has a 2012 Challenger SRT-8. Black on black with a six speed, it is a REALLY cool car.

They look great and damn if we aren't lucky to be in the middle of HP war between Chevy, Dodge and Ford.

[Hardrock69]

Not getting into details as I am no expert on the current "re-imagined" muscle cars, but I prefer the way the Camaros look. They just look like if you turn your back on them they will attack you and eat you alive, lol.

I almost owned a 1968 Mustang when I was 14 in 1975. My Dad bought it for 700 bucks, and was making payments. He said if I could pay 20 bucks a week on it and pay half of the total (350) it would be mine.

I had a shitty paper route...and the fucking thing would not even make 20 bucks a week, so he ended up selling it.

I could have been one of the coolest kids in high school.....instead I had no fucking car.

When I was 22, I owned a 4-door 1976 Torino with a police package. I loved that motherfucker. 351 Windsor, power windows, leather interior. I ended up junking it after driving it into the ground. If I had been smarter and had the cash, I could have kept it running, but I was an idiot in my younger 20s.

In 1995, I bought a 1986 Grand Prix, financed through a dealership where a friend worked....for 3 grand. Drove it for 2 years, and the interior began to fall apart, and I began to think of selling it. Then one day I drove by the dealership where I bought it, and lo and behold, there was a 1975 Torino sitting there for sale for $1200. I had only paid off the Grand Prix a couple of months before, but I stopped RIGHT FUCKING THERE and talked to the salesman I knew: "Hey, I just paid 3 grand for this Grand Prix....I will trade you straight across for the Torino". He thought about it for a moment and said "Deal".

I drove that fucker for 3 years. Ran great. Had a 351 Modified in it. Same color (blue). 25 mpg on the highway, amazingly enough. I ended up selling it for 300 bucks before I moved to Gnashville, as I could only bring one vehicle, and I chose my Chevy van.

Wish I had a mid-70s Torino now, but the only ones I see for sale are rustbuckets for 300 bucks that need new engines or trannys, or pristine garage cars that are 15 grand.

So those are my only experiences with Fords. Oh, I learned to drive in my Dad's 1943 Ford Army Jeep. Everyone should learn to drive in one of those, lol.

[Nitro Express]

I think all the remaked classic muscle cars look great. You can still see the classic lines in them. It's refreshing to see today when most cars look like a bar of soap.

[VAiN]

no hate here vain... the holden (gm) vs ford debate has raged here for 40 years +. the hemi blokes just laugh at us. one thing i've always thought was brilliant was having the dizzy at the front, not the back of the engine.

and windsors are far superior to clevelands imho.

I've been out of this debate for a few years, but I can't wait to get back into it this summer.
I think Ford has it all over the other 2 with their continued use and development of DOHC V8's.. Being able to spin a V8 to 7000rpm is a great feeling! They've come a long way and the new 32v 5.0 is a beast of a motor!

[vanhalen1r2]

I've been out of this debate for a few years, but I can't wait to get back into it this summer.
I think Ford has it all over the other 2 with their continued use and development of DOHC V8's.. Being able to spin a V8 to 7000rpm is a great feeling! They've come a long way and the new 32v 5.0 is a beast of a motor!

The new 5.0 coyote platform is cool engine in the GT and Boss 302, the Shelby 5.4 2007-10 iron block 2011-12 aluminum block and the new larger bore 5.8 aluminum block for 2013 are good engines the issue with the platform is its over square, larger stroke vs bore they develop lots of piston speed at high RPM.

You can with a few simple mods make some huge power.

[qikgts]

Fun thread!!! Great contributions all!!!

[chefcraig]

Pure fiction. The Mustang II was built from 1974-1978 on a modified Pinto chassis, the next generation Mustang was based on an all new platform, called the Fox platform, which first appeared in 1978 as a Fairmont/Zephyr/LTD. It shared nothing with the Pinto chassis and I have never heard of any fuel tank issues with Fox chassis cars.

Uh-huh, because you have never encountered something in your life, it can not exist, right? This is not "pure fiction", as you put it. The fact is, a great deal of automobiles have a tendency to go up in flames from rear end collisions, including the Ford Crown Victoria (once widely used here for police vehicles). Having spent 17 years driving a truck in the tri-county area, I can vividly attest to witnessing countless car fires resulting from rear end collisions, including the Mustangs with Fox chassis you seem to never have heard of. If such a thing wasn't a problem, then why would Ford install the shut off switch in the first place? Hell, for a while there, GM designed it's cars to allow the rear end to fold downward in a rear end collision, to avoid gas tank fires.

While I appreciate the effort expended in going through my post and refuting as much as possible in an alleged scholarly fashion, I never intended to come off as some sort of expert in the first place. I was merely relating some vague and (more than likely) tarnished memories. The fact is, if you can recall with vivid detail everything that took place through the late seventies/mid-1980s, you simply were not there.

Again, thank you for setting the record straight, Mr. Fucking Haynes Manual.

[gbranton]

Uh-huh, because you have never encountered something in your life, it can not exist, right? This is not "pure fiction", as you put it. The fact is, a great deal of automobiles have a tendency to go up in flames from rear end collisions, including the Ford Crown Victoria (once widely used here for police vehicles). Having spent 17 years driving a truck in the tri-county area, I can vividly attest to witnessing countless car fires resulting from rear end collisions, including the Mustangs with Fox chassis you seem to never have heard of. If such a thing wasn't a problem, then why would Ford install the shut off switch in the first place? Hell, for a while there, GM designed it's cars to allow the rear end to fold downward in a rear end collision, to avoid gas tank fires.

While I appreciate the effort expended in going through my post and refuting as much as possible in an alleged scholarly fashion, I never intended to come off as some sort of expert in the first place. I was merely relating some vague and (more than likely) tarnished memories. The fact is, if you can recall with vivid detail everything that took place through the late seventies/mid-1980s, you simply were not there.

Again, thank you for setting the record straight, Mr. Fucking Haynes Manual.

LOL, you are welcome. The truth is ANY vehicle can suffer a rupture fuel tank if struck hard enough (or by an 80,000 pound semi) and I don't doubt you saw some bad accidents. I'm not saying the Mustang is a paradigm of safety by any means but it has substantial differences in design (such as shielding which protects the tank) from a Pinto and that was my point. The "problem" with the Pinto was supposedly in the area wher the filler neck joined the tank and that the unshielded tank could be pierced by the differential. After the recall a later study by The Rutgers Law Review examining actual incident data that concluded the Pinto was as safe as, or safer than, other cars in its class.

http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf

Although there is no specific requirement from the NHTSA for it, fuel shutoffs of some type are installed on most cars sold in the United States today.

And thanks for calling me "scholarly" in addition to beating off to classic Van Halen, I beat off on these old cars as well.

[Nitro Express]

I remember riding in a VW bus in Bolivia that caught fire. If you don't replace the fuel lines when they start to get old they will break and send fuel into the ignition system and then you are on fire. Of course they had no fire extinguisher on board so we stood on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and watched our transportation burn. You gotta love Latin America. Nothing like going along a mountain road on an overloaded bus with old tires with no tread left. You either shit your pants or get religious in a hurry traveling in the Andes.