[Fast Floridian]

I cannot wait to drive my 80 bird on the street on 93 and still run 9s . I cant wait to smoke that copo camaro at the track. Talk about comfort I will be very comfortable sitting on 850+naturally aspirated horsepower roaring and sucking air violently through my dual dominator tunnel ram manifold. I can almost here my 3 1/2 in spintech exhaust now.
I dont know what I like best. The Passion or the Pursuit Pontiac power

[Tom Vaught]

A true 850 HP NA street car that can go from say Naples to Bradenton, run 9s, and then return to Naples under its own power would be quite the street car.

Tom V.

[unruhjonny]

Don't get me wrong, I'd love a Challemger Hellcat, but unfortunately I don't make enough to afford one.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by TCSGTO

When I started this topic I wasn't thinking about new vs old but I'm enjoying the direction it's taking and the points being made on both sides.
The new cars will keep progressing and the old cars will continue to benefit from the newer tech and improve.
In my original post I mentioned my car ran low 14's stock and that was very respectable at the time. It ended up running near 11 flat with tall gears and idled at 700 rpm. Thats pretty commonplace now but 20 years ago that would have been insane performance.
11's are the new 14's and before long it'll be 10's, then 9's,....

I think we are already there. 11's are pretty easy to obtain these days with most any classic street car without power adders, that was happening 10-15 years ago fairly regular. Stroker kits are cheap and made for any engine combo out there. 500-600hp is a piece of cake. A lot of the well thought out street car combo's out there now already run 10's just on motor alone. Quite a few classics run around here like that.
To be honest, these days anything less than 500 cubes is considered small now. Crate engines that keep getting bigger and available everywhere today along with stroker kits that are cheap, and aftermarket blocks, it's just the direction things went. Now you can build a pump gas large cube motor, decent cylinder heads, and not need all that much camshaft to make silly power, and you don't have to spin it tight to do it either. It makes the engine very streetable.
If that's not enough, toss a power adder in the mix and things change drastically. There are quite a few classics around here with what sound like very docile engines that idle rock solid but have that familiar pro-charger whine. 8-900 hp with these is not unusual, and they drive very tame.

[Formulajones]

I'll say this, I was running bottom 11's in my chevelle back in the late 90's, and there were a few other classics doing the same at that time. My fathers GTO was another one. I was doing it with a very simple pump gas 454 combo, good aluminum heads, hydraulic roller. Very docile engine I drove to and from the track on drag radials, race the car and drive it home. Most guys were trailering stuff back then. To make things worse, the car scales 4,108 lbs. and has working A/C. If I could take 3-400 lbs. out of the car it would have tickled the high 10's back then. My father was doing the same with a similar built 455 Pontiac.
Fast forward today, I still have the chevelle, still the same untouched combo it was then. I drive the car everywhere and it still runs strong. However as strange as it may sound, today the car isn't fast, it's considered fairly slow among a lot of other classics. I can attend a local cruise here with 400-500 cars and find 2-3 cars in every isle way that are likely much quicker than my heap. A lot of them today run more than 500 cubes, and if that's not enough, quite a few of them equipped with Pro-chargers making silly power. I probably don't stand a chance with some of them and I'm okay with that. My father on the other hand still has that bug. The 455 got replaced with a pump gas 571 making 200 more HP than before. I can't compete with that so I tend to leave my junk at home and ride with him

[TCSGTO]

Originally Posted by AG

I still want a Hellcat

Me too. My favorite thing, besides the potential, is that crazy supercharger whine. They sound like a fire truck on acid.

[AG]

Originally Posted by TCSGTO

Me too. My favorite thing, besides the potential, is that crazy supercharger whine. They sound like a fire truck on acid.

Amen. I would still keep my 3 Pontiac street cars and race car, but it would be nice to run a street car that goes high 10s with AC and can still fit the whole family in.

[Bobalong]

One huge advantage the new go fast cars have over old muscle is weight to HP / torque.
My console mounted 8 track and Delco AM/ FM weigh more than both front seats of newer cars. Then there'a the full size tire rim in the trunk, and old school A/C compressor, and on and on and on . . . .

[tpssonic]

Originally Posted by TCSGTO

Me too. My favorite thing, besides the potential, is that crazy supercharger whine. They sound like a fire truck on acid.

X3!

[JLMounce]

Originally Posted by Bobalong

One huge advantage the new go fast cars have over old muscle is weight to HP / torque.
My console mounted 8 track and Delco AM/ FM weigh more than both front seats of newer cars. Then there'a the full size tire rim in the trunk, and old school A/C compressor, and on and on and on . . . .

With some of the cars, yes, but you'd be surprised at what the new cars weigh these days. A Hellcat Charger tips the scales at over 4400 lbs without a driver. Even the Z06 which used to be a featherweight in the C5/C6 era is now around the 3500-3600 lb range depending on what trim level the car is.

[Formulajones]

New cars now in the V8 rear drive category are pretty dog-gone heavy. Much more than a lot of the muscle cars from the by-gone era. Matter of fact the weight of quite a few new cars has been a long time complaint among some of the hardcore racers. One reason they keep a decent power to weight ratio is...adding more power, usually with a power adder, that's the easiest way. Others like the Z06 vettes started shedding pounds for performance with things like thinner glass, carbon fiber, etc...then as the next generation grew larger and heavier, they went to larger 427 ci engines. Now I think they use a power adder in the Z06. Look at how heavy the 5th generation Camaros are. Boy did the Camaro camp complain about that when the 5th gens scaled nearly 4,000 lbs, a good 400 lbs. heavier than the 4th generations they replaced.

I put things in perspective with this new stuff.

All the really fast new stuff out now uses a power adder. The ZR1, the Cobra Mustangs, the GT500's, the Hellcat, etc. etc.... Makes their power numbers not as impressive to me when you're shoving another 14.7:1 worth of atmosphere in the engine, or more.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by JLMounce

With some of the cars, yes, but you'd be surprised at what the new cars weigh these days. A Hellcat Charger tips the scales at over 4400 lbs without a driver. Even the Z06 which used to be a featherweight in the C5/C6 era is now around the 3500-3600 lb range depending on what trim level the car is.

You beat me to it. We are on the same page. I had an 04 Z06, GM went to great lengths to keep that car light. Wheels, glass, suspension etc... After that generation went away it seems they lost that uniqueness. With the ever tightening safety standards cars have to meet today, it's no surprise.

[unruhjonny]

Originally Posted by Bobalong

...
My console mounted 8 track and Delco AM/ FM weigh more than both front seats of newer cars. ...

don't kid yourself - have you actually lifted a current car seat?

They started getting heavier every year in the early 1990's - to the point htat I put Fiero seats in my Grand Am in place of the period correct factory sport seats - the Fiero seats were about half the weight of the sport bucket...
I am certain my Cobalt's seats weigh at least as much as the GA's sport buckets - and my wife's Caliber SRT seats definately weigh more (all the SRT's used the same seats for a given model year for a number of ears).

A 1970 seat have an absolute minimum of steel, with burlap over wire holding the foam in place - the new seats have an abundance of steel, with a little more for reinforcement - and much heavier (denser) foam - and then there's the motors for the electronics that most seats have these days.

[Fast Floridian]

I use a trailer if its more 3 hrs away. I made a point to be able drive from Jacksonville to Daytona for the turkey rod run every year. When we had a track in town we could drive back and forth. When I go to Valdosta its 6 hrs round trip I always bust out the trailer. My goal is to run 9s at Norwalk next year. I might even go back to my rallys and stock hood if it dynos better with 1 Dominator,than the with the TR

[Bobalong]

Originally Posted by Formulajones

New cars now in the V8 rear drive category are pretty dog-gone heavy. Much more than a lot of the muscle cars from the by-gone era. Matter of fact the weight of quite a few new cars has been a long time complaint among some of the hardcore racers. One reason they keep a decent power to weight ratio is...adding more power, usually with a power adder, that's the easiest way. Others like the Z06 vettes started shedding pounds for performance with things like thinner glass, carbon fiber, etc...then as the next generation grew larger and heavier, they went to larger 427 ci engines. Now I think they use a power adder in the Z06. Look at how heavy the 5th generation Camaros are. Boy did the Camaro camp complain about that when the 5th gens scaled nearly 4,000 lbs, a good 400 lbs. heavier than the 4th generations they replaced.

I put things in perspective with this new stuff.

All the really fast new stuff out now uses a power adder. The ZR1, the Cobra Mustangs, the GT500's, the Hellcat, etc. etc.... Makes their power numbers not as impressive to me when you're shoving another 14.7:1 worth of atmosphere in the engine, or more.

Google said my 70 GTO weighs 3780 plus or minus. Never took the time to compare newer go fast cars to compare.
Just figured with the paper thin sheet metal, thinner glass, alloy wheels, composite dashes, small spare tires, smaller PS AC components . . . . .they HAD weigh less.

[TedRamAirII]

Originally Posted by Fast Floridian

I use a trailer if its more 3 hrs away. I made a point to be able drive from Jacksonville to Daytona for the turkey rod run every year. When we had a track in town we could drive back and forth. When I go to Valdosta its 6 hrs round trip I always bust out the trailer. My goal is to run 9s at Norwalk next year. I might even go back to my rallys and stock hood if it dynos better with 1 Dominator,than the with the TR

You coming to Daytona? I may be there, I usually park with the Jacksonville Pontiac Club at turn 4

[JLMounce]

Originally Posted by Bobalong

Google said my 70 GTO weighs 3780 plus or minus. Never took the time to compare newer go fast cars to compare.
Just figured with the paper thin sheet metal, thinner glass, alloy wheels, composite dashes, small spare tires, smaller PS AC components . . . . .they HAD weigh less.

Some of those are more myth than truth. While yes, some vehicles use thinner gauge steel, there's reasons for that other than cost cutting. Vehicles no longer use the "skin" as structural portions of the vehicle. There's a ton of steel in the bodies to hold the car and it's skinned over the top of that. As a result you don't need thicker gauge steel in a lot of cases.

Except for notable exceptions like the C5/C6 Z06 where GM specifically used thinner windshields for weight savings, most new autos have glass thickness on par with what you'd typically see of older cars. In some cases this glass may be heavier with the addition of UV and anti-shatter coatings etc. Safety regulations push that and is one of the reasons cars are as heavy as they are.

Back in the late 80 and early 90's when you had cars like the Fox mustang that were not only small, but had few government mandated safety regulations, those were the lightweights. A fox coupe LX with no options could slide in under 3000 lbs.

[Skip Fix]

My '04 GTO weighs 3850lbs eventhough it is about 2 feet shorted than my TAs.

[goatwgn]

Originally Posted by JLMounce

Some of those are more myth than truth. While yes, some vehicles use thinner gauge steel, there's reasons for that other than cost cutting. Vehicles no longer use the "skin" as structural portions of the vehicle. There's a ton of steel in the bodies to hold the car and it's skinned over the top of that. As a result you don't need thicker gauge steel in a lot of cases.

Except for notable exceptions like the C5/C6 Z06 where GM specifically used thinner windshields for weight savings, most new autos have glass thickness on par with what you'd typically see of older cars. In some cases this glass may be heavier with the addition of UV and anti-shatter coatings etc. Safety regulations push that and is one of the reasons cars are as heavy as they are.

Back in the late 80 and early 90's when you had cars like the Fox mustang that were not only small, but had few government mandated safety regulations, those were the lightweights. A fox coupe LX with no options could slide in under 3000 lbs.

A lot of truth to that, the way cars are put together nowadays. Only problem with the cheap thin metal on the outside is that it takes virtually nothing to cause a sizable bit of cosmetic damage to the body, which usually cost a fortune to fix. and even a "mild" hailstorm can look terrible on one of these newer vehicles.

[Fast Floridian]

going down to Daytona friday after thanksgiving !