I have various fast cars!
75% of EVās are still on the roadā¦
The other 25% made it back home.
The C5 Z06ās were great from the showroom to the track cars! Light weight and powerful and can still be found for bargain prices!
Yes, indeed! Light is nimble.
Yep. My Viper is a hand built race car. Itās not built in the main assembly line like a corvette is. It doesnāt have anti lock brakes or traction control. Itās light and nimble however you best know how to drive it. When you get to know her itās loads of fun. Itās like driving a large go cart. Many amateur drivers end up totaling them.
I drove a Viper once. That engine is a torque monster. I like that there are no driver aids, no bs. Just a hoot to drive.
Especially on the rotating bits and pieces. There is a square or square root in the calculations that show up really quickly. One pound off a wheel rim was roughly 1HP effective increase in effective accelerating power.
Gross weight is also the enemy of going fast especially around corners.
The Dirt Late Models that we raced were 2350 lbs. with the driver and used an all aluminum 450 CI engine that was roughly 900 HP at 9000 RPM on (racing) gasoline.
The complete engine was in the neighborhood of 350 lbs. carburetor to oil pan.
Big Fun.(but also expensive)
410 CI Sprint cars are about the same 900 HP but only have to weigh 1250 lbs with the driver. They have enough power that they will throttle wheelie at almost any speed if there is enough traction available.
A friend has a Lotus Elan S2 with a Spyder chassis. Roughly 1500 lbs and 200 hp.
7.5 lbs/hp is a lot of fun.
Iāll bet itās a whole lotta fun. Until you drive a light weight high powered vehicle you cannot imagine what it feels like.
And the lighter they get the easier on parts they are.
I think the most fun for the buck would be a superbike but I wouldnāt be the right person to own one.
One of my employees has a Hyabusa and it tried to kill him a couple of times before he wisely sold it.
At the time they were not insurable due to too many fatalities and thefts.
The Lotus sort of reminds of my '77 Spitfire 1500 I had as a 23 year old. [a/k/a spit nuts and bolts]. Great cruising (at 80 mph) with the top down, whether it be Robert Moses Causeway, the North Shore or East end of Long Island, or Manhattan (at 20 mph).
A DIY mechanicās delight. In the winter time, I had four concrete cinder blocks in the trunk for traction on the snow slick roads .
PS: not my car, but an exact duplication of what it looked liked.
The Viper was a mass produced dimestic car. Nothing wrong with this, but far from special/exotic.
As an aside, i saw many crashed at the track by overly confident owners. Canada corner at Road America was a particular problem for many.
Great memories.
My college gf had a Bug-eye Sprite.
One day she asked me if I would like to go with her to visit her parents. Without asking where we were going, we drove from Princeton, NJ to Boston in that car, a car the size of a Chuck Taylor.
Looking back, Iām so glad I had that experience.
A Spitfire would have been like a Caddy.
A great experience/memory.
All Vipers were hand built. Not mass produced on an assembly line like the corvette.
In 1999 there were only about 1,249 Vipers built vs 33,270 corvetteās built on GM assembly lines. Vipers were hand built at a separate division of Dodge in itās own assembly building just for Vipers (The old Champion spark plug building).
The two two-seaters.
I love my 987 Cayman, but I donāt see keeping it long-term. More like a gateway drug to another Porsche. Either a 981 Cayman GTS or an older 911.
Surprising how similar the two cars are, but I drive the MX5 more. (Probably in the back of my mind trying to keep the miles off the Cayman. Iām not sealing it in wax, but knowing Iām not going to keep it, I feel better running my errands in the Mazda.)
Interesting definition of hand built; fewer workers and slow production. Assembling Ikea furniture meets this definition.
The process itself is no different than assembling any other car.
Corvettes are also assembled in a dedicated plant and very few are produced relative to the vast majority of cars. This also does not equal hand built.
Edit: The engine in my Z06 was assembled by a single worker. There is a plaque on the engine with her name on it. Does this make the engine hand built?
To Chryslerās credit they continued to improve the car. The early models did not handle well and were a handful to drive on the track, but not in a good way. The handling improved a great deal with the late models, at least those I drove. I also drove some early models with modified suspensions which were quite nice. It was sad to see so many crash.
The styling was, of course, polarizing.
I am glad Chrysler took the shot to build the car.