Quote:
Originally Posted by ///MPhatic
It's going to kill the GT3RS on track. The one thing Americans are good at is power, and when everything else is copied from best-in-class vehicles, you've got a world beater.
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This is a post straight out of the 1980s.
The big german manufacturers have been dynoing their claimed horsepower at the wheels for years. BMW M550s, M3s, M5s, 911s, etc. These are making huge power with twin turbo setups, hot-Vs, tapping right off the exhaust manifold, and so on. Sure, there's the one-off Dodge Redhawkeye Muskrat making a claimed 10000hp for drag racing or whatever, but in the real world, Chevrolet and Ford have been keeping prices manageable with RWD setups and generally supercharged larger displacement engines. They don't require as much hardware as the twin turbo setups and don't see as much stress as the smaller engines pushed to higher HP amounts, like a 3.0 pushing out 500+hp at the wheels. They also generally aren't pushing out as much HP. There are some exceptions, but in the general sense, power is not unique to the American manufacturers by any stretch.
And then there's handling. GM has nailed steering pretty well for a while, especially considering how bad some european stuff, like BMW, has been. And for turning, the chassis have been pretty tight for years now. Sure, Ford has made the cheaper mustangs pretty bouncy and not very aggressive over the years, but GT350 and GT40 show that they absolutely know how to do it, if they want.
So it just depends on whether Ford dropped the money into this to make it work. They are mainly a "one chassis" sports-car company, which kind of makes it hard to cover the wide spread of "sports", from GT touring to race track to drag strip, but you dump enough money into it and you can even make rear engine car perform.
The C8 Z06 seemed targeted directly at the GT3 (non RS). Corner speeds were almost identical. Slightly faster in the straights, but NA with similar torque, not some giant disparity either. GT3 RS is a different level aerodynamically, so it is obviously faster on a course. It's also on a different level as far as livability and daily-ability...So again, Ford could have made this Mustang "even faster"...but possibly "even more compromised". At some point, it's just a "road legal race car", which sounds cool...till you actually drive one in traffic and realize how bad it is.
Still, it's good to see them developing something. Chevrolet really pushed the limit with the C8 for US sports-car development and manufacturing. Would be nice to see that continue.