They indeed were. Look at the extent that they went to to style it, color keyed wheels, it was a mini muscle car. Just like the Vega was a mini Camaro.
Yes I know it could, but back in the 80’s and 90’s you would just mild build up a 302 with carb, cam, intake and maybe heads and go have fun… The modern 5.0L (302) w/fuel injection required marring wiring harnesses and adding a computer, more hassle/effort than worth it, keeping it a simple poor mans Mustang means keeping it carbureted… And a safe 150HP shot gives it some pretty decent HP for the day…
I’m curious- were you car buying age back then? I was and it’s not what I recall. Remember, it’s not just the cost of the car. Insurance etc also would go up significantly with a new car. No one I knew that was in minimum wage jobs or was just starting out in their career was buying new cars. Numbers are one thing but the reality of it was perhaps a bit different- at least from my perspective…
I agree with you, mostly… But Johnny Bohmer does not in anyway.. He has a daily driver, yes it is 100% street legal that has been 310.8 MPH in his 2006 Ford GT pushing 2,700 HP (which is not hard to do anymore)…
Hmmm, this from a transmission guy
As we know, most problems can be solved with gearing.
I have almost no issues driving my fun car (down to one- sad face) on the street- it was designed with that in mind. And although it has some suspension upgrades, it is still essentially a 1970s car.
In the 60s we had difficulty getting 400 hp to the street. I remember traction bars, stiffening leaf springs until the car rode like a garbage truck, etc.
Those were the budget “solutions” even back then. Better suspensions were available but out of range for the average guy messing around. Plus, we had limited gearing in a 3 or 4 speed transmission. Oh, and pretty much lousy tires back then as well. Let’s not forget the unboxed U shaped control arms that would flex all over the place…
Also on rear leaf’s, but I believe Twin Turbo was referring to the rear GM control arms that were notornis flexing, however boxing them would/will stiffen them a lot, but still had bushings that would flex, but wait there is more, once the adjustable boxed control arms came out with Poli bushings, you could really make them hook and book… We needed to either add a leaf(s), or clamp the front of the rear leaf’s a couple more times and unclamp the rearward section of the rears and add an adjustable (or make one from scratch like I did) pinion snubber.. Now you can just throw some CalTracks and maybe their mono leaf’s on, and now we are hooking and booking also…
My first GM car was a 1975 Olds 98 regency. A very comfortable car, but not fast. By that time I was 24 and no longer engaging in a race every time the light turned green.
When I had a summer job driving for a limo service, my usual ride was an '82 Olds 98 Regency. Its power was only… adequate… but I was very impressed with the level of comfort in that car, and even its handling was decent–for a big car. The A/C was cold enough to store meat in that car.
By contrast, I dreaded having to drive their Caddy Fleetwood limo with the V-8-6-4 engine, which we nicknamed the V-8-6-4-2-ZERO engine because you couldn’t depend on it to accelerate when you needed to merge into expressway traffic, and it also had a tendency to stall.
The limo company owner told me that “it will be okay if you warm it up for at least 20 minutes (even in the summer)”, but that was not really true. That engine was a real dog.
Right you are!
My cars had rear coils tho- I installed an Art Morrison/Dick Gazan rear package that uses tubular control arms and relocates the top ones to a super beefy plate structure that stiffens the differential connection substantially. I set pinion for -0.5 and on hard launch comes up to neutral but no further. I had some custom progressive rate springs made for it as well.