This is a car rant. I don't expect any of you to get it, or even care. I don't give a shit.
Fuck the Ford Motor Company. It's sunday, which is the only day of the week when car shows are on. And I'm watching Car and Driver, reviewing the 2001 SVT Mustang Cobra.
They skipped the 2000 models, because they fucked up the '99s. How, you ask? The SVT Cobra's in 1999 were billed as a 325 horsepower cars. But on the strips, they just couldn't keep up with the 320 horsepower Camaro SS's. So what the hell is going on? The genius knuckledraggers at Ford decided to actually put this piece of shit on a dyno, and they found that the amazing brand new, 4 cam, supercharged rat only made 280 horses. So where the fuck did the other horses gallop off to? They didn't say, but I just though it was hilarious that a company with a prestigious racing history didn't even know how much power they're flagship made. And it took them an entire year of swapping cams and intakes and fuel injection systems to bump the motor up to 320 horsepower, to run with the Camaros.
Another absurdity of the Ford Motor Company are their engine sizes. They seem to be obsessed in making their engines smaller, while still trying to maintain a respectable power level. Take for instance, the SVT Mustang Cobra, of which I was just speaking. The powerplant in that particular slug is the 4.6 liter V-8,
while the Camaro uses the 5.7 liter 350 that they've used since, for all intents and purposes, since 1963. Of course, the motor has gone through several drastic changes since them, but someone says that their car of truck is running a 350, it always elicits the same reaction. So why is Ford obsessed with downsizing their motors? Every respectable racer knows that you can be sneaky and massage another 5-10 horsepower out of you engine by tweaking a few things, but if you want real power, there is no replacement for size. Cubic inches make power. And that's that.
So now, Popular Hot Rodding is on, and they're featuring a popular street/strip car. The '89 Mustang, with Ford's standby, the 5.0 liter 302. The car is billed as running the 302, bored out to 347 cubic inches. What? You see, Ford also makes a 351, a 5.8 liter motor. So why would you go through all the trouble, not to mention money, of boring out the 302 to not even come up with the same size as a popular engine already in production? If you were going to do that, why not start as big as possible and bore out the already bigger block? What's more, why not go with a 460 cubich inch truck block, and go that route? Idiots. All of them. I could understand if this was a budget car, a stock build-up. But this car was obviously not a budget build-up. Fiberglass hood and front fenders, Paxton supercharge, NOS nitrous plumbing, 9-inch rear with Doug Strange axles...This is easily a $40,000 car. So why spend all that money on that gutless wonder of a 302? Feh. Fuck them all. Go buy a Chevrolet.
Which reminds me, the SVT Mustang is in competition with the Camaro SS, so what is in competition with the Corvette? Well, nothing, until 2000. John Coletti, the idiot behind the SVT program, decided to again go the stupid route and develp a version of his beloved Mustang, the Mustang R to make the same power numbers as the Vette Z06, 385 horsepower, 385 foot-pounds of torque. Except he did it in grand Ford, starting with a small motor and spending way too much money building it up. This is reflected in the final production costs, the cost of the Mustang R is about $60,000, and the Corvette Z06 is closer to $50,000. So which one would you buy? That might not be as simple as it sounds...there are still of Ford guys out there panting to keep up with the Chevy's...good luck boys.