Quote:
while the Vette is a shockingly poor handling


Are you guys getting the 84 Vette over there??? The new Z06 is going head to head with Ferraris in publications here, with instrumented tests, and is in the same leage (not to mention the 1/3 cost). You can drive the thing in the winter and people can actually afford to race the things.

Kind of reminds me of how the Lotus Eclipse was legendary for being the best handleing car in the world. Until some magazines actually started hooking instrumentation upto it and found this wasn't the case at all.

The Range Rover was supposed to be great and off roading too... but until very recently that wasn't the case. And that credit only goes to either BMW or Ford.

And don't discount whole segments simply because European or Japanese makers don't produce them. I simply could not function in my career without my diesel pickup. To say our pickups don't count because nobody else is tying to make them would disqualify the M3/M5 because no US car maker has tried anything like the M3/M5.

Likewise, if I wanted a RWD, 300hp coupe for $25, I'm looking at a Ford Mustang GT or a Dodge Charger if I want a sedan. The only thing close would be a Nissan 350Z but the heritage of a 350 does't stack up to a Mustang.

And I know it's fashionable to hate SUVs, but we don't have tiny roads here. I don't own one because I don't like the rough ride or bad fuel economy, but the Pacifica cross-over we have has been a Godsend raising our baby and going on trips out of town.

I can think of plenty of bad cars in the US, but the thing is THEY SELL. Can you expect Ford to pull the Mercury Grand Marquis off of the road when it comprises of a majority of the entire company's sales? Just because you or I might not like a car, we can't expect that to be reason enough for a company to pull the plug on a certain model. The people buying these cars have plenty of other options but still choose their Taurus. We can talk about how dumb our 45 year old, married mother of 3 is for chosing interior square footage and comfort over razor sharp handling and DVD navigation, but isn't that being snobby?

I chose a Subaru WRX because I wanted an AWD sedan with at least 200hp. It was my only option. But I can't blame the whole country for not wanting the same thing. In fact, I intentionally picked the car because I knew there wouldn't be many of them on the road.


Edited by SE_Sport_Driver (06/12/2005 10:42)
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Brad B.