Dual exhausts? everywhere, but not on the right cars

Anyone remember the G35 driver that turned TC/ESP off at a light so he could to a smoking start, forgot to turn it back on, and crashed as soon as he tried to take a turn? :lol:

Oh, and Bad Bowtie - no need to get so upset. We are not talking about drag racing at all and I don't think anyone badmouthed drag racing in this thread.
 
I don't remember trim levels on those things but if its a V6 and its a true dual then yes.


Yes, it is a true dual, but that sure don't make it a sports car, which I think was part of the original discussion..

I think.
 
I loooove the pious attitude that comes standard with your typical road racer/auto-crosser ego. Drag racing isn't real racing, right? Because anyone can do it, right? That is seriously laughable.
It depends on a car these days. You can run a GT-R all day long posting best times as long as your tires are up to snuff, between LC and stupid fast DSG it really is a matter of mashing the throttle.
 
Oh, and Bad Bowtie - no need to get so upset. We are not talking about drag racing at all and I don't think anyone badmouthed drag racing in this thread.

Not upset, just correcting things that irk me. I don't think this internet stuff seriously. :D But for the record.....

If you want to turn, my advice is that anybody can mash the gas pedal



It depends on a car these days. You can run a GT-R all day long posting best times as long as your tires are up to snuff, between LC and stupid fast DSG it really is a matter of mashing the throttle.

Agreed, but cars with factory launch control and dual clutch transmissions are a rarity at the strip.
 
I like how people assume drag racing is just mash the pedal and go, like you just said in your post. :lol: Granted it takes a different set of skills and in almost every case less actual talent, but that's because drag racing is mostly about setting up the car before the race, not (entirely) what you do in the race. I have a friend with an LS1 Formula that ran 12.0s with no power mods other than a muffler. Different beasts, but that doesn't mean one is better than the other.

Well, I suppose that just goes to my personal preferences and where I put drag racing on the motorsport totem pole. I've done it somewhere around a dozen times and got bored with it. It's an adrenaline rush alright but really all I wanted to know was how fast can I go, and I found that out within 3-5 trips to the drag strip and I've been on 3 different strips (Englishtown, Atco, Island). I didn't really care about anything further for drags and like you say to each his own, but I found I wanted to use the brake pedal and the steering wheel too. ;)

BTW I've found most stock-ish powerful cars will get great numbers on a well prepped track and a set of Nittos.

I loooove the pious attitude that comes standard with your typical road racer/auto-crosser ego. Drag racing isn't real racing, right? Because anyone can do it, right? That is seriously laughable.

I've done all three and I drag raced first before discovering the others, so I don't know where you see this pious attitude. Drag racing is all about getting a good launch, putting down power, and shifting efficiently. As a driver, I found it boring compared to autocross and road racing. Just my preference, people want to drag and nothing else, more power to 'em. I just think they're missing out on a bigger world because cars are about more than going fast in a straight line.

But you want to talk attitude, I'm picking up a drag racer inferiority complex.

Not upset, just correcting things that irk me. I don't think this internet stuff seriously. :D But for the record.....

janstett said:
If you want to turn, my advice is that anybody can mash the gas pedal

Please do me the favor of putting it in context and don't jump to conclusions. That was not a swipe at drag racing, it was a swipe at hitting a road course thinking flooring the accelerator is going to get you anywhere. I said "if you want to go straight, drag race. If you want to turn, anybody can mash the pedal, going fast around a road course is about more than raw power.". To reword it, you seem to be under the impression that straight line speed is very important in road racing. I've seen and to a degree been one of those guys. Getting on a road course and thinking you can just mash the pedal will get you failure. I then spent a paragraph saying how important carrying speed through corners is and how hitting a road course treating the throttle like it's an on/off switch leads to understeer entering corners, oversteer powering out of them, and offroading excursions in the grass.

But no, don't listen to someone whose done all three types of events, go on with your laughable assumptions having never even done two of them.
 
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Drag racing is also more taxing on your car, usually. You can rip drivetrain bits out in one day of hard drag racing, but you'd have to be a complete idiot to do that much damage on a road course.
 
Drag racing is also more taxing on your car, usually. You can rip drivetrain bits out in one day of hard drag racing, but you'd have to be a complete idiot to do that much damage on a road course.

It depends -- in drag racing you can grenade a diff or snap a driveshaft or blow the motor, it's a violent full-out trauma to the car.

But road courses are no walk in the park because you're driving your car all-out for 15-30 minutes at a time. I've seen guys throw rods on the track, I've seen them dump oil too. You can expect to shred your tires and cook your brakes -- it's easy to go through a set of pads in one day. Seen a couple of guys total their daily drivers too. But yeah, a road course day will usually expose what you haven't been maintaining, you usually won't destroy anything that's been maintained.
 
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You don't like the older Mustangs so they aren't sports cars in your opinion. O.K. good for you.

I love Mustangs. I have one. Iv'e had a number of them over the last 30 years. I've even autocrossed a couple of them quite successfully.

None of them were sports cars. GTs, yes, Sports cars, no. Too many seats, for one. I'm a purist, from teh old school. Sports cars are open, 2 seat cars designed with agility and handling for road racing as a primary function. Any more seats or add a roof and it's a GT. Any more doors and it's a sedan (and yes, i believe there are good sport sedans and sport coupes, but they are not what we woudl call sports cars).

Sports car makers know this instinctively, which is why Porsche 911s when they are set for motorsports are not sports cars but GTs, and say so even in the name (GT-One, GT2, GT3) Porsche has been around for the beginnings of this, and they know. So does Ferrari, who take it one step further and decalre any sports car that is primarily a road car a GT, which is how you get a GTS (Grand Touring Spider) at Ferrari.

Nothing wrong with calling a car a GT instead of a sports car, as GTs were usually faster than pure sports cars due to better aerodynamics of the closed roof bodystyle. But look at these cars and tell me the difference (and notice the naming of them), made by one of the oldest pure sports car manufacturers:

MGB.jpg


1967-red-mgb-gt-mk1-front-side.JPG


There you have an MGB and an MGB GT. The difference being the fixed roof. The definitions still work, it's just that the cars in each category have gotten better (Like the Nissan GT-R. Notice the category). The Mustang is a traditional GT, not a sports car, and the name is accurate (my Mustang says so on the fenders)

bluestang07b.jpg


Now, just like the term "roadster," "GT" has been grabbed by the marketing folks and bastardized in recent years to be put on cars that have nothing to do with the definition (and a 5 door hatch is not really a GT). But the rule of thumb is, if the company is a sports car company, then they probably know what the definition is and stick to it. BMW is the exception, as they pretty much invented the term 'sport sedan" even though Alfa and Lancia made them before BMW did. So why they call the 5er GT a GT is beyond me.
 
I disagree that a sports car needs a roof. If it did, the term "roadster" would be redundant. I think a GT is a 2-door 4-seater designed for quickness AND comfort of driving long distances, but not sportiness. Think Aston Martin. Or Mustang.
 
I disagree that a sports car needs a roof. If it did, the term "roadster" would be redundant.

No. Roadster is a distinct bodystyle, a convertible 2 door with no rollup windows. A 2 door with roll up side windows is a cabriolet. Both are subsets of convertibles, but roadster is NOT merely a small car with a folding top. The terms are not interchangeable. There are sports cars that are not roadsters and there are roadsters that are not sports cars. See below for examples of each...

There are true roadsters on the market, though they are rare these days due to the market's desire for more practicality in their convertibles, but they used to be fairly common. In fact, you used to be able to get both roadsters and cabriolets in teh same model line. A prime example is the jaguar XK120/140/150 line where you could get a cabriolet (drophead coupe) and a roadster at the same time:

roadster:

1956_jaguar_xk140-pic-30822.jpeg


Cabriolet:

1956xk140.jpg


This goes even farther back, to cars like, say, the '30 Ford, where this was the roadster:

HF08_r162_01.jpg


And this was the cabriolet. Notice the roll up side windows and different windshield frames:

ford_model_a_cabriolet_1930.jpg


all these terms came from the old coachbuilding terminology (including coupe and sedan), and the definitions still work today, even if there are few, if any, cars in EACH of the old classifications now. A Miata/MX5 is not a roadster no matter how much their marketing arm wants to mangle English to make it so.



I think a GT is a 2-door 4-seater designed for quickness AND comfort of driving long distances, but not sportiness. Think Aston Martin. Or Mustang.

GT has a distinct FIA definition, which is where cars like this got their name:

250gto_lead.jpg


You do know what that is, right? And it's not a sports car. Ferrari had an open car of the day that raced that was their sports car. The 250 GTO was, in fact, a GT.
 
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I disagree that a sports car needs a roof. If it did, the term "roadster" would be redundant. I think a GT is a 2-door 4-seater designed for quickness AND comfort of driving long distances, but not sportiness. Think Aston Martin. Or Mustang.
I would agree with you, you can't call something like a 240z a GT car, or even a 350z they are not exactly built for any kind of comfort. The M, (R)S, AMG would be GT cars so would the 3000GT or the Z32 (300ZX).
 
...but kept the live rear axle and leaf springs. Not advanced Corvette leaf springs either, but truck-style leaf springs.

Thankfully the after market has taken care of that. There are plenty of 4 link, 5 links, and IRS swap ins (yes swap ins, the car was originally designed for a 5 link rear).
 
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