Quote:
Originally Posted by gtfoxy
Possibly.
The viper was an incon, no doubt. In reality it was a take-off of the Shelby Cobra, in then-modern, or even post-modern for the time, with an exotic V10. A V10 that, IMO, actually ended up being its down fall. I remember a C&D/ R&T/ MT, or something like that, series on the Viper that went into all kinds of facets relating to cost of ownership. The engines were junk & had a lot of problems that were extremely expensive to fix & maintain.
The Corvette always had the protection of GM, for the most part, of being the flagship performance car. There were, however, vehicles that made it under the radar that would absolutely smoke it in acceleration. Those included the 86/87 Turbo Regals, the 89 GTA Turbo Trans Am & around the time of this Viper/Vette battle, the Syclone &Typhoon would eat both their lunches in the 1/4. It took the LS vette era to meet the milestone of straight line acceleration of those trucks.
In actuality, the LS evolution in general was the milestone of the performance race we see now. The Terminator aside, Ford was way behind with the Mod-motors. Dodge was not even in the market until much later. The D & F camps had to step up their game big time to compete with the New SBC.
Another side of that was your average gear head. We were slapping superchargers & turbos on them & making never before seen amounts of power, for cheap. Gear heads, whether hands-on or not, buy performance cars. In order to attract that crowd to buy new manufacturers had to step up to the plate & deliver with increasingly more powerful engines. Engines we still take farther than they do. The LT5 is simply that next step from GM in this segment. It’s still nothing that hasn’t been done by the aftermarket engine builders & tuners. It really excels in its further complexity.
In an introspective contemplation I am starting to conclude the TCM lock-out is a move by GM to quell that aftermarket surge in newer vehicles. By controlling the limit, they become the limit, to a point. Maybe I’m off base here, but if it gets worse, that will be the reality. Now whether or not it’s outside forces, ie .gov, behind the shadows is yet to be determined.
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In '91 and '92, the Syclone and Typhoon were running low 14s in the 1/4 mile at 93 mph (one C&D test I found for the Syclone was 14.1 @ 93 mph, and one test for the Typhoon was 14.3 @ 93 mph). That's not close to the new at the time '92 Viper which ran 13 flat at 110 mph with its 400 hp. And the LT1 '92 Vette was 13.7 @ 102 mph, easily surpassing those trucks. The '91 Corvette was at least a 1/2 second slower in the 1/4, though, with the L98 compared to the LT1 'Vette, meaning the AWD trucks would have been a close race, e.t. wise, but at a 5 mph lower trap speed (L98 Covette's trapped 98ish mph. Of course, during this time there was the ZR1 that also ran 13 flat at 112 mph.
The LS was certainly a big chapter in the evolution of the hp war, but mainly at the mid-level range minus the C6 Z06's 505 hp LS7 beast.
I don't think car guys supercharging their vehicles caused the hp war that manufacturers have been engaged in the last 25+ years. I don't think that would make a big enough ripple to cause manufacturers to have to react to it. I think it's just a one-upmanship mentality in order to sell more vehicles. And with modern technology, it's simply gotten incredible.