Your Car isn't as fast as you think it is....or was!

Supercars-every manufacturer had at least one, some had more than one. A car that could lay down 13 second quarters right off the showroom floor, and with maybe just headers and slicks could break into the 12's. LS6 Chevelles, Hemi 'Cudas, 428CJ Mustangs, Ram Air IV GTOs, Hurst/Olds 442s, Buick GSX's and a couple others I probably missed. The truth of the matter is that most of us whether we owned them or rode in our friends or relatives cars, most of our "Musclecar Memories" revolve around what we would now call "Entry Level" musclecars-i.e-389 GTOs, SS396 Chevelles, 383 Road Runners, or "Mini-Musclecars" like 327 Novas or 340 Dusters. Tales of third-gear rubber and being pushed back in the seat seem silly when someone pulls out a yellowed, dog-eared, copy of Car Life, or Motor Trend, and we find that the machine in question ran in the 14.60's. Gearheads love to quote magazine test results, but they don't always take every factor into the equation. Enthusiast mags, especially Hot Rod, or High Performance Cars, or Popular Hot Rodding, would sometimes recurve the distributors, re-jet the carbs, or even add slicks, headers, and traction bars. Not exactly "stock" performance. Pontiac was the master of this Royal Pontiac in Michigan would rejet the carbs, recurve distributors, even mill the heads. Jim Wangers finally admitted some 40 odd years later in his autobiography what everyone else already knew. The GTO than ran a 4.6 second 0-60 time, and a 13.1 second quarter in Car and Driver's May 1964 issue was a ringer. The 389 had been pulled by Royal Pontiac and replaced with a blueprinted 421. I experienced this in high school. I had a Ram Air III, 4-speed, 4.33 geared 69 GTO Judge. ( What were my parents thinking? ) A buddy had a 1969 440 Six-Pack Super Bee. He challenged me and the Judge, swearing on a stack of bibles that his car ran "Very Low 13s or Very high 12s." He gleaned this information from an old Car Life road test where Chrysler engineers had Pro Stock Champion Ronnie Sox pilot a prototype Six-pack Road Runner to a string of 13.0 and 12.9's in the quarter. They wouldn't admit that it had been blueprinted, but said it had been brought to "The top of Specifications." It also was equipped with a 4-speed, 4.30 gears and slicks. My friend, only being 17 years old, would not listen to what I thought were two very important facts. #1- He didn't posess Ronnie Sox's driving skill, and #2- His car, which hadn't had a tune-up or even an oil change in god-knows-when, sporting 3.23 gears, a Torqueflite, and street tires, would probably run substantially slower than the Dyno-tuned, 4-speed, 4.30 geared, drag-slicked test mule. In addition to the mechanical advantage my GTO had-i.e. the four-speed and 4.33 gears,-my father was an expert Pontiac mechanic, and my car was perfectly tuned. My pal was totally shocked when I beat him in a street race. I experienced this twice more, in later years. I had a 403 Olds engined 77 Pontiac Trans-Am. I know they were considered "smog-dogs" that ran 16.3s, but mine had headers and real dual exhausts, a Holley Street Dominator intake manifold, and a TransGo shift kit. It wasn't a rocket, but it ran a best of 14.82, and it would run 14.9's all day, in 90 degree weather. A buddy had a new ( In 1985 ) 5.0 Mustang.  All the road tests I have read on stock 5.0 Mustangs between 1984 and 1993 vary slightly- the slowest was a 15.29, the quickest a 14.72. My buddy was sure his car ran "14 flat" because of a Car Craft road test. Their "Basically Stock" car did run a string of 14.05's,14.03,s and 14.01's, after they swapped the stock 2.73 rear end gears for 3.73s, added a K&N Airbox and air filter, and swapped the 225/60VR15 street radials for some bias-ply, 235/60/15 M&H "DOT Legal" Drag tires. My pal was shocked beyond recognition when my "Slug" T/A gave him a race that was too close to call 3 times in a row. Later, after I bought my 73 Hurst/Olds and "Restified/ Butchered" it -that's another story for another time-i.e.-a ZZ4 GM crate motor, B&M Turbo 400, and swapping the stock 3.08 gears for 4.10s-and running consistent mid to high 13s at my local strip, I was challenged by a neighbor with an all-wheel-drive Turbocharged Mitsubishi 3000 GT VR4. I told him that I liked the cars, but every one I had ever seen ran about 14.5 in the quarter. He was adamant he could beat me, or at least give me a hell of a race, producing factory literature. It said in the brochure that the Mitsubishi test car ran a 13.7 Quarter, with a "Professional driver on a closed course, under controlled conditions." After I blew his doors off, he went on the internet to get the "Controlled Conditions." The Mitsu engineers disabled the knock sensor, disabled the rev limiter, filled the tank with 104 octane gas, lowered the tire pressure to 15 psi in all four tires, and had the "Professional Driver" drop the clutch at 6,200 rpm and shift at 7,000. This netted them the blistering 1/4 mile time they were after, but after three runs, also grenaded the $5749 transaxle! I didn't have to say it-my friend did. "How many people run around with 100 octane gas in the tank, the knock sensor disabled, 15 psi in the tires, and are willing to drop the clutch at 6,200 to jump some punk in a 5.0 Mustang or Screaming-Chicken Firebird from a red light?"  I love muscle machines, but we need to be realistic about what they were and are capable of!!  Mastermind