Check your facts before you start name calling.....

I often contribute to Muscle Car Review, as well as Popular Hot Rodding, Hot Rod, and Hemmings Muscle machines. I recently wrote an article talking about some of the fun times and races I've had in various muscle cars that I've owned.  I recieved quite a bit of flack in responding letters for what I said. People called me a liar, and other vile names and said I lived in a dream world because of three statements I made.  I'd like to call these people out publicly and correct them and ask them to apologize with the same venom they hurled at me for making reasonable and true statements.  #1 was I said my GTO beat my buddys Six-Pack Super Bee in a drag race.  Mopar fans howled to the high heavens. My buddy's 69 Super Bee did have the vaunted 390 hp 440-Six Pack under the hood. It also had a Torqueflite and 3.23:1 gears. My GTO was a 1969 366hp Ram Air III Judge with a 4-speed and 4.33 gears. I fail to see why anyone who has ever drag raced would not believe that a 366 hp car with a stick and 4.33 gears, could beat a 390 hp car with a slushbox and 3.23s in a "Stoplight Gran Prix". I even said that I chastised my friend for quoting the famous Car Life road test where Pro Stock champion Ronnie Sox piloted a Protorype Six-Pack Road Runner to a string of 13 flat and 12.9 1/4s.  I don't know why my saying that my then 17 year old buddy didn't posess Ronnie Sox's driving skill, and that his Torqueflite equipped, street tired, 3.23 geared Super Bee that hadn't had a tune-up or even an oil change in god-know-when, would likely run a lot slower than the Blueprinted, 4-speed, 4.30 geared, drag-slicked Car Life test mule, and that later production examples tested by other magazines ran between 13.60 and 14.40 is so profoundly offensive!!  # 2  I said when I bought my 1973 Hurst / Olds 442 way back in 1994, that I enjoyed "spanking" 5.0 Mustangs. Dozens of idiots wrote in and even sent in 10,11 and 12 second time slips of their highly modified and sometimes blown and nitroused Fox-bodied Mustangs. The 1987-93 models are acknkowledged as the best performers. Every road test I ever read of a 5.0 Mustang between 1987 and 1993 listed 1/4 mile times in a narrow range. The quickest was a 14.72 and the slowest a 15.29. These were all five-speed Mustangs. The automatics were slower.  I could not find a Road Test of a 1973 Hurst/Olds, but I found two of a "regular" 1973 442 with the 455 / Turbo 400 powertrain. Motor Trend's car ran a 15.20 e.t. and High Performance Cars tester ran a 14.82. Virtually identical to the range of a stock 5.0 Mustang. Numbers don't lie. Unless a Mustang driver was exceptionally skilled with a stick and launching without excessive wheelspin, ( In a 5.0, on street tires? good luck ) I'd say the big Olds had a good chance of winning a stoplight sprint. And from a rolling 20, or 40 or 50 up a freeway on-ramp,-302 cubes with 2.73 or 3.08 gears against 455 with 3.23s ?  Puhleeeze.  # 3 Also concerned my Hurst / Olds in it's current condition, which is powered by a ZZ4 Chevy crate motor, a Turbo 400 and 4.10 gears. I said I had fun torturing little boys in their Subaru WRXs. Even the editor of PHR made fun of me, until I pointed out that every WRX tested prior to 2008 had 224 hp and ran about 14.4 second 1/4s. The 2009 and later STI models with 305 hp run 13.7 second 1/4s, according to Road and Track and Car and Driver. In the Sept 2008 issue of Hot Rod magazine they had a "Crate Motor Shootout" where they tested 8 GMPP offerings in a 69 Chevelle. We all know that a Chevelle and a Cutlass are the same size car. With a ZZ4, the Chevelle ran between 12.44 and 12.69.  The Chevelle had slicks, 4.30 gears and a 3,500 rpm converter. My 442 has 275/60R15 street radials, 4.10s and a 2,400 rpm converter. I don't profess to run 12.69 with this combo, but even if I was a FULL SECOND slower than the Hot Rod test car, I could still feasibly show a WRX my taillights. And again, that's from a light. Off the line is the little all-wheel-drive Turbos advantage. If were above 20 mph, and wheelspin isn't a factor, with my 405 lbs ft of torque on tap and 4.10 gears- To plagiarize M.C. Hammer- "Can't Touch this".  The same thing happened when I said my brother beat a Buick Grand National with his GTO.  Morons came out of the woodwork with their 10 second GNs and nasty letters. However if you remember back in the day magazines clocked stock GNs between 13.9 and 14.3.  Before you fire off a spittingly hysterical letter slandering someone, read all the information!!  Mastermind