General Lee vs the Bandit? How does that math work?

A while back I commented on a compact sport sedan comparo that was in Motor Trend or Car and Driver-I forget which. But I remember it because it pissed me off so badly. They compared a Subaru WRX,a VW Golf GTI, an SVT Ford Focus and a Honda Civic SI. The Subaru was the fastest 0-60, the fastest in the 1/4 mile,had the shortest stopping distance from 70 mph,and had the highest numbers on the skidpad, and the lowest price!  Yet they declared the VW the winner. Huh?  Why? Because it had more cupholders?  How in the hell, in a performance comparison does the car that won every single performance test finish second? Well, one of the buff mags has done it again. This one was the Bandit vs the General Lee. For those of you that have lived in a cave for the last 38 years the "Bandit" is a black '77 Trans-Am driven by Burt Reynolds in the classic car chase / comedy "Smokey and the Bandit" which out grossed everything but "Star Wars" back in '77. The General Lee is an Orange '69 Dodge Charger with a Confederate flag on the roof driven by John Schneider and Tom Wopat in the campy TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard".  ( There was also an awful movie with Johhny Knoxville and Sean William Scott, but real fans always think of the TV show. ) Anyhow they found a couple guys one with a Charger done up like General Lee and another with a well preserved Black and gold SE T/A and did the usual performance tests. With catalyst-free exhaust and 440 cubes it's a no-brainer to say that the Charger was quicker in a drag race than the smog-choked 400 inch Trans-Am. However-in every other performance category the "Bandit" stomped "The General". It had a way shorter 70-0 stopping distance,and the gap got larger as they tested because the Chargers 4-wheel drums faded badly and the T/A's front disc / rear drums didn't. The T/A smoked the Charger on the skidpad-staying remarkably composed and registering a blistering .82g while the Charger wallowed around like the Titanic and scored a dismal .67g-about the same as what an F250 Ford truck scores!!  In the slalom and a race up a curvy country road the Pontiac again left the Dodge in the dust because it cornered way better and braked way better, and the seats kept the driver firmly planted behind the wheel. The Charger driver complained that the flat smooth seats had him sliding out from behind the wheel during hard cornering so badly that he had to hang onto the door strap in left turns and hang onto the shifter for dear life in right turns. One of the writers pointed out that it would be pretty easy to add Horsepower to the Pontiac which would really make it an ass-whippin'. The other guy said-wrongly-that if the Charger had factory disc brakes it would have fared better. I say wrongly because in checking old magazine road tests a '77 T/A stopped from 60 mph in 144 feet, while a disc-braked '69 Charger took 207 feet. The Mopar fans said that you could by sway bars and subframe connectors and different springs and shocks to make the Charger a g-machine. That's true but if your comparing "Apples to Apples"-theirs tons of upgraded suspension parts for '70's Camaros and Firebirds as well. Either bone-stock or modified-like it or not-a '70's T/A is a much better performance car than a '60's Charger. That's simply because suspension and tire technology made huge advances in the intervening years. A 2015 Mustang GT will smoke a 1969 428 CJ in every performance category. 45 years of technology advances will do that!!  Anyway-even though the T/A bested the Charger in every single category except the drag race, these guys voted the Charger the winner. Really??  How does that math work?  I'd love to have a 1967 427 Stingray. But a 2015 Corvette will run off and leave it in any performance category.  Go ahead and love the old one-but don't say it's a better performer-the numbers don't lie!!  Anyhow, I just had to vent that.  Mastermind