No,your car is or wasn't that fast......

I get so tired of people pulling numbers out of their ass. I blame the "Fast&Furious" movies for a lot of this with their constant spouting about "10 second" cars. Almost daily I overhear some idiot claiming to have 500 or 600 hp-yet he can't produce a dyno sheet!!  Or claiming some blistering 1/4 mile time, and again-can't produce a timeslip!!  These idiots don't realize that 1/10 of a second equals one car length in a drag race. So if your car runs say a 13.8 and someone elses car runs a 13.5-he'll beat you by three car lengths. If the other guys car runs a 13.0-that's an 8 car length ass-whippin'!!  I love old musclecars-but there were very few that could run low 13s off the showroom floor and easily drop into the 12s or high 11s with maybe headers, slicks and traction bars. Hemi 'Cudas, LS6 Chevelles, W30 442s, RAIV GTOs, 440 Six-Pack Mopars,427 'Vettes, and  428CJ Mustangs-but that's about it. And these cars were just as rare new as they are now. Whether it's their car or their father's or older brothers-most people's "Musclecar Memories" involve "entry level" musclecars-389 GTOs,396 Chevelles,383 Road Runners, etc. Or 340 Dusters, 351 Mustangs,350 Camaros, 400 Firebirds, etc. Tales of nearly pulling the front wheels,being pushed back in the seat and third gear rubber seem silly when someone pulls out a yellowed, dog-eared copy of Hot Rod or Car Life and find that the machine in question ran in the 14.60's. I also love it when people pull up old "ringer" road tests and quote them. My personal favorite is the Mopar guys who claim that the Dodge Li'l Red Express pickup was the fastest american car in 1978-even quicker than an L82 Corvette or a WS6 Trans-Am!! This comes from a November 1977 Car and Driver article called "Double the Double Nickel"-they tested a bunch of cars that could run 110 mph or faster. They did have a Corvette and a Trans-Am, and the "Prototype" Li'l Red Truck did win a 3-way drag race. However-the "Prototype" had a 360 V8 with NASCAR spec "W2" heads,a hot cam out of the old 340 Six-Pack, and a 4160 Double-Pumper Holley carb mounted on a single-plane aluminum Holley "Street Dominator" intake, and catalyst-free dual exhausts, and a 2,500 rpm torque converter!!!  No surprise that production examples with a garden-variety 360 with stock 318 /360 heads,a lazy cam,and a Carter Thermo-Quad mounted on a Iron intake with an EGR valve, and a stock torque converter were substantially slower!!  A close 2nd is the "stock" '91 Mustang tested by Car Craft that ran a blistering 14.03 in the 1/4-when every other magazine that tested a "5.0" between '87 and '93-ran between 14.72 ( Hot Rod ) and 15.29 ( Road and Track ). CC's mule was "stock"-except for a K&N airbox and filter,a Flowmaster cat-back exhaust system, swapping the 2.73:1 gears for some 3.55:1s,and swapping the stock 225/60R15 radials for some 235/60R15 M&H drag tires!!  I mean if your going to nit-pick....The point I'm making is you can love your car-you don't have to exaggerate it's performance!!  Mastermind