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Originally Posted by KatarHol
For some reason,that doesn't fit my personal peception of a Camaro. A non-v8 performance model works for Mustang and the Firebird always had a euro flair to it,so it worked for 1st gen OHC Sprints and the 3rd gen 20th anniver. TA,but for Camaro........i don't know  It's more of a muscle car,i don't think it would fly. It would be the same for a Corvette or like a 911 with a 4-banger(912),it wouldn't work. |
A lot of people on the boards have been really opposed to the possibility that a V8 is not the best possible method of attaining horsepower, torque, and efficiency. There's nothing uniquely American about a big V8. That's a major misconception that American car enthusiasts tend to have when thinking about classic cars. They forget that the big fighters on the street here may have been huge V8s when the same battles were happening on the tracks of Europe. I can't understand why Americans are so intolerant to the idea that power can be achieved with less cylinders or difference sources of fuel. Just because something has always been done a certain way doesn't make it the best.
I know that you'll tell me that the American V8 has a unique sound or bellows in a way that nothing else compares. It has tradition. I understand all of that. On the same token, there are a lot of American and international traditions that had to die for their obvious fallacies. With the V8 tradition, there comes the belief that it is superior somehow. More noise must mean more power, or more cylinders must mean more power. If either one of those were correct, the V8 owner could feel dominant on the streets until, of course, an exotic featuring 10 or more cylinders pulled up at the next stoplight.
When that happens, the game changes. Americans start talking about reliability and how exotics are harder or more expensive to maintain. They talk about how their V8 gets more miles per gallon or that theirs was made in America, as if the fact that a car being built in the land of the free makes it somehow superior than a car built in the land of delicious pasta—Italy, of course.
These are arguments that import buyers use to justify racing their little 4-bangers against larger displacement beasts. Who are we to say that they're wrong? The Chevy Cobalt SS turbocharged gets an astounding 260 hp from the LNF (2.0L) EcoTec and boasts to be the fastest 4-banger in the world, making it more of a competitor with cars that have 6 or 8 cylinders. What happened to the tradition of a 4-banger never keeping up with a V8? Now you've got 2008 Cobalts beating 1968 Camaros at the track. Maybe that shows us something.
We need to play with the idea of having aggressive V6s. GM should be building V6 blocks with forged internals for the sake of forced induction replacements for V8s. They are more efficient and as powerful as any V8 that boasts more displacement. They may not be quite as easy to bring to 1,000 horsepower, but the vast majority of enthusiasts won't break the 700-hp mark. When we can make 8-cylinder engines with the efficiency of 6-cylinder or 4-cylinder engines, then we can talk about reverting to the tradition of only V8s in muscle cars. I'd love to see it happen, and it is possible with the proper management of the fuel going into the engine. It just hasn't been a priority to make efficient V8s, which is sad because that idea alone could have saved the American auto industry a lot of trouble.
Basically, the only things that should be sacred to a car enthusiast are style and speed. If you can achieve both of these pillars of the automotive community with anything less than a V8, then I think it should be encouraged.