[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by speeder

Man, some of you old tough guys are easily triggered. I actually was NOT referring to your car but many cars of friends/acquaintances/strangers back in the day. Your car might have been set up great, many were not. For some reason, I've never seen a quick SS Chevelle big block but I'm sure they must exist, right?

If you are referring to cars with all kinds of gov't mandated emissions with catalytic converters, lower compression... then you are just not knowledgable about building motors for performance instead of gas mileage. Anything after `69 started detuning and by '73 they were a neutered shell with all show and not a lot of go

I was too young for the bulk of the muscle car days but I rode along as a young teenager with an older friend in his 1970 AMX w/ a close ratio 4-speed and 343 w/ headers. Not sure of the axle ratio but it was quick in short races. We'd go out to the cruising strip at night and get in multiple street races from a rolling start and his win/loss record was impressive. I don't remember ever losing to a 396 or 454 Chevelle, only walking all over them. There were some other cars that beat him, mostly Mopars and once a Boss 302 Mustang! Have no idea if it was stock but holy balls was it quick.

Rolling starts are for cars without the torque needed to be quick.

There were lots of guys who had no clue how to set up a car but then my crowd was really young back at the time. They would just fire the parts cannon at it with headers, big carbs, etc. and nothing necessarily was the correct or perfect component. If you built a quick car, good for you. Trust me, I wasn't thinking about you. I never do.

I will concede that when I go to a local car show of 6-800 cars each month, I laugh at custom built "hot rods" with massive motors and blowers sticking out of the hood but NOTHING done with the stock DRUM brakes and no suspension changes to help put the power to the ground (a key factor in quickness when you aren't getting the rolling start handicap adjustment. Back in the day (yeah, I know) we would consider rolling start to teeing off from the ladies tee...


They didn't ask "how pretty?", they asked "is it quick?"