[masraum]

Originally Posted by zakthor

And I’m not even into muscle cars but my high school friends dad gave him a barracuda with the boxy girl front and flip up headlights and it was stupidly powerful. If I stomped the pedal at a stop sign the smoke from the rear tires went around us as we slowly slid off the line. No idea of year but that must have been a dark period in American motoring if the carrera was considered the fastest (or even fast.) Maybe there were different car magazines for domestic cars?

There were powerful (relatively) fast cars (straight line) until the early 70s. Starting in 1970, the HP of most vehicles dropped precipitously. Prior to that I the hottest cars had mechanical lifters (vs hydraulic) and compression ratios from the factory that could be as high as 12.5:1 as well as big 4bbl, 3x2bbl, and even 2x4bbl carb setups to feed massive amounts of fuel to the thirsty motors. Some of the highest rated motors were rated around 450hp from the factory, but there were ringers that were heavily underrated by the factory whether for insurance reasons or to lull the competition into a false sense of security.

By 1974, I think almost everything was running 8.0:1 or maybe 8.5:1 compression and enough emission controls to choke the previously brawny motors.

Things stayed pretty anemic until things started to pick up in the mid 80s, but V-8 motors with 200-250 hp were still considered powerful in the day. And the cars that they were having to push were likely MUCH heavier than the 911 of the day.

Of course, today, with computers and everything else, there are cars that would run circles around the best of the golden years, but with less style and character.