[Normy]

As to gm in the late 1980's....they were famous for building transmissions for the street that were easily race quality. That means they were built 4-5 times stronger than they needed to be, especially the brake bands. Why? Simple: gm built a bunch of low-rpm high torque motors with 6 cylinders, since they figured out that a 3500 pound fwd car with a 3.8 liter engine could achieve 30 mpg if the rpm's were held down to 1800 tops. These cars, which had huge chains to transfer the power from the transverse mounted engine to the transmission....had tranny electronics that lugged the 3800 engine. This same basic transmission was used on all gm fwd cars, including the 300+ hp Northstar cars.

N!