Well, the results are in. According to Dream Car Garage's "Muscle Car Shootout", the '70 LS6 Chevelle lost by one point to the Boss 429 Mustang (in the burnout competition no doubt!). Sure the Chevelle had an auto and the Mustang had a stick, but let's see them fit 5 people comfortably in a Mustang! I think the competition was rigged!

Great episode..I really enjoyed it.Those cars sure got put thru the paces.Its funny how they complained about the 3.31 highway gears in the LS6 :D

The variables for each car's setup where way too random. Why couldn't they all have stick-shifts, and a like rear end?

Poor Challenger had a bad clutch... better luck next year! HA! tongue.gif

I couldn't help but shake my head for all of the AMX owners out there. The retail value on their cars just dropped 20%. redface.gif

I bet that the Mustang Website isn't nearly as informative or visited as much as us Chevelle Gearheads on this site! ;)

Not like any of the owners were willing to start changing their factory speced original cars to something that would be more even for the test. But it was kind of the real-world test. You bought a car back in the day, and you run what you brung off the showroom floor against the other new cars out there. Sure the Mustang won 3 competitions because of the 4-speed and 3.91 gears, but its just the way it is. I'm much happier the Chevelle was the all-around better car. Good handling, killed them all in braking, and did good in the 1/4 (even though we know the story if it had been a 4.10, 4 speed car ;) ). Oh, and of course it was the best looking car, even with the vinyl top :D

I didn't see the competition but i have run the Boss 429 mustang with an average running '72, four speed, Stage 1 Buick GS with street tires. The Mustang won but only ran 14.09 @ 100 MPH. Wouldn't even have been a close run for my old 375 H.P. Chevelle had i had it out that day. Other old Fords were a lot faster, mostly 428 Cobra Jet Mustangs and 427 Galaxies.

I would like to see the 1/4 mile test with all the cars on slicks to take away the traction variable and to see the timeslips.

:rolleyes:

[ 08-12-2004, 10:14 AM: Message edited by: Dean ]

On of the things that hits home for me is how the factory engineers managed to cut down on performance the way they did. If you look at the available parts in 1969-1970 they left a lot of perfomance "on the table". GM for example had F70-14's on the GTO and the Chevelle SS, but had F60 (or G60) -15's on the Buick GS cars. Even Ford had 60 series 15's on Boss 429 cars. The automatics of the day had real tight torque converters. And the factory exhaust packaging was the worst. In reality, the '70 LS6 car probably didn't have a real installed power level over 350HP - anybody know what the real number is?

It is kind of ashamed that what is looked at as the pinnacle of factory performance is in reality rather tame.

Give all the cars open headers and slicks and all be either 4 speed or automatic. Have them all checked and certified stock internally. That would be a level playing field.

I thought the cars did very well for being supposedly bone stock and not "tweaked". Just for comparison, in Oct '69 I bought a new '70 L-78 Nova off the showroom floor. Automatic and 3.55 posi rear. One week later, untouched, the best it could muster was a 15.10.

Ah come on guys, don't take it so serious.

The show was cool, and the right or wrong rear gear could've changed the order of finish, for any of the cars featured.

As far as those cars being tame,...
Well compared to some of the cars on this site maybe,...
but only a small handful, of reasonably priced cars built since, can claim to be as fast.

My comments were not to degrade performance, but rather how engineering got pushed aside with the muscle cars at the expense of packaging, marketing, accounting or lack of top level informed decision making. In restrospect, historically, there was a window of opportunity to create and market never to be seen or duplicated masterpieces. I am not a big fan of the Pony Cars, and would have liked to have seen the Chrysler product represented by the 440 6-pack Road Runner, or the Buick GSX-455. Either way I enjoyed watching it.

I saw the show and I thought it was cool. But I am curious, what exactly were they measuring in the "Burnout" category? I think the Mustang won that one too. But, what does that have to do with performance? :confused:

Originally posted by 68 421:
:rolleyes: Thanks For editing this...

It is kind of ashamed that what is looked at as the pinnacle of factory performance is in reality rather tame. People tend to forget this. The reality is, a LS1 F-body, 5.0 Mustang, 4.6 Mustang, etc, etc. is every bit as fast as some of the fastest '60's muscle cars as delivered.

Those old cars sure respond to minor tweaks though! smile.gif

Originally posted by novadude:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />It is kind of ashamed that what is looked at as the pinnacle of factory performance is in reality rather tame. People tend to forget this. The reality is, a LS1 F-body, 5.0 Mustang, 4.6 Mustang, etc, etc. is every bit as fast as some of the fastest '60's muscle cars as delivered.

Those old cars sure respond to minor tweaks though! smile.gif </font>[/QUOTE]And none of that expensive computer bullcrap to go through either

good show.... but i wished that they would have setup each car with the most hi performance options availabe for that car from the factory. so.. like the ultimately optioned LS6 against the ultimately optioned AMX etc etc... becuase as mentioned the GTO had a RAMAIR 3 instead of the more potent RAMAIR4 and the challenger had a bad tranny, and the LS6 only had a 3:31. but i would not have added anything to make them the "same"... like...lets give them all 4 speeds and 4.10 rearends (becuase 4.10 was not availabe in some cases in that car). heck if you want to see cars that are "made similar", wait until sunday and watch nascar.

what i really want to know is how can i get that guys job.... can you image being able to drive those cars like that!! graemlins/thumbsup.gif

Von, just to show you what was possible, even with the no traction tires back then my 375 H.P.-'67 Chevelle on a decent day at Tulsa ran 14.21 @ 107.7 MPH by easing it out of the hole and going thru the traps in third gear. This was a four speed with 3.73 gears. The car was a light year faster on concrete than on the asphalt where you could rev it up to 3500 RPM and come out on the clutch quickly. With an automatic you would have needed a 4.10 gear and a looser converter to have made it fly because of the lack of low end torque.

Yes I finally got it to the 12.80's a couple years later with 4.10's, open headers, an ign CD box, and 7" recap slicks. With just different mufflers, a dist curve, and CD box it went 14.40's in the heat of summer. The exhaust system on the Novas was very restrictive. Hot Rod Magazine tested a '69 and went 13.85. ?????

Von, the 375 motor really likes to be twisted. Mine in later years had a ZL-1 cam, an Edelbrock dual plane manifold with a 850 holley carb., 4.88 gears, open headers and M&H 10.5 x 28" slicks and ran a best of 11.58 @ 117.64 MPH going thru at 6400 RPM. (needed more gear).

I always miss the good shows! I must've been watching Celebrity Boxing or something!

Was there any mention of the Ram Air IV Trans Am's or even the Super Duty 455 versions?
Those cars are MY second favorite musclecar of alltime...especially in Lucerne Blue.