Mine didn't have the massive stock front and rear bumpers (lots of mass at the largest possible distance from the centre of gravity - now that will really increase polar moment of inertia and ruin yaw response!)
It also had a rear antiroll bar ("sway bar" in America.) It would happily hang the tail out in a turn.
It was certainly a long car, and I'm sure that, even without the monstrous big bumpers, it had a larger polar moment of inertia than a similarly-sized mid-engined car. But for exactly that reason, it was a very honest car that never bit you driving on the street. You didn't need Mario Andretti's reflexes to enjoy a Z.
That's more than you could say for a Porsche 911, with its fearsome reputation for biting you in the behind if you went a hair too far with it. A friend of mine learned a similarly expensive lesson driving his mid-engined Toyota MR2 (the pretty second-gen one, not the original flying cheese wedge.)
I drove a borrowed Porsche 944 for a while, and owned a '73 Road Runner with a rip-snorting 340 V8 for a long time. Both were really fun, in very different ways. But I think I had more hours of quiet enjoyment in the 240 Z than anything else. That car was fun to drive even when you were on public roads and driving in a safe and responsible manner.
Sad to say, "fun to drive" is not part of the experience with my current car. It has many good qualities, but fun isn't one of them.
-Gnobuddy
Wow, you guys are bringing back memories. My mother had a 67 Beetle. She had a girlfriend that had a 70's 240z. She had another girlfriend with a 70's Camaro. My father had TWO Merc ML350's and a Mazda CX-9. My wife's 2016 Volvo S60 has stop-start tech. When I met her in 1990, her dream car was a VW Rabbit Cabriolet. And, she had a 1984 Honda CRX.
It's a Kosmic Koincidence!
The 80's were a time with few fun cars in North America, but the CRX was one of the few bright spots. Small, cute in a snub-nosed, origami-puppy-folded-from-paper sort of way, with quick handling, enough power to burn the (front) tires when you dropped the clutch from a standstill, plenty of leg and head room for a 6' 3" driver, and superb gas mileage to top it all off. What a great design!
Now our new cars and trucks and SUVs are moving answers to the ancient riddle "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?". But the CRX was the answer to a much more scientific question: "What happens to f=ma if you divide f by a small number, and then divide m by a larger number?"
And the answer was "Driving fun and good fuel mileage happens."
-Gnobuddy
After 10 year of driving $200 beaters, in 1979 I bought my first new car. It was a 1979 Plymouth Champ (a Mitsubishi Colt in disguise). It had a 1.4L engine, a funky "twin stick" manual transmission and carried all of it's 1700 pounds on 13 inch wheels. It cost a whopping $3600 bucks, and they wouldn't take my 1970 Plymouth Duster in trade, so I sold it for $200.
I was looking at a Dodge Omni but balked at it's over $4K price and sluggish performance. I spotted the frog like green Champ on the lot and asked about it, but the dealer had no info. He only knew that two of them came in on the last delivery and somebody bought the blue one after going for a ride......so I asked him to fetch the keys. I gave the throttle a blip and popped the clutch. After 5 minutes of terrorizing the salesman, I bought that one.
This was the 55 MPH era, so I took it on a 500 mile road trip and kept the speedo as close to 55 as I could and achieved 51 MPG, on both the trip out, and back.
It took some doing to figure out the two stick shifter. It was basically a standard 4 speed with a second shifter that changed the final drive ratio, for "performance" or "economy." Some careful measurements with the tach and speedo revealed 7 unique overall drive ratios. It took some time and practice to learn the technique to shift that thing for fastest acceleration. I remember that two shifts involved moving both sticks at the same time.
One day on the way to work I pulled up next to a coworker in his 240Z. When the light turned green I got the drop on him, and did have the inside lane in the turn, but he never caught me by the time we got to work.
Those cars went up in value so quickly that I got the entire purchase price for the nearly 3 year old car when I traded it in for a Dodge Charger ( a "fast" name for a 2 door Omni) in 1982.
Mine was the same ugly green as this one, but only had the 1.4L engine.
Junkyard Find: 1979 Plymouth Champ, with Twin-Stick! - The Truth About Cars
I was looking at a Dodge Omni but balked at it's over $4K price and sluggish performance. I spotted the frog like green Champ on the lot and asked about it, but the dealer had no info. He only knew that two of them came in on the last delivery and somebody bought the blue one after going for a ride......so I asked him to fetch the keys. I gave the throttle a blip and popped the clutch. After 5 minutes of terrorizing the salesman, I bought that one.
This was the 55 MPH era, so I took it on a 500 mile road trip and kept the speedo as close to 55 as I could and achieved 51 MPG, on both the trip out, and back.
It took some doing to figure out the two stick shifter. It was basically a standard 4 speed with a second shifter that changed the final drive ratio, for "performance" or "economy." Some careful measurements with the tach and speedo revealed 7 unique overall drive ratios. It took some time and practice to learn the technique to shift that thing for fastest acceleration. I remember that two shifts involved moving both sticks at the same time.
One day on the way to work I pulled up next to a coworker in his 240Z. When the light turned green I got the drop on him, and did have the inside lane in the turn, but he never caught me by the time we got to work.
Those cars went up in value so quickly that I got the entire purchase price for the nearly 3 year old car when I traded it in for a Dodge Charger ( a "fast" name for a 2 door Omni) in 1982.
Mine was the same ugly green as this one, but only had the 1.4L engine.
Junkyard Find: 1979 Plymouth Champ, with Twin-Stick! - The Truth About Cars
Those Mitsubishi Colts/Plymouth Champs were awesome cars for sure, much better engineered than the us made cars at that time. I recall they had an accelerator linkage that passed under the passengers side dashboard. I would occasionally reach up under there and gently hold it on while my friend was driving. My uncle had one years later, and we found a set of rare KYB, application specific shocks on a close out deal that were incredible, like a set of race tuned bilsteins.
That 340 was a great engine, same uncle had a dart gts at one time, very fun car.
That 340 was a great engine, same uncle had a dart gts at one time, very fun car.
But like all the early budget Mitsu's the cheap plastic could not handle the Florida heat and started to crack after a few years....I ditched mine before that happened.
I never had one, but a friend had a 340 Demon that was pure wicked on wheels.
I had a 68 Camaro Convertible. When the 327 died of old age and smoking at almost 200K miles, in went a built 350. You had to be careful not to hit second gear too hard or you would break loose both back tires at speed. My buddie's automatic 340 Demon was faster, but he had some $$$ in that motor. He went 12's at the local 1/4 mile track. My Camaro ran traction limited high 13's. The convertible was too flexible to hook up good tires anyway without a subframe or a cage.
As I said earlier I traded the Champ for FWD Charger. It was the first of 3 Chargers I would own over the years. The second got a turbo motor and transaxle out of a Daytona and a healthy dose of Shelby help and upgrades. I often won the battle on the dragstrip against the 5.0 Mustangs of the late 80's, and held my own at the autocross track until the second gen RX-7 came. It would go low 13's with the exhaust removed on a cold day.
You guys are killing me! The wife had a Dodge (Mitsubishi) Colt sedan after the CRX. I remember putting a megaphone exhaust on it. That thing sounded like a Kawasaki KZ1000 at high rpms. Her girlfriend's husband had a 86-87 Civic Si. I put an ansa exhaust on it and beat my buddy 's 84 Maxima in a 2 out 3 drag race. That Si was quick!
Low 13's was quite a surprise for a FWD Dodge Charger in the days before the FWD "sport compact" fad came and went.
I had some help from a few random interactions with people who knew how to make these little cars fly. I had purchased a used Charger 2.2 for far below market price with some issues. I just ignored the "funny noises" and drove the car until the transaxle grenaded itself all over the road. A bearing had failed spitting out it's rollers, one of which found its way into the gears at 40 MPH locking the front wheels, throwing the car sideways off the road and splitting the transaxle case.
A junkyard shopping spree had discovered a freshly wrecked turbo Daytona with a 5 speed transaxle. I had a 4 speed. Would the 5 speed drop into my car? Would the whole drivetrain fit into my car? No turbo Omni's or Chargers existed, so there must be issues, right? All Omni's / Chargers at the time were carbureted. The Daytona had EFI. I had a book called Carroll Shelby's 2.2 Speed Secrets which had a phone number for the Chrysler / Shelby Performance center, so I called looking for these answers.
A receptionist answered, so I asked to talk to someone who could answer some technical questions. The next voice I heard was Carroll Shelby's. He told me that there was indeed going to be some turbo Chargers with his name on them in the dealer's show rooms starting in 1985, and a guy at his shop named Steve had built the first prototype from a 1982 Charger and a 1984 turbo powertrain exactly like what was in the junkyard. He put me on the phone with Steve for the details. First of many phone calls.
I stuffed the powertrain in the car, hand wired a harness from the one ripped out of the Daytona, and the one from my Charger, plumbed the fuel injection and installed the correct (purchased from Shelby) fuel pump in the tank. Eventually I got it running, and began my quest for more power. As the turbo's boost was turned up, the parts breakage started. Head gaskets.....I went through several. Mr Shelby tells me that he has discovered that piston pins and connecting rods become an issue at the power levels I'm getting. Upgrades are needed.
There was a local engine builder who had moved north to work for a company who specialized in 2.2 L Chrysler Turbo engines because they made cars that used those engines.....So I pay them a visit.....and leave with a "breakproof" rebuild of my engine. Full floating wrist pins, forged pistons, rods and crank, "O" ringed block deck, flow bench tweaked head......Don't twist it past 8000 RPM, he said. OK, my rev limiter was set at 7200.
Consulier GTP - Wikipedia
I never broke that engine.....Mr. Shelby sold me some guaranteed unbreakable half shafts, and I never needed that guarantee either.....but I got real good at rebuilding transaxles. I was already past where Mr. Shelby limited the torque in all cars sold through Dodge, so stuff broke, and the bigger transaxle would not fit in the little cars.
All of that tweaking got me to a 13.2 something timeslip one January night with the catalytic converter removed, no exhaust past the downpipe. Best previous time was 14.4 something. Running a full exhaust usually got me high 13's. Just enough to beat the stock 5.0 Mustangs, which depending on driver were high 13 to mid 14 cars or worse.
With the oddball 225 / 55 VR 14 tires (stock on a VW Sirocco 16V) I could just hit the 7200 RPM rev limiter in 5th gear. That works out to 154 MPH, and a really surprised Corvette driver! With my usual 15 inch wheels the car would slow down when shifted to 5th, but I could cover the 1/4 in 3 gears. The 14 inch wheels required a third shift which gave a slower time, but faster trap speed.
I had some help from a few random interactions with people who knew how to make these little cars fly. I had purchased a used Charger 2.2 for far below market price with some issues. I just ignored the "funny noises" and drove the car until the transaxle grenaded itself all over the road. A bearing had failed spitting out it's rollers, one of which found its way into the gears at 40 MPH locking the front wheels, throwing the car sideways off the road and splitting the transaxle case.
A junkyard shopping spree had discovered a freshly wrecked turbo Daytona with a 5 speed transaxle. I had a 4 speed. Would the 5 speed drop into my car? Would the whole drivetrain fit into my car? No turbo Omni's or Chargers existed, so there must be issues, right? All Omni's / Chargers at the time were carbureted. The Daytona had EFI. I had a book called Carroll Shelby's 2.2 Speed Secrets which had a phone number for the Chrysler / Shelby Performance center, so I called looking for these answers.
A receptionist answered, so I asked to talk to someone who could answer some technical questions. The next voice I heard was Carroll Shelby's. He told me that there was indeed going to be some turbo Chargers with his name on them in the dealer's show rooms starting in 1985, and a guy at his shop named Steve had built the first prototype from a 1982 Charger and a 1984 turbo powertrain exactly like what was in the junkyard. He put me on the phone with Steve for the details. First of many phone calls.
I stuffed the powertrain in the car, hand wired a harness from the one ripped out of the Daytona, and the one from my Charger, plumbed the fuel injection and installed the correct (purchased from Shelby) fuel pump in the tank. Eventually I got it running, and began my quest for more power. As the turbo's boost was turned up, the parts breakage started. Head gaskets.....I went through several. Mr Shelby tells me that he has discovered that piston pins and connecting rods become an issue at the power levels I'm getting. Upgrades are needed.
There was a local engine builder who had moved north to work for a company who specialized in 2.2 L Chrysler Turbo engines because they made cars that used those engines.....So I pay them a visit.....and leave with a "breakproof" rebuild of my engine. Full floating wrist pins, forged pistons, rods and crank, "O" ringed block deck, flow bench tweaked head......Don't twist it past 8000 RPM, he said. OK, my rev limiter was set at 7200.
Consulier GTP - Wikipedia
I never broke that engine.....Mr. Shelby sold me some guaranteed unbreakable half shafts, and I never needed that guarantee either.....but I got real good at rebuilding transaxles. I was already past where Mr. Shelby limited the torque in all cars sold through Dodge, so stuff broke, and the bigger transaxle would not fit in the little cars.
All of that tweaking got me to a 13.2 something timeslip one January night with the catalytic converter removed, no exhaust past the downpipe. Best previous time was 14.4 something. Running a full exhaust usually got me high 13's. Just enough to beat the stock 5.0 Mustangs, which depending on driver were high 13 to mid 14 cars or worse.
With the oddball 225 / 55 VR 14 tires (stock on a VW Sirocco 16V) I could just hit the 7200 RPM rev limiter in 5th gear. That works out to 154 MPH, and a really surprised Corvette driver! With my usual 15 inch wheels the car would slow down when shifted to 5th, but I could cover the 1/4 in 3 gears. The 14 inch wheels required a third shift which gave a slower time, but faster trap speed.
My parents had several Volvos. I inherited the 1999 V70 after my father passed. In another coincidence it was at National Trail Raceway near Columbus where i ran it into a ditch busting a hole in the oil pan requiring a tow, a lift and a lot of JB weld to fix. I used to go to the Mopar Nationals in August every year, but I haven't gone in a while.
I just happened across this video today. It's a retro-review on the 1985 Shelby Turbo Charger. It it similar to what I started with before the quest for more power.
The first comment echos my findings nearly exactly....Smoking a Vette or two, top speed of 152 MPH, and 13 seconds at 103 in the 1/4 mile.......and it's dead due to a blown transaxle. I rebuilt mine 4 or 5 times.
As in the 80's opinions of these cars run from love to hate....with an empty void in the middle. There were some other fast ones mentioned in the comments......and the deal about torque steer was very real.....never pop the clutch without a two handed firm grip on the wheel. You never know which way it's going to yank you either, that decision was made by the tires and the pavement.
YouTube
The first comment echos my findings nearly exactly....Smoking a Vette or two, top speed of 152 MPH, and 13 seconds at 103 in the 1/4 mile.......and it's dead due to a blown transaxle. I rebuilt mine 4 or 5 times.
As in the 80's opinions of these cars run from love to hate....with an empty void in the middle. There were some other fast ones mentioned in the comments......and the deal about torque steer was very real.....never pop the clutch without a two handed firm grip on the wheel. You never know which way it's going to yank you either, that decision was made by the tires and the pavement.
YouTube
My other ride
Besides my V5 MK4 Jetta, this is my other ride. A 1998 W210 e280 with the M112 engine. She drives like a oil tanker, you dont feel the bumps at all. As of late, slight white grey smoke at startup, only after standing for more than 12 hours. And no, its not water or oil burning. And a weird smell from the exhaust
Besides my V5 MK4 Jetta, this is my other ride. A 1998 W210 e280 with the M112 engine. She drives like a oil tanker, you dont feel the bumps at all. As of late, slight white grey smoke at startup, only after standing for more than 12 hours. And no, its not water or oil burning. And a weird smell from the exhaust
All this dragster talk makes me want a Corvette!
C5 I'd guess, but then I've been watching McFarlane and his Corvette "Leroy" for the past few months, even more so in the last few weeks.
Though that now runs $$$$s of upgrades, including twin turbos, slipper clutch and a mix of E85 and petrol - I still much prefer the first iteration, with large supercharger.
That runs times in the 8 - 9 second range for 1/4 mile.
I believe the standard C7 or C8 runs less than 13s straight out of the showroom, road tires!
I was planning on getting over to my nearest dragstrip, this year, Santa Pod - its been 4 years since I managed to go and see the spectacle.
Back in the day, my day, c1990; a friends turbo 1430cc mini made 13-14s on a "run what yer brung" day - quite something for something with 4 gears and ratios that top out at about 90mph.
C5 I'd guess, but then I've been watching McFarlane and his Corvette "Leroy" for the past few months, even more so in the last few weeks.
Though that now runs $$$$s of upgrades, including twin turbos, slipper clutch and a mix of E85 and petrol - I still much prefer the first iteration, with large supercharger.
That runs times in the 8 - 9 second range for 1/4 mile.
I believe the standard C7 or C8 runs less than 13s straight out of the showroom, road tires!
I was planning on getting over to my nearest dragstrip, this year, Santa Pod - its been 4 years since I managed to go and see the spectacle.
Back in the day, my day, c1990; a friends turbo 1430cc mini made 13-14s on a "run what yer brung" day - quite something for something with 4 gears and ratios that top out at about 90mph.
My boyz have C5z, C6z, & C7z's.
The white C6z and black C7z (my best friend) are brothers.
The black C5z & C6z belong to their cousin.
The brothers are HPDE instructors. Our home track is Mid-Ohio. I've been to Indy (my boyee had a C7z51 at the time) and Watkins Glen with them. They go to Pit Race, VIR, Sebring, Daytona, and Road Atlanta.
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