Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
[color="blue"]The thread topic was "sleeper" cars. Given all the hoopala and publicity about Chrysler's hemi motors and the 300C car as a milestone in a family performance sedan, there was nothing "sleeper" about these cars. Everybody knew that these could really haul in a straight line after R&T and C&D ran their tests. I grew up with a family that had owned Chrysler Imperials and 300C's since the early 1950's, and put more than a few miles on them; the steering was vague and the body roll was almost as impressive as all the chrome on the inside and outside of these cars. The bench seating was no support, either, for aggressive driving.
Yes, I realize the thread topic is "sleeper," I was just pointing out that some American cars could reach speeds of 140+ back in the 1950s. The early 300s had very little body roll... I have one magazine after another showing that.
Quote:
I'd certainly differ with you about these cars "handling well", when I've driven a fair number of 1950's Alfa Romeos, Porsche Speedsters, and even some lowly Morgan's and Triumph's and MG's and Jaguar's ... which had their strength in a balance of handling/braking/horsepower as opposed to all their marbles in the bucket of horsepower.
As for handling comparisons, keep in mind you are comparing sports cars with 5-6 passenger mid- and full-sized cars!
Still, some of those '50s Mopars had very good handling. Here are some comments from a Jan., 1957 Mechanix Illustrated test of a '57 Plymouth with the new torsion-bar suspension...
"As some of you know, I've written books and many articles on foreign sports cars, praising their abilities while tearing down our local products. Today such talk (and it still goes on among glassy-eyed, close-minded sports car fanatics) is likebucking all over again for Williams Jennings Bryan as the best man for President. This new Plymouth would give any sedan in the world- and I include the Mercedes 300S- a rough time in trying to shake it on any road course."
Quote:
A friend's BMW 507 with the carbureted pushrod 3.0 liter V8 would have blown your USA muscle cars off the road racing tracks with it's much more sophisticated handling and braking ... but there's nothing "sleeper" about a 507, especially it's new price/limited production. Nor was there anything "sleeper" about the high end Italian exotics ... they looked as fast as they would go. We won't even get into OSCA's or Pegaso's or Lotus cars ... way too expensive, too rare, and certainly not "sleeper" cars by any stretch of the imagination.
Come on now... USA muscle cars were not built to run on road racing tracks. Just like a BMW 507 isn't built to carry 6 passengers and two weeks' worth of luggage. The typical '60s muscle car buyer was most interested in how fast their car could go down 1320 feet of pavement! A street racer in New York, instance, wouldn't really care about road racing tracks.
Quote:
You can trot out all the examples you want of domestic cars that had big V8 motors stuffed in them .... and were marketed as "go-fast" or "pony" cars, or whatever special or limited production they had from the domestic manufacturers ... and everybody knew what these cars were about. No surprises here, and certainly no "sleepers" in the bunch. But very few ... outside of a 1/4 mile run or a brief run down a relatively straight freeway were known for having good suspension, brakes, luxury car equipment and interiors and capable of maintaining high speeds on the twisties for any amount of time.
Uh, look at my first post in this thread. I posted a few sleeper U.S. cars. Like the '69 Dodge Dart GTS 440. It looked like a 318 Dart from the outside, but ran a 12.7 sec @ 112 mph 1/4 mile! That was fast enough to blow away any Ferrari in a 1/4 mile race at the time.
Another sleeper: 1967 Chevy Biscayne 427. A plain-looking sedan on the outside, but with that big and powerful 427 V-8, it ran a 13.40 sec 1/4 mile... on 1960s tires!
Quote:
It's why Shelby, as one "tuner" example, made such an impact on the marketplace with his high horsepower make-overs of an otherwise mundane Falcon chassis ... ooops, that was marketed as a Mustang bodywork exercise by Ford. He didn't stop with the horsepower increase to improve the overall car performance. But, again ... none of the cars bearing Shelby's name on them were "sleepers"; everybody knew from the marketing and the road test reports that these cars hauled. Come to think of it, I drove a Ford Falcon with a 260V8 and 4 speed manual from Colorado to California at Thanksgiving break in 1965, and that car had no issue with running across Nevada and the California deserts at 100-110. But it sure didn't have any brakes up to anything except normal freeway driving, and it certainly wasn't a "luxury" car in it's appointments, road manners, or equipment ... a "sleeper" only in it's straight line performance.
A Falcon was never meant to be a luxury car. Did you expect it to be one?
Quote:
The proof of the pudding, so to speak ... is to look at what cars folks put on the tracks and what kind of lap times they could produce. Given that the name of the game is to get around the track the fastest at any price, you didn't see stock Cadillacs (I'm not picking on them, there's lots of other big V8 USA cars) in the races. If they'd have been such good handling/braking/performing cars, folks would have been flocking to them for racing (along with other GM products, or Ford products, or Chrysler products) ... but they didn't. We did see Cadillac motors dropped into other chassis (Allards, for one) for track racing, but that was the extent of their presence anywhere except on the road. Modern "Stock car" racing seems to have developed into a specialized form of car re-development and manufacturing .... there's little more than meets the eye of a casual onlooker that's truly common stock of muscle cars that get to the tracks ... and again, we're not looking at luxury cars that are "sleepers", we're looking at some pretty hot purpose built cars.
Why would you expect a '60s Cadillac to be in races?!? They weren't built for that!
Quote:
Even the vaunted USA Corvettes with V8 high horsepower didn't run well against much smaller displacement Porsches in the 50's-60's ... because the little german roadsters could blow them off the track if there were a lot of turns instead of a 1/4 mile being the deciding factor. I got dragged to a couple of autocrosses in SoCal in the late 1950's/early 1960's ... and the 356 series 100-110 HP cars could well out-do the big V8's in lap times, too. Later 904's could similarly do serious lap times on modest sized motors ... but again, no sleepers here, even as a "sports car".
Actually, Corvettes did quite well in the handling department. A 1970 Motor Trend road test did a comparison test between a 'Vette and a Porsche and discovered that the 'Vette went through the road course just as fast, if not faster, than the Porsche.
Quote:
Anyway, back to the thread at hand .... the topic was "sleepers". Big V8 powered USA cars of almost any era simply aren't sleepers, no more than a Morgan +8 or a Sunbeam Tiger is a "sleeper". You pretty well know in advance what these cars are all about.
The cars I cited as "sleepers" ... especially the 745I BMW ... are rather unexpected in their performance coming from large luxury sedans as they have the brakes and suspension to really get around and do it in a comfortable manner and fashion at very high speeds.
As I posted above, there were sleeper USA cars. Not many but some.
Quote:
I certainly wasn't looking for an argument about your Cadillac's ... which haven't been shown to have anywhere near the combination of straight line performance and handling (oh, wait a minute ... you tossed that away because Cadillac didn't need to build "handling" cars because their clientele didn't value that aspect) compared to such a machine as the 745I ... or the 6.3.
Well, it's true... how many owners back in the 1960s bought their Cadillacs for handling? I certainly didn't buy mine for that. (BTW, mine can also burn rubber through 1st gear... 525 lbs-ft of torque will do that!)
Here is an owner's survey (Popular Mechanics, July, 1966):
1966 Cadillac
Best-liked features: (Top 5)
(I, too, was shocked when I first read the list... handling came in first... over comfort and ride!)
And:
Buy another Cadillac?
Yes----------------- 98.1%
No------------------ 1.9%
Quote:
At least, to my limited knowledge ... nobody had taken a late 1960's 4 door sedan Cadillac in stock trim around a road race track at competitive F1 lap speeds for several laps, as MB did with the 300SEL6.3 in 1968. So, if it makes you feel good about your choice of cars ... compare the paper specs all you want. This is a situation where the "specs" don't necessarily reveal all there is about the cars and their real world performance on the road ....
Again, why bother taking a 19-foot, 6-passenger (or a 21-foot, 9-passenger) car on a road course? However, don't think it's never been done.
As for specs, they can disprove a lot of myths!
Quote:
Oh, by the way ... without having to google it, do you even know what a Doble car is?[/COLOR
No, but I know more what more important things are, like an 1970 LS-6 454, a 1970 Challenger T/A, a Ford side-oiler 427 and a Pontiac Ram-Air IV 400, a Chevy L-88 427, a ZL-1 Camaro, a Mopar 426 Max-Wedge (a factory-built 12-second car) and a '62 Super Duty 421 Pontiac Catalina.
Yes, I realize the thread topic is "sleeper," I was just pointing out that some American cars could reach speeds of 140+ back in the 1950s. The early 300s had very little body roll... I have one magazine after another showing that.
Not knowing what magazine articles you're referring to makes it rather difficult to draw any conclusions because the rest of us don't know what you've got in hand ... most of the car mags and PopMechanix I saw from the 50's compared only domestic marques. R&T, in it's early days, was pretty much the lone voice of automotive news with articles about euro cars.
As for handling comparisons, keep in mind you are comparing sports cars with 5-6 passenger mid- and full-sized cars!
Still, some of those '50s Mopars had very good handling. Here are some comments from a Jan., 1957 Mechanix Illustrated test of a '57 Plymouth with the new torsion-bar suspension...
"As some of you know, I've written books and many articles on foreign sports cars, praising their abilities while tearing down our local products. Today such talk (and it still goes on among glassy-eyed, close-minded sports car fanatics) is likebucking all over again for Williams Jennings Bryan as the best man for President. This new Plymouth would give any sedan in the world- and I include the Mercedes 300S- a rough time in trying to shake it on any road course."
While I'm a fan of the hand built limited production MB upline cars of the 50's ... I wouldn't rate any of them as "sleepers". And MB's regular production cars were decidedly behind most of the contemporary USA model cars. A 50's Chevy or Ford was a lot better car than MB built on their production lines. The emerging mass car market post WWII in Europe had other priorities with materials, roads, fuel costs, etc.
Come on now... USA muscle cars were not built to run on road racing tracks. Just like a BMW 507 isn't built to carry 6 passengers and two weeks' worth of luggage. The typical '60s muscle car buyer was most interested in how fast their car could go down 1320 feet of pavement! A street racer in New York, instance, wouldn't really care about road racing tracks.
OK, your NY driver didn't care about anything except the 1/4 mile, but a lot of other drivers around the country had a different outlook. Track racing, in many forms, had certainly been popular for a long time ....
Uh, look at my first post in this thread. I posted a few sleeper U.S. cars. Like the '69 Dodge Dart GTS 440. It looked like a 318 Dart from the outside, but ran a 12.7 sec @ 112 mph 1/4 mile! That was fast enough to blow away any Ferrari in a 1/4 mile race at the time.
Another sleeper: 1967 Chevy Biscayne 427. A plain-looking sedan on the outside, but with that big and powerful 427 V-8, it ran a 13.40 sec 1/4 mile... on 1960s tires!
You're not really seriously going to suggest here that that Dodge Dart would run with a Ferrari on a road course or on the roads of the day, are you? The Dodge was a single purpose car, and certainly not a sleeper. The 427 Chevy's? no sleepers here, either
A Falcon was never meant to be a luxury car. Did you expect it to be one?
No, but it was certainly the basis of a whole market segment of high performance cars in it's new clothing and with the attention of outside tuners. Once breathed on, these cars could fly with proper attention to chassis and suspension mods. With big names like Shelby linked into Ford dealership showrooms, these cars weren' sleepers.
Why would you expect a '60s Cadillac to be in races?!? They weren't built for that!
Neither were many of the other big HP V8 domestic cars "built for racing". But they sure wound up being used for that purpose.
Actually, Corvettes did quite well in the handling department. A 1970 Motor Trend road test did a comparison test between a 'Vette and a Porsche and discovered that the 'Vette went through the road course just as fast, if not faster, than the Porsche.
Not much in common between 50's-60's Corvettes and the later generations except the nameplate and the two seat sports car vision. The development was to Chevy's credit, but you can't put the earlier cars up against the Porsches of the 50's-60's. Motor Trend editorial staff has a wonderful publishing record of bringing us some truly wonderful "cars of the year" which maybe weren't so wonderful; their biases were pretty obvious on a lot of their reporting through the years.
As I posted above, there were sleeper USA cars. Not many but some.
Well, it's true... how many owners back in the 1960s bought their Cadillacs for handling? I certainly didn't buy mine for that. (BTW, mine can also burn rubber through 1st gear... 525 lbs-ft of torque will do that!)
Here is an owner's survey (Popular Mechanics, July, 1966):
1966 Cadillac
Best-liked features: (Top 5)
(I, too, was shocked when I first read the list... handling came in first... over comfort and ride!)
And:
Buy another Cadillac?
Yes----------------- 98.1%
No------------------ 1.9%
Owner surveys are, by their nature, somewhat suspect in the objectivity of their data. For the most part, all they've done is compile how well the manufacturer has targeted his market and satisfied it. Few, if any, would be willing to spend the premium dollar for a Cadillac in that era and then say "I bought a POS" ... although GM later did an exceptional job of destroying that segment of manufacturer credibility by going down the path of re-badging amongst their products. And, I'd bet there's a lot of less than happy folks with such wonderful cars series as the 4-6-8 selective firing V8's that Cadillac built in later years. Cimarrons, anybody?
Again, why bother taking a 19-foot, 6-passenger (or a 21-foot, 9-passenger) car on a road course? However, don't think it's never been done.
As for specs, they can disprove a lot of myths!
Yes, MB did, with superb results. As for specs, they can also mislead very greatly. Take a good look again at some of the Motor Trend "car of the year" awards, for example
No, but I know more what more important things are, like an 1970 LS-6 454, a 1970 Challenger T/A, a Ford side-oiler 427 and a Pontiac Ram-Air IV 400, a Chevy L-88 427, a ZL-1 Camaro, a Mopar 426 Max-Wedge (a factory-built 12-second car) and a '62 Super Duty 421 Pontiac Catalina.
None of which comes remotely close to being a sleeper car in the years they were built, or anytime afterwards. All 400cuin and up massive V8 power with lots of low RPM torque on tap gives rise to smokin' straight line performance, but nothing that was unexpected by the marketplace.
The Doble, on the other hand, could qualify as a "sleeper" ... except that the company was underfunded (and possibly mismanaged by the technically proficient/inventive ownership) and never able to get into a real production, so remains one of those quirky automotive stories that only came close but never made it to the mass luxo market. Off the top of my head, Abner built less than 30 cars .... which were all milestone vehicles as the engineering improved with each series. These cars would outperform vehicles built many years after they were built. All just museum pieces now .... external combustion powered cars have been replaced with multi-fuel internal combustion power.
I've got ads and lit on some other exceptional cars ... a Maybach Zeppelin, duPont, and Delage vehicles .... but none of these would qualify in their era as "sleepers", no matter how exceptional they were compared to the marketplace of their contemporaries. They were all of build quality, power, and limited production ... along with many other bespoke cars of quite a few decades.
Ford Falcons were the low dollar farmer's Sunday church car, just like the Chevy II/Nova. They weren't even designed to go fast, it's just that you could do so with not much power because the cars only weighed under 3000 lbs. The name "Shelby" were only applied to Mustangs and they themselves weren't all that fast, but the AC Cobras were.
Muscle cars of the 60's were not corner carvers. Not much was in those days. You're comparing apples to oranges on a 30 year span. Try today, with todays technology Mustangs and Camaros and Corvettes now are more of a corner carver.
Neither were many of the other big HP V8 domestic cars "built for racing". But they sure wound up being used for that purpose......I seem to only recall a hand ful of cars from factory set up for racing, most others were just hot street engines, a few were actual detuned race engines. (Hemi)
Funny thing I've learned is that most that bash on muscle cars can't even afford one.
Another sleeper would have been a typical LAPD unmarked street patrol sedan in the 1960's----------the 1968-69 Ply Belvedere 383 complete with a rear sway bar. They had the reputation of being serious canyon carvers.
1970 Dodge Dart with a 273 cid V-8 and taxi suspension.
The last year of the 273 was 1969..............too I used to own a 1967 Dart 4 door sedan complete with front disc brakes and HD suspension with its front sway bar while still in the Wash DC area. Its 273 was only a 2 barrel though
sunspirit, I'll try to reply the best I can since you put your comments mixed in with my quotes...
Quote: "Not knowing what magazine articles you are referring to..."
I DID post the magazine articles. For instance, the Jan., 1957 Mechanix Illustrated. And it's not true that American car mags ("except Road & Track") from the '50s compared only Domestic makes. I have quite a few '50s car magazines and they definitely did test foreign makes. Motor Trend had a 6-way comparison, 3 U.S. cars and 3 Foreign, in a 1957 issue.
And a 1959 Motor Trend did a comparison test between a '59 Plymouth Fury and a Lago.
Quote: "Track racing, in many forms, had been popular for a long time..."
And those who did track race did not buy muscle cars! Also, typical drag racing/light-to-light street racing has always been more popular in the U.S.
Quote: "You're not really going to suggest that a Dodge Dart would run with a Ferrari on a road course..."
Read again... I said that a 440 Dart would blow away any Ferrariin a 1/4 mile race at the time. Show me where I mentioned a road course?
And there were 427 Chevy sleepers... the '67 Biscayne, as I mentioned. A plain-looking, 2-door post sedan with only two tiny little "427" emblems to identify them... a sleeper! Pop off the emblem and most people would think it is a 283 Biscayne!
(Regarding the Falcon)
As Deez Nuttz, there were no Shelby Falcons.
(Regarding Motor Trend) Quote: "Their biases were pretty obvious..."
From about 1970 on, Motor Trend was biased toward imported cars. Read through some of their road tests and you will see. They even printed letters of readers complaining of their bias.
(Regarding owner's surveys)
You can just go one denying all you want. Also, the Cadillac events you mention (the V-8-6-4 engine and the Cimarron) were from the '80s and were long after Cadillac's glory years. As Deez Nuttz said, you are comparing apples to oranges yet again. I could do the same thing... like the Porsche 914 (or 912... whatever it is) had a VW engine (and was sloooow!).
(Regarding Motor Trend's Car of the Year)
What does that have to do with a car's facts and figures and performance figures?
None of which comes remotely close to being a sleeper car in the years they were built, or anytime afterwards. All 400cuin and up massive V8 power with lots of low RPM torque on tap gives rise to smokin' straight line performance, but nothing that was unexpected by the marketplace.
I didn't say they were sleepers. I said that, for me, they are more important than a Doble.
This is my Turbocharged 03 GMC Z71(4x4). It is a daily driver, and has been 10.59@127MPH in las vegas 2100' elv, and 10.85@125MPH here at bandimere speedway 5860' elv.
Yessssss! Finally, a SLEEPER! Wow, well done! Impressive times on that thing!
And thanks for breaking up the useless muscle car arguing, it was driving me bonkers.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
