308 or 328

+1

i dont have a miata or want one... but a stock miata will destroy a stock 308 on the track and im not even talking about the later cars 2.0L cars.

for those who think otherwise most likely dont do very much track drive...this is F-chat after all.

yes ive been asking on this forum for over 5 years now for any street 308 to come within 5 secs (which really is an eternity) of a puny miata on any road course circuit in north america. no one has come forward as of yet.

still i rather be in a 308....

cheers

hf

 

When spec's are compared between any Miata I could find and a 328, the 328 beats it in just about every catagory. The only exception I could find is the 100 ft. slalom where the MX5 does it in 65 mph, the 328, 60 mph.

-F

 

didnt we say 308 rather than a 328?

just curious any laptimes of a 328 at an north american track?

anyhow we arent talking about specs but laptimes, any fool can smash the go pedal from a standsill. nearly all the 1.6-1.8 miatas will get smoked by a modern mini van off the stop lights

 

+1

Dale

 

This is funny because my Lancia Scorpion 4 cyl. 1,8 Ltr. smokes the Miata all day at the track, but my 308 smokes my Lancia all day long.

 

laptimes pls otherwise its just bs stories that mean nothing.

case in point, ive taken a stock mundane stock fwd car at grattan during the lotus great lakes event. the lotus north america brought in a handful of elise to film. i lapped every single elise (there were half dozen of them), 993, 993 turbo, 911sc, M3 coupe etc out there. the only person to pass me all day was an old skool europa and 79 souped up esprit. Its delusional to think the car i was in was any faster than those cars. im just a competent driver against guys without much experience at the track.

F-chat is nothing bout bunch of gold chain street stories how i smoke this or that. for pertinent useful reference, post up your lap times then we can talk. its quite easy to figure out. the event you were at, speedventures, opentrack racing whatever north/cal-socal club event, they will have your laptimes online. stack these numbers up against the spec miata cars and be humbled . Its amazing to me on f-chat with people with hundreds of post each that there is so little measurable data like dyno runs, or lap times. I will post up any confirmed spec miata time in NA here on this forum for comparison if you like ok?

your bro eddie said i had one of the quickest scorp he's driven. He never did drive my faster scorp. i think my scorp could have taken my 308 on the track too but never a well driven miata even though it was quicker from zero to whatever.
Respectfully
rs

 

Probably because, at least in this section, we're talking about street cars, nothing more. Maybe you're confusing this site with PorscheChat.

Based on what?

-F

 

are implying you need a race car to get laptimes on your steet 308?


whats in a spec miata that isnt streetable? hell most street miata's are have more power with minor tweeking which isnt allowed tightly controlled spec miata's.
based on laptimes...what else is there? how many dancing black horses you have on your red car?

 

I think most 308 owners just don't track or try and get a spot-on tune out of their cars the same way so many other groups of car owners do. For instance, you can bet that half+ of the 911 owners on the Porsche Pelican forums know their exact dyno figures, weight, and suspension settings. For some reason 308/328 people (and most all Ferrari owners for that matter) just aren't like that. People in the Ferrari business for 20+ years still *gasp* at me when I tell them these old engines in no way make what Ferrari claim they make. My guess is they would rather not know because for 99.9% of people out there it just doesn't seem to matter as much when it is a Ferrari.

 

No I'm stating the reason why you don't see many lap times for 308 and especially for 328. They aren't tracked very often. I'll poke around and see if I can find some.

Based the the same numbers testers evaluate EVERY street car since the beginning of time: HP to weight, torque, lateral g's, 1/4 mile, top speed, HP and torque vs. RPM, slalom, etc.

The 328 came with around 260 HP lugging around 3300 lbs.

-F

 

For instance, you would be very hard-pressed to find many Ferrari guys doing this type of work in their garages (like I do, I must be nuts!). I think a lot of Ferrari people are terrified to work on their cars. Porsche guys *love* getting their hands into the stuff.

The motor below is a 3.4L motor with 10.5:1 compression and DC80 cams! 320bhp and stuffed it in a purpose built RSR replica weighing in at about 2000lbs. Stupid fast. Guy built it in his garage. Stuff like this is super common with other car marquis circles. Ferrari? no
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

they arent tracked often but enough people here can claim they will smoke a miata on the track... thats my point.

spoken like a true armchair enthusiast that relies on magazines on how gauge "performance" of a vehicle. based on what you are saying, a toyota sienna will smoke a miata too. While you’re at it, I suppose you can quote road and track testing the Lp400 countach with a top speed was 192 mph …lol. Lets see here, 375 malnourish Italian ponies with a cd of .40 plus = 192mph…. please only if it drove off a cliff.

on the track those numbers dont always tell the true stories especially the ones tested 35 years ago with the 308. i cant tell you how many effin times i got held up on the track with guys with knowledge their cars having superior power/weight, better acceleration and lat G's, slalom, blah, blah, Failing pull out of the way ignoring the blue flag because they are driving with their mirrors.

over the years ive attended the 348 challenge and the 964 porsche cup. pretty much stock cars with safety equipment and race rubber. on paper the F-car has vastly superior power to weight to the 911 and one naturally would it would be the faster car. Basically on the same track same day the 911s trounce the 348s. it wasn’t even close, much like what a miata would do to a 308. later when they evolved to 355 to 993 the p/w ratio was even more lopsided in the 355 favor (magazines test also confirm this a much faster car) but outcome was no different with the F-car getting spanked once again.

im not bagging on the performance of a "308". it was amongst the better performing sports car in its day and a fantastic spirited drive. its not fair to compare cars from different era's the 308s defense. i was just shedding some light on what came out of EJM butt.

all the best

hf

 

I dunno about all that. A lot of course depends on the driver, but at a easy track like MSR Houston I do know that a vanilla 355 or 348 can undoubtedly get around quicker than a 993. Low 1:40s are typical for a 355 while typical Porsche 997 supercup times are 1:31 ish. Current 911GT3s are lapping in the uper 1:30s. I think it depends on the driver and how modded the Porsche in question may be.

 

I was just disputing EJM's claim that a Miata is more of a sports car than a 3X8, which includes 328. Maybe the Miata, which is inferior in nearly every metric when compared to the 328 is superior to the 328 when compared on the track. But that doesn't pass the smell test.

On a track, superior drivers can do great things with inferior cars, I get it. That has nothing to do with my push back on EMJ's statement.

I doubt that based on weight to power ratios alone, not to mention slalom numbers.

Lastly you may not be familiar with EMJ and his tendacy to pull stuff out of his butt with very little or in some case no data to back it up. This is why I'm driving so hard on the subject.

-F

 

Yes drivers are important, Ralf Schumcher took a stint in a Porsche cup race in between his F1 season qualified mid pack and finished no better!

Im positive, about the speed difference. I was at Imola and Monza for the F1 races with 993 AND THE F-355Challenge ran as the support races. The 2 races were on both on the same day same track. Being a diehard Italian car nut in ferrari’s back yard I was heartbroken the Porsche where so much quicker. You can clearly see the lap times on the scoreboards and TV monitors. This repeated itself year after year in every race till the F360 came into play. Back in the day I used to vhs tape most of the races.

Keep in mind the 348/355 and 964/993 were both truly gentlemans racers that were street legal and differ very little from the standard model. You can literally buy a standard car and create a challenge car with basically bolting on safety equipment, tires, brakes and suspension. Very little was done to the drivetrians as I recall. The later cars 360 scud, 430 challenge/997 GT3s the cars are much more potent than the standard variants with many more specialized speed parts. It would take a lot of effort to retrofit standard 430 or 997 to be a challenge or GT3 car.

Anyhow thats my 2 cents you guy keep believing the 308 is the bee’s knees of performance cars especially when you don’t track em!

 

im pretty darn certain there are plenty of people who have tracked and timed both a miata and a 308 so lets take the drivers equation out of it. not a lot of people here post up their 308 lap times even though im positive they have time their sessions. the dont know what the power to weight is but sienna mini van is like 2 seconds faster than an early miata to 60. i was being facetious but never mind i guess im not getting through to you.

by the sound of your post im gonna venture out and say you dont have very much or any experience on the track? your magazine metrics dont tell you on how much seconds you can save buy the intangibles. trust in the chassis, brake feel and fade, clutch take up and travel, pedal placement for heel toe, quick rack steering ratio to catch the slide etc. shift speed/smoothness alone i reckon would save a second. hell i'll even wager the steering wheel position and butt hugging seat will shave off fraction of a second from those slippery seats and bus driver steering wheel shuffling your hands for enough lock. these are the intageles old magazine road test cant tell you in a slalom test around cones at 60mph in a open parking lot with nothing to hit.

i use to own 308 and sampled a few others. ive also driven friends 348, 355, and tracked a 360. theres a big jump in performance between the 308 and 348 in my exprience. i relagate the 308 to what it is, a dated fabulous classic.

 

You don't need to drive so hard on this. This is a 308 board and we don't need to defend our cars to anyone. Especially to anyone who thinks a miata is a sports car, let alone one better than a 308.

 

What do you expect to accomplish trying to convince members and owners on a 308 board that their cars are secondary to of all things a miata? Go find a Mopar board, tell them all they should be driving Fords or Chevys.

 

+1

i dont really know EJM personally but if he's out there tracking his 308 and sharing his experience here than great. if your not a multi-millionaire with a service crew, i have the utmost respect for guys tracking there vintage cars especially F-cars. ive been tracking my daily driver more and more these days cuz im getting lazy ff modifyiing, prepping, repairing and forking out $$$ for each event. it much easier to not have to tow back track car around and spend half the time in the paddocks underneath car tinkering with it. now im hanging out with friends relaxing or sitting in the pitlane waiting for the out lap with the AC blaring!

 

you need to compare apples to apples here in terms of car prep.

I would say an out-of-the-box early 911 is far more race-ready than a bone stock 308. A early 911 can also be far easier modified as the chassis is definitely stiffer and easier to stiffen further and add giant rear wheels and giant wings and the like. The 308 needs to literally be torn down to the bone and have certain chassis members beefed up, fenders widened correctly, certain panels changed for aero purposes etc. The way 911s behave on the track is not really my cup of tea but they are effective. A 308 with a LOT of work can be made equally effective, but it takes a huge personal time investment to do it right. This of course goes back to making a Michelotto type car which is of course a nuts project although one fchatter we know of in the UK made one and ran the hell out of it at Spa.


Come to think of it, if I were building some sort of Michelotto 308 track/street toy like 911 guys often do, I would tear the thing down to nothing, widen the fenders appropriately and of course use the correct 'coffin' wheels, but I would not retain the 3L displacement. I would do just as the 911 RSR replica crowd does and throw a motor like I am currently building now into the thing. At least 3.4L and run somewhere around 350bhp. Those RSR guys are usually getting 320-330 out of their super flat-6 motors so I can't imagine an equivalently equipped 308 with like-weight wouldn't be stupidly competitive.

 

are you here on this forum to learn more about your 308 and the experiences of others or rather this be a cheerleader board?

in my mind im not try to convince anyone they their 308s are secondary to anything. i ve stated i dont own or want a miata. all im saying what this "homo" car is capable of running rings around 308s on the track and many here beg to differ

this is my last post on this thread if it bothers u so much

all the best

john we look forward to your exciting project.. maybe on another thread

 

and here it is! I love this guy's car. what a great job he did

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iohH9jQdb5s[/ame]

 

Odds are it may really come down to the weight and suspension of the old 308 versus newer Miata. That, as you know, can make a huge difference. Also agree with furmano that superior drivers can do great things with inferior cars. The DRIVER (and tires, say Perelli PZero or the like versus Ferrari TRX) makes a substantial difference for these obvious momentum cars. It is funny how this debate of Miata vs 308 has now really gotten quite a few people's panties in a bind.

Has anyone entered their 308 to run against a Miata in SCCA or some other sanctioned series (maybe someone in Australia?). There is a Ferrari instructor out of New England USA area hopefully he will chime in here as i believe he has driven both types of cars on the track.

Perhaps we can all agree on one thing, wall a Miata and no one would really care about the car. As long as you can walk away fine who gives a darn about the car. Wall a 308 and walk away fine is good, yet as for the car...

 

I completely forgot about Sean, he tracks his 308 all the time! He probably has the best knowledge of anyone I know. His car has a bit more oomph than a stocker of course, and I believe he has actually made a proper suspension out of it too by adding good adjustable shocks. His car goes like hell.


There is also a fellow in Germany who really beefed up his 328 who runs the heck out of it, but I can't remember his name.....I remember his intake system was really neat in that it had ITB DCOE style Jenvey bodies. Really neat setup and he was running with 355/360 no problemo.

 

I think we're talking past each other. I'm trying to focus on one statement made by Steven and you're giving your perspective about tracking cars.

Obviously getting whipped up over this topic is pretty silly, I'm just not letting Steven's assertion that a Miata is more of a sports car than a 328 go unchallenged. Personally, I could care less. The 328 is what it is and that ain't gonna change. But when he asserts what he did, in a thread started by someone looking to possibly buy a 308 or 328, I just can't let it go unchallenged.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a Miata is more of a sports car than the 328. I'm just scratching my head trying to figure out how that's possible.

Forget the numbers, just look at the magazine reviews from the time. Did the journalist who did this for a living say the Miata was a better sports car than the Ferrari at the time? No they didn't. Of course they did say that about the NSX which truly did hand the Ferrari it's lunch.

You're right, I've never been on a track and you're right, those intangibles do come into play. But when you add the intangibles to the argument I'm even more convinced in my position.

I've done a quick search for information about track times for a 328 and I can't find any which doesn't surprise me. The 328 never was nor is a track car. It's basically a pretty sports car for the road. So all I am left with is typical road car test numbers.

Lastly I will say, maybe part of my incongruence to Steve's assertion is based on the fact that I only have experience with the GTB as opposed to the GTS. And it seems that there is not a day that goes by where people who have driven both swear by the true difference in feel between these two versions, larger than people realize.

Fugetaboutit. I'm just busting Steven's chops, that's all.

Peace.

-F