Nice vid! My take: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_qoFZHaxcg]Fun drive in a Ferrari Dino (HD) - YouTube[/ame] I wish that lady in her SUV best of luck....
you can stroke and bore a small block bowtie block to 427 cid. We ran larger in our outlaw sprint car. Actually i think the new LS7 427 is a small block from the factory Chevy Street Strip 427 Small Block 550HP Street Beast
Hans Wow, very cool vid! I like the camera position where you can see the car, the driver and the road. And the sound isnt too bad either. I didnt know The Netherlands have so beautiful roads Markus
Great engine music in that video. It does looks a little "hilly" for the Netherlands though Italy, right? /Karsten
I did see this a while ago-great road for a drive. Hell of a car you have there-too bad you didn't meet up with any SUVs!
Here's a comparison: two cars in my garage are a 1978 Triumph Spitfire and a 1954 Jag XK-120SE. With only half the horsepower, the Spit would probably run circles around the Jag. It's much lighter, more nimble, and sure-footed. The Jag is great for cruising and has far more "panache", but as a "sports car", it's day is long past. When he gave it to me, my Dad told me that "back in the day", when one of these Jags was bought new, the first thing the new owner would do would be to take it out to the twistiest road to see what it could do. Dad followed up by saying "DON'T DO THAT!!!" It's so far from a modern car (sports or otherwise), just not up to the task. I'll go a step further. A car I just sold (to another F-Chatter) to help make some garage space for the Jag was an '04 Jetta TDI Wagon. Even that car would out perform the Jag. Now, as far as the question about a 1975-vintage family sedan? Yikes, I'd still rather take the Jag - 70's family cars were just too wallowing, had that vintage LTD when I was much younger - fast with the 351 (even though it was a Windsor), but no handling at all. FWIW. gp
It depends on the car. You can stroke a 5.7 to 7.0 in which case you'd still be a small block. Others are actual "big" blocks. The 'Vette had a different casting for the block between the 327 and 427.
Not to jack the thread, but "small blocks" can be punched out to 427 or more cubic inches. Chevies AND Ford small-blocks by the way...on the outside they look just like their smaller brothers.
My Subaru Forester will out perform my GT4 in just about every metric (often by a large amount) while using less than 1/2 the fuel. It can also carry 8' 2x4s inside, try that in a Ferrari. It's more about the advances in automotive engineering over time. The era when 308s were built was the low point of automotive performance. Mustangs and Camaros had about 150 hp and ran about in the high 17's @ 80 mph in the quarter mile. Today the 308 is more about attributes other than absolute performance numbers, not unlike the top performers of the 50s-60s such as the fore mentioned XK-120.
Why do they always comparing or competing against our 30 year old 308 with their current model car Weather it's an SUV, van, or another sports car? Always seeing from time to time on a magazine, 308 vs this or that.
Recently I raced a 348TB off the line in my Nissan Leaf; he struggled to pass me as the road merged from 2 lanes to 1 at 55-60mph. He was noticably pissed and hitting the redline from shift 2nd to 3rd. LOL! Electric cars will smoke most gasoline powered cars off the line.
Awesome video. Poetry. That kind of moment are what these cars are about. You make me want to get out and drive!
I want to get a Nissan Leaf but it's too much car for me after driving a GT4 for so long!! All jokes aside-all of these electric cars are light yrs ahead of where they were even 5 yrs ago-the instant torque is what everybody notices when they drive a new one. But whether it's a Leaf or a Tesla or whatever they are simply too reliable for me and deep down I know I would miss the rust
The small block "back in the day" topped out at 400 and the big block started at 396, so there was a little overlap. There still are 2 block castings, but they don't put the big block in cars anymore, just certain trucks. The 427 7.0 in the modern z06 vettes would be considered a 'small block' in old school terms but at this point it has very little in common with the traditional small block other than maybe the bore spacing. Anyway, contemporary road tests put the 308 even or faster than most modern SUV's at 6.5-7s to 60, and given modern rubber they should be a bit quicker than that. The difference is you have to do a 4000-5000rpm clutch dump to get the most out of them which (understandably) most owners don't want to do, especially on the street. It also requires practice to do, so after doing 5 or 6 practice launches, you can give it a real go on the street (and hopefully you haven't broken anything or smoked your clutch at that point). The only time I actually do a serious launch in my 355 is when I'm at the autocross and it does make a huge difference. The guy behind me also loves it, but who knows how long my clutch will last...At least it's plenty easy to change.