Yes, it's like Ferrari, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, etc... Look back into
1970's at their products. They're far inferior in most ways to American counterparts of the period. Ferrari's were beautiful cars with kit car build quality. Mechanically they were unreliable. They weren't all that impressive performance-wise either. Sure, the snobby will call their performance "balanced", but a common Chevelle SS would outgun most Ferraris in an acceleration contest. The one on Magnum PI had a 0-60 time of something like 9 seconds! The original VW GTi was capable of that. Even the Corvette during those poor performance years could go faster. Porsche never even made a fast car until the 1978 911 Turbo was released, and its performance would have been laughed at between 1967 to 1971. Have you even seen a 70's era Bimmer or Benz? Most were nothing to look at... There was nothing special about Mercedes vehicles back then, but somehow in the 1980's we began a love affair with them and that funded them to improve their product to be where they are now. Same goes for Honda, Toyota, and Datsun (Nissan). Our need for fuel efficiency provided them with the much needed funds, combined with their ambitition, led to the admittedly good products they have now. But back then, there was nothing special about them. I remember reading an article about a Toyota 2000GT, where they were so unreliable that the engine needed rebuilt every 60K or something like that. They got the reliability later, after we funded it.Ferraris of the 50's, 60's and 70's were the performance cars of their generation overall, hands down.
They were not dragsters, certainly. But who cares, except for a few stoplight losers? The Ferrari V12 engines were capable of putting out more power than all but the rumpiest musclecar engines-but they were turbine smooth and would make power from 1500 rpm all the way to redline. They would run a very long time and were highly rebuildable with cylinder liners and a hell-for-stout lower end. And the drivelines were rugged, the brakes first rate...sure, there were Cinzano wrappers for fuses in the early ones, but mechanically they were first class. Ferrari's real bread and butter was, and is, foundry work...and it shows.
Corvette? No one takes Corvette fully seriously. Sure, the current one is a credible car on the Autobahn. But for decades they weren't, and besides, a guy who wants that kind of car doesn't want one made in that quantity, bought by secretaries. He wants beautiful mechanicals, not shared with pickup trucks, he wants race car tech (NASCAR isn't a race car-it's taxicab racing) and aircraft smells.
Ford GT? It's a Corvette shaped like a GT40 road racer. Pure cheese for the gullible. The money is in the right ballpark, but the tech is Focus level.
The sad thing is Detroit COULD do the job. They could build a real contender, in fact Ford could have made the GT a serious car for another ten grand per unit. But since Americans are (mostly) too ignorant to understand the difference, the status quo will continue.
I guess the poster never heard of a Porsche 550RS, a 908 or a 917, or a Mercedes W196, 300SL, or 300SLR. Like I said, we're ignorant and we like it that way.