I think that the idea was to make a vehicle that's sold to the crowd of men out there going through midlife crises who are dying to buy a fast, powerful sports car, but can't slip something red, with 2 seats, and shaped like a low-slung wedge past the wife.
There's not many RWD V8's out there that are in sports cars anymore, save perhaps the very high end and expensive corvettes and a few others. Most of the red sports cars out there seem to be rice burners with turboed 4 bangers and such, so someone wanting a decent amount of displacement doesen't have much choice in V8's.
I am really hoping that this black soap bar takes off, because if it does it will show the rest of the autmakers that the V8 magic is still alive, and quite powerful if it can get something this ugly to sell. Maybe then it might stimulate the rest of them to go back to putting V8's into sedans. If you recall the glory muscle car days of the late 60's, most of the excitement was taking cheap 2 door sedans with big V8's that were stifled with mild cams and icky heads and stuffed up exhaust systems, and doing a fairly cheap amount of work to correct those deficiencies.
Ted