In Defense of Enzo, who loved Jeeps

calcerise · 2005-05-29T01:41:40+00:00

Yes, it's like Ferrari, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, etc... Look back into1970'sat their products. They're far inferior in most ways to Americancounterparts of the period. Ferrari's were beautiful cars with kit carbuild quality. Mechanically they were unreliable. They weren't all thatimpressive performance-wise either. Sure, the snobby will call theirperformance "balanced", but a common Chevelle SS would outgun mostFerrarisin an acceleration contest. The one on Magnum PI had a 0-60 time ofsomething like 9 seconds! The original VW GTi was capable of that. EventheCorvette during those poor performance years could go faster. Porschenevereven made a fast car until the 1978 911 Turbo was released, and itsperformance would have been laughed at between 1967 to 1971. Have youevenseen a 70's era Bimmer or Benz? Most were nothing to look at... Therewasnothing special about Mercedes vehicles back then, but somehow in the1980's we began a love affair with them and that funded them to improvetheir product to be where they are now. Same goes for Honda, Toyota,andDatsun (Nissan). Our need for fuel efficiency provided them with themuchneeded funds, combined with their ambitition, led to the admittedlygoodproducts they have now. But back then, there was nothing special aboutthem. I remember reading an article about a Toyota 2000GT, where theywereso unreliable that the engine needed rebuilt every 60K or somethinglikethat. They got the reliability later, after we funded it. Ferraris of the 50's, 60's and 70's were the performance cars of theirgeneration overall, hands down. They were not dragsters, certainly. But who cares, except for a fewstoplight losers? The Ferrari V12 engines were capable of putting outmore power than all but the rumpiest musclecar engines-but they wereturbine smooth and would make power from 1500 rpm all the way toredline. They would run a very long time and were highly rebuildablewith cylinder liners and a hell-for-stout lower end. And the drivelineswere rugged, the...

May 29, 2005 22 Replies

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Lon 21 years ago

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com proclaimed:

The 308 indeed was supposed to have just been the follow on model of Dino, succeeding the far better looking Dino 246. Only the 12 cylinder models were supposed to be Ferrari badged. Then they discovered they had no real new 12 cylinder model to compete near the price range so they violated Enzo's edict.

How about a turbo Range Rover doing it? Or a Hemi Cuda which did it around LeMans?

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Lon 21 years ago

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com proclaimed:

Twice. And in one year, came in one, two, and three.

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calcerise 21 years ago

The interesting thing is that the 308 chassis was designed originally to take the Columbo V12. No one picked up on that until a Califiornia owner got the bizarre idea to see if a V12 would fit. It did, albeit with some extensive fabrication, but only just-it had to have been designed that way from the beginning.

More bizarre was the 330 P three seater. Rumor has it it was originally designed for a DOHC scratchbuilt broad arrow twelve-thirty years after the Napier Railton and thirty years before a W-12 F1 engine effort recently.

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