[Shotimes] Pontiac unveils SHO successor?

[Ron Porter]

Don, the bulk of US car buyers are clueless rubes. Much of the move to AWD
SUVs is due to big FWD cars being as useless in bad weather as big RWD cars.
After having owned/driven smaller, lighter FWD cars, I learned in the winter
of '89 that FWD in a SHO was no picnic and had nothing on a RWD car with an
LSD and good tires, and in fact was no better than the '86 Z28 TPI AT with
no LSD that I traded in on it. In '89, my wife bought a new 5.0 GT 5-speed,
and once we got the same tires on the SHO and the GT, the GT was as good in
crappy weather as the SHO.

In my wife's opinion (and possibly mine, since I drove it), the BEST winter
car she had was a '78 Toyota 5-speed (RWD). Low power, skinny tires.

In 10+ years we will look back on these years with FWD in big, heavy cars
and comment about what a misguided direction the car mfrs took.

Ron Porter



-----Original Message-----
From: shotimes-admin@autox.team.net [mailto:shotimes-admin@autox.team.net]
On Behalf Of Donald Mallinson
Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 10:11 AM
To: shotimes@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Shotimes] Pontiac unveils SHO successor?


I think a lot of us (but not me) have forgotten how anti-RWD 
most of the country was at that point.  It has only been the 
last 4-5 years that RWD has started getting some acceptance 
among the general population, and only because of better 
traction control systems.  Some of you may have forgotten 
how truly awful and dangerous RWD is in the snow if you 
don't have the right winter traction devices (snow/ice 
tires) and how great FWD is in comparison.  FWD is not going 
to go away, personally I do NOT want to go back to the main 
part of the population driving around in small light hard to 
control RWD cars.  Note also that most fans of RWD 
enthusiast cars have a FWD or AWD "winter" car for those 
that live where snow flies at ALL during the winter.

Don Mallinson