Thread: Stunning engines from USA after-market

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

They build cars for their own market and marketplace. Big cars for a big country and generally big people with incomes that are the envy of the rest of the world. They have good roads so don't need sports car handling. They prefer soft ride. If not for political interference with vehicle design Americans by choice would still be driving big six seater sedans. Cars are cheap and reliable there. Where else in the world do you see 5-8 year old world class luxury cars like Cadillacs and Lincolns dumped at roadside?

Have you spent time there and driven American cars in America? Until you have don't spout the drivel written by anti-American motoring journalists who have only literary qualifications, if any, and no technical training whatsoever.

Check the numbers they build and sell. Chevrolet was building 10,000 small block engines a day and various GM divisions were building 7,000 cast iron derivatives of the Buick V6 per day. This is the engine family that became the Rover V8.

Do you know how many aluminium V8's Rover built in the last 40+ years? I don't, but I can tell you that GM built 180,000 of them in 4 1/2 years before abandoning the engine to market forces and the fact that it was slow and expensive to make. A wood duck called Rover produced a cheque book and bought it. Then found they could not make it on their forty year old plant and had to redesign the engine to do so.

Historically look at the advances that came out of the US motor industry. High tension ignition, starter motors, syncromesh, power steering, unit construction, automatic transmissions, Delco electronic management is used by nearly all modern manufacturers or items made under licence to Delco, first use of alternators in mass produced vehicles and so on. Buick and its distributorless ignition in 1980. first turbocharged mass produced petrol engines, etc.

Then have a look at heavy trucks. US power trains dominate, & the Euro manufacturers were forced to use or to mimic. Daimler-Benz bought Detroit Diesel and now are about to refuse sales of the 60 Series engine to other manufacturers it is so good.

Small marine engine users still lament the demise of the Detroit Diesel two stroke and keep them going with after market parts and plan to do so for ever.

Yep,American cars are the best,thats why 'Ol Henry got the British to build the GT40 including the engine to beat them crappy poorly made euro thingy me jigs.Americans must have amazing roads if thier cars handle and stop well there.Oh and the europeans have invented some good stuff too,like the motor car and internal combustion engine,both Petrol and Diesel. Pat

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

Have you spent time there and driven American cars in America?

Yes and it was scary. Sure the van I drove was about 20 years old, but I've never driven anything as flogged out feeling.
Thankfully most of the cars I drove in america were japanese. Just happened that most of the people I met preferred them to american cars for running cost, reliability and resale.

You know that Fiat used a production line before Henry did?
The unibody cars don't appear to be a US invention, who uses Delco engine control outside GM?
Who uses US trucks outside the US and Aus? The euros sure don't. Here it's mostly euro and japanese.

How much truck stuff is actually made in the US these days? Their cars seem to be all made in Canada or Mexico. Engine makers like cummins make stuff all over the world, the US is only a small part.

The japs copied everything they made off the brits and yanks, and the rover /buick V8 came before the V6 so the rover V8 traces its lineage back to 1959 when the alloy V8 was first released.

Originally Posted by loanrangie

The japs copied everything they made off the brits and yanks

They copied the Germans too. Where do you think subaru got the boxer idea from?
Mostly copied (and improved upon) the brits though, the US stuff was too big and pointless for the japanese markets.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

Never was beaten to 130 mph by anything. A stock convertible body without aerodynamic aids got a bit floaty and non-directional ..

Hmmm, must have been interesting.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

They are now worth approaching $500,000. .

Looking in the wrong places then bloke....... found heaps of them under 100k US.

However they are one of my all time favourite cars, one day.... maybe.

Originally Posted by twitchy

Looking in the wrong places then bloke....... found heaps of them under 100k US.

However they are one of my all time favourite cars, one day.... maybe.

You won't easily find a convertible with genuine Hemi 426 and four speed as it left the factory. Only a handful were made that way and few survive. A+ condition examples have sold at auction over US$400,000

Originally Posted by twitchy

Looking in the wrong places then bloke....... found heaps of them under 100k US.

However they are one of my all time favourite cars, one day.... maybe.

You won't easily find a convertible with genuine Hemi 426 and four speed as it left the factory. Plenty of two door hardtops with hemis fitted afterwards and almost all have auto transmissions. Only a handful of convertibles were made with a hemi and few of them with a four speed, and few survive. A+ condition examples have sold at auction over US$400,000.

The manual transmission made it very touchy-feely to drive in the wet. Hemis have bulk grunt from idle to top speed. That car could wheelspin in third on dry concrete at 120mph.