928saregreat

...the flyin' scotsman said...when did vettes get DOHC?

They didn't use it long, but in the 1986 Lotus Engineering started producing the LT5, a DOHC version of the chevy smallblock. The engines were built by Mercury Marine and was used in the ZR-1 up until 1995, I believe. However the car and engine weren't formally put together until 1990. But in early 1986 GM sent 20 vettes to Lotus in England to be mated with the LT5 for racing purposes. In fact in 1987 you could order a Vette without an engine for just that reason. In 1988 GM built 56 street legal race cars for the SCAA Corvette challenge.

They (GM) should've kept on with it but went back to pushrods in 1997 with the LS1 and the more powerful LS6 that went into the Z06. GM claimed at the time that it was a cost-saving measure. A collector friend of mine owns one and complains about it alot, saying that parts are scarce and its not that reliable, etc..

I told him he won't be happy till he buys a GTS... With a 5-speed...

Mark

...when you've sampled the best of Euro aluminum, why go back to plastic...

SeanR

Thanks to Lotus.

Bret928

You bet! And as Mark pointed out - a price tag to go with it.

Not that rebuilding a 928's engine is cheap - but I've read lots of reports about the costs of rebuilding a blown or damaged ZR1 engine costing more that the car is worth.

the flyin' scotsman

Thanks Mark............didn't know that.

See, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

heinrich

I have called it German Iron, or German Muscle, and more often a German Street Rod. It doesn't have to meet 440 US spec to be a muscle car because by comparison it is MASSIVE for a Euro engine, compared to 750; 900; 1100; 1300; 1400; 1600; 1800; 2 litre; 2.2; 2.2; 2.5; 2.7; 2.8; 3.0; 3.3; 3.6 -litre Euro motors. You don't get much bigger than 2.2 in most cases. So, 5-litre V8 is massive ... ergo .... MUSCLE. A 3.3 or 3.6 turbo is a very different thing. No muscle there. Small displacement, low grunt/torque and high revs and bhp. No muscle there.

The Europeans do it with small displacement and turbo.

brutus

In the mid 1960s when the muscle car was developed John Delorean at Pontiac wedged the 389 into a tempest and created the GTO Olds and Chevy followed suit with the big block engines. The definition at the time was a huge engine in the cheapest lightest chassis you could find. Rambler ended up stuffing a 390 cu inch into a little bitty Ramber American sedan . A lot of 1960-70s car for sale today are referred to as muscle cars when they were never looked at that way when new so maybe the meaning has become diluted over the years. What I intended to convey was that calling something a Muscle car is NOT a compliment which if you have ever owned and driven them you quickly understand. Now if Porsche had shoehorned the V-8 into a 924 that might have been a muscle car .

brutus

There were some other potential euro muscle cars ...Sunbeam Tiger , Facel Vega , Iso , Cobra , Rover V-8 sedans , Allards are among my favorites . The big 6.9 Mercs were just to big and expensive but a serious hot rod !

Daniel Dudley

Never heard the ''German muscle car'' phrase. ''German Corvette'', and ''like a muscle car that handles'' I have heard. Seems somewhat appropriate though.

hacker-pschorr

Nope - not even close to a muscle car.

Muscle cars were sedans with V8's dropped into them, pretty simple formula. Corvette's were always faster but never considered a "muscle car".

heinrich

point taken, thanks or the lesson

Fogey1

Hacker-Pschorr wrote: "Nope - not even close to a muscle car.
Muscle cars were sedans with V8's dropped into them, pretty simple formula. Corvette's were always faster but never considered a "muscle car"."

I disagree. Mustangs and Camaros. Both 2+2's, both muscle, both 302's.

And Porsche V-8's qualify as big blocks by weight and size, if not output.

Mind you, I agree with Heinrich (?) that it's not necessarily a compliment, but some were less car-shaped trucks than most.

RicerSchnitzzle

Landhai ist ein wahres deutsches Muskelauto!

True the original concept was all muscle no brains, however the 928 should be allowed in the club. Even though it scored higher on the SAT than a tri power lemans GTO, it can still hang with the jocks at the lunch table.

Bret928

Ya know its funny - but doing the conversion of liters to cubic inches – the 928's 4.5L is actually same cubic inch (273ci) displacement as my 67 Barracuda. Sure in 77 the 4.5L was the only production V8 Porsche made. But regardless I don’t consider the early Cudas (pre-70) weren’t exactly "Muscle cars" (using the Tempest/GTO formula) but where pony cars, like the Mustang & Camaro.

RicerSchnitzzle

Okay, now it's official.. The 928 is a muscle car..

Official Muscle Car Link

JEC_31

Ummm... you meant to type "small-block" instead of "big-block", right?

Big blocks are much larger castings and usually pack 400 to 500 cubic inches. Those 302s are most definitely considered small-blocks.

My old-school-chopper/hot-rod/rat-rod/rockabilly friend is putting together a '40 Chevy project and debating long and hard what sort of motor to stuff into it - then he came across a mint hear-it-run-flawlessly 500 cubic inch elephant-lump from an early '70s Cadillac. Now that is a BIG block. My grandfather used to pull those same motors out of junked Cadillacs and put them into his GM pickups for heavy farm duty.

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My $0.0000002: The 928 might as well be described as a German Muscle car, becasue frankly this is the only way to describe it to average Americans so they get a glimmer of understanding.

We know that the 928 is so much more advanced than any other automobile ever called (or mis-called) a muscle car. Let us be smug in our knowledge, and leave the traditional muscle machines numbly understeering their way into the weeds whilst we blast through any turn in high-precision comfort and style.