Drag Race - Porsche vs Ferrari vs Corvette vs Niss
- Thread starter gabefun
- Start date
MrX
High Octane
Wheres the supra?
Kind of pointless to include a car no longer in production. Besides, a stock Supra would have not even been competitive in that crowd.
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Larry Gude
Strung Out
...
...that Vette looks awesome.
...that Vette looks awesome.
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toppick08
Guest
God, my av makes me proud........
clevalley
...
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toppick08
Guest
LateApex
New Member
those are monsters.
Indeed.
The first thing I would do is through a twin screw on it..
LOL.
I can't get to my sister's myspace page or I'd link some pics.
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toppick08
Guest
......I'll take this one.Big Red Rides Again
Pro Touring Cars Everywhere Have Emulated Big Red, the World's Baddest Camaro. Now Dan and R.J. Gottlieb's '69 Returns to Show Everyone How Speed Is Really Done . . . Again.
By Rob Kinnan
photographer: Wes Allison
The Porsche and Ferrari wankers never knew what they were getting themselves into. The second running of the Silver State Classic was expected to be much like the first--a group of high rollers bringing together their European exotics and assorted oddball sports cars (with a handful of Corvettes, Panteras, and other domestics thrown in) to let it all hang out on a closed section of highway in the remote desert of Ely, Nevada. Ely is so far out in the middle of nowhere that we were shocked they had electricity, let alone an actual high school with a football field. But there we were, standing on the field surrounded by beautiful people and their beautiful automobiles, being careful not to bump into anyone lest we cause them to dribble their chablis. The Euro supercar owners at best tolerated the Vette guys and were confident that a red Italian car would run the highest speed of the event. It would be a red car, that's for sure, but not one of theirs.
It's all about the stance, baby!
That's when it happened. Amid the polite conversations of tire ratings and frequent V-12 tune-ups there came a rumble that seemed to generate from well below the earth's crust. We hot rodders in attendance recognized it as the sound of a high-compression big-block Chevy firing up. The rest weren't quite sure what was happening until R.J. Gottlieb backed Big Red out of the trailer, clunked the Jerico into First gear, and slowly idled the surging, barking, bright red '69 Camaro between the rows of shiny new sports cars toward its space next to father Dan's hot rodded '91 Corvette. After R.J. backed it in and hit the switch to kill the 800-horse Rat motor, the world seemed eerily quiet.
The 540 was originally built by the late John Lingenfelter to be a durable endurance engine for open road racing. It was freshened by Larry Mollicone, and modern technology has it producing about 100 more horsepower than it did back in the day. Notice the radical setback.
Normally, a crowd would gather around such a spectacle, but not here. Not today. The other competitors kept their distance, and all they could do was stare, mouths agape in sad realization that they would all be racing for Second Place, and even then, nobody would care. For this garish American "godawful hotrod" was sure to not only eat their lunch, but to also spit it back in their face and walk off with their trophy wife.
Sure enough, with HOT ROD's Joe Pettitt doing little more than providing right-side ballast, Big Red destroyed the 94-mile course in 27 minutes, 54 seconds, for an average speed of 197.99 mph and a radar-recorded 222-mph top-end velocity. That was in 1989, and the legend of Big Red had just begun.
In reality, Big Red's legend began a year or two earlier. The original Big Red was a '69 Camaro with not much more than a rollcage and a John Lingenfelter-built 540 big-block that made 800 hp and pushed the car to over 200 mph. The first time the world saw the Gottliebs' '69 Camaro was at the '88 La Carerra Road Race, a flat-out 120-mile road race in Ensenada, Mexico. Foolish officials started Big Red third on the grid, but it quickly passed the two "faster" cars that started in front of it, then chased down a handful of the motorcycles that got even bigger head starts. Near the end of the race, however, with R.J. driving and Chris Kaufmann in the right seat, the car went off the road and crashed. R.J. and Chris walked away but the car was toast. Before they even got home, a new '69 body was located and they wisely decided to drop it on a full stock car-style tube chassis. Bill Osborne of Inland Chassis Design was given the task of building the car.
Monstrous BBS wheels carry equally huge 335/30ZR-18 Goodyear street tires. Tire clearance is possible with no front wheelwells and tubs in the rear.
Osborne built the chassis using the day's state-of-the-art stock car parts designed to handle the high-speed loads that come with open road racing. Larry Mollicone freshened the 540 and they backed it with a Jerico four-speed. An all-steel '69 Camaro body was dropped over it, complete with functioning doors, roll-up windows, and a stock dash. The seats were even leather-covered Recaros, not full-race aluminum jobs. The difference between Big Reds One and Two were immediately obvious, and all involved knew the car was going to be unstoppable.
Big Red Two, now known simply as Big Red, ran La Carerra a few more times until that race turned into a rally, prompting Dan Gottlieb to help start the Silver State Classic open road race. That bonzai run with HOT ROD on board happened at the '89 Silver State, where Big Red really got the world's attention. This and other magazines showcased this glorious car (including a great Road & Track shootout wherein Big Red flat-out embarrassed a lot of ridiculously expensive tuner exotics), and readers immediately recognized it as quite possibly the coolest Camaro of all time.
The stock car-spec chassis uses a Stiletto manual rack-and-pinion setup.
And they began to try to duplicate it. Within a few years, we started seeing wide wheels and big brakes on all-around performance cars. As Pro Street turned to full race, a new trend caught on spurred by Big Red's stance and attitude, germinating in, most notably, Mark Stielow's One Lap of America '69 Camaro, built and raced in 1993. Stielow, through Chevy High Performance's Jeff Smith, named the trend Pro Touring, and we were off to the (street) races. Popular Hot Rodding loved the idea but refused to acknowledge its competitor's success in naming the trend first, and dubbed these cars "g Machines."
There had been IMSA-styled Monzas and Corvettes since the early '80s along with cars built to handle well, but it never really caught on as a trend until Big Red hit the scene. Call it Pro Touring, g Machine, or whatever, but all these types of cars owe their heritage to a bright red '69 Camaro from Southern California that has yet to lose a fight.
HORUS
Better than YOU.
Thats why I'm glad I didn't buy the first model years like all those other idiots thats paid 10,000 - 30,000 K dealer markup to be the first to have one.