Car and Driver Star Car shootout now on the shelves

[JimShine]

Its finally out! The 1969 Charger General Lee won the shootout in all respects. The piece is alot lighter than I thought it was going to be. We spent 2 solid days having pictures taken and the final spread does not reflect this. But its a fun article and its cool to see the Charger put up against a Gran Torino, Mad Max car, Delorian, and Batmolbile.

[Shakey]

Can you scan the article Jim so I don't have to buy the magazine?

My Wife is starting to get a bit perturbed with all of the magazines I have laying around the house that never seem to get put away.

[Corellian Corvette]

I'm a C&D subscriber and just read the article last night. That drag shot of the GL and Torino on the inside cover was awesome. Shakey - I don't have the issue here in front of me (I think there is a BMW on the cover) but if you open the inside cover you'll know immediatey if it's the right issue 

The General basically won the whole thing, as you say, the Batmobile got top honors just because, well, it's the Batmobile. 

I was laughing through the whole piece. You're right - if was fluff because I could have seen 10 more pages on that and been super happy.

I was surprised what a DOG that DeLorean was (did you see those 70-0 Braking numbers!)

Did you spend any time around the other cars? Were they nice?

The one compaint they had about the GL was the brake feel. What do you attribute that to?

[JimShine]

I spent MOST of my time around the other cars.

I wont scan until the magazine is off the shelves. I don't want to piss them off. However, I will dig around for some pics we took while there.

Here are some of my thoughts:

The Charger would have done better all around if they had a driver experienced with old cars. They had a 30 something who is used to driving exotics test all these cars (to keep things fair one guy drove them all). Each pass he made on the quarter mile he got better, but the tires were nearly gone by the time he was done (the tires were bad when we got the car). The brakes are Viper brakes. I wasn't all that impressed with them. But it is likely they needed to be serviced. John spent a couple grand getting the engine ready and getting a couple stress cracks repaired. We almost didn't get it. The tires and such I think were going to be done, just the lack of time worked against us.

The other cars:
All were nice. The Batmobile looked better on film than in real life (as is usually the case with prop cars in real movies). The body looked lumpy in person.

Delorian was too cool. Better than the real thing. It made all the correct sounds too.

There were tons and tons of unused pics. We shot some stuff up in the hills that looked great. I only saw one. The pic of the Torino driving down the road. I was in the passenger seat, that only happened in the hills.


PS- Mike (the Torino guy) had his Torino being tweaked right up until the quarter mile testing. If he had an extra 30 minutes, it would have had nitrous added. We shot at his garage the first day (all the interior stuff) and his car was getting some serious attention by his crew.

[UFO]

Did anybody else see this? Same issue.Cant be very many hemi chargers there.

[Dodge Don]

Did anybody else see this? Same issue.Cant be very many hemi chargers there.

They mean the new "dime a dozen" ones.

[UFO]

AGH crap!! I see "hemi charger" I dont think of the new ones.

[Charger1973]

aka hemi intrepid 

[Ghoste]

They gotcha.  See, the clever marketing with a name from the past really does work.

[Shakey]

I saw a trailer load of Plum Crazy ones this morning on Hwy # 403 near Brantford, ON.  I must say they looked pretty cool!

[justin1987]

PS- Mike (the Torino guy) had his Torino being tweaked right up until the quarter mile testing. If he had an extra 30 minutes, it would have had nitrous added. We shot at his garage the first day (all the interior stuff) and his car was getting some serious attention by his crew.

Mike built those S&H Torinos to run. There was a story I heard about him taking one of the Torinos to a set where Paul Michael Glaser (the original Starsky from the television series) was and let Paul drive it. He got in, took off, and stopped about 100 feet away. He got out of the car and said the car scared him and had A LOT more power than the ones on the show did. He wasn't expecting the car to have that much power.