Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

If Mercedes-Benz is allowed to make the G63 AMG 6×6 a road legal SUT, then I'm all for wild domestic "muscle" and "Baja capable" trucks!

Fizzboy7

I am the sheriff, not the Bandit. =)

mmarshall

......or simply have traction/stabilty control that one cannot switch off.


There are good drivers under 25 years old (as I was) and, yes, some real jerks. When I was in high school and college, I had the chance to sample some of the classic American muscle-cars of the period (Road Runner, GTO, Mustang Mach 1, Chevelle SS, etc.....) but always did so safely and with respect.

Fizzboy7

Things have changed and the reality is people are crashing and getting killed left and right. Street racing has turned into a massive problem for us in L.A. Any given night, you can hear cars revving, screeching, and going 70 mph down small streets. The skid marks are everywhere. This never existed until the last few years. The police have no handle on it. People are crashing and getting killed. These are nearly all under 25 drivers and it is all done in new Chargers, Challengers, Mustangs, and Camaros. Since nothing is being done and it's being so widely abused, the manufacturers should step in or new laws should be passed about who can buy these loud POS. Give an inexperienced, testosterone-fueled male 500 horsepower (and some alcohol), and you got a serious societal problem.

Aron9000

^ You know why street racing is such a problem in LA??? You have 3 drag strips in the whole area, and one of them is a 3 hour trek out in the middle of nowhere north of San Diego. They used to be all over the place in southern California, a lot of them closed due to people moving in close by *****ing about the noise, which is total BS, the dragstrip was there before your house, you moved next to a drag strip, what the hell did you expect.

Fizzboy7

Huh? There was never any dragstrip near my dwelling. And several still exist in SoCal. Willow Springs is an hour and a half north of L.A. There are appropriate places to race cars. City streets, where there are children and families living is not one of them. If you are okay with the above cars racing around at 70 mph and doing donuts in front of your driveway, PLEASE publicly advertise your personal street for everyone to use.

mmarshall

I have to agree with Fizzboy. He makes some good points. The real problem is not a lack of drag-strips, but right-foot-itis....the obsession of people, particularly young people, with speed. Over the years (and this seems to be a pattern, going back to at least the 1970s) I've seen more kids and young adults badly hurt or killed in V8-powered Mustangs (Mach 1, Cobra, Shelby, SVT, Saleen, etc.....) than probably any other car....with the BMW 3-series probably in second place. Not all Mustang jocks (even in the V8 models) are aggressive road-burners, but, in general, something about that car just seems to invite stupidity behind the wheel.

Aron9000

I don't condone street racing, but if you want to do something about it, giving people a legal place to race would help curtail it. The ratio for number of people in the So Cal area and the number of facilities is WAY off. If all the people who street race showed up at the local drag strips on one given night, they might get one or two runs down the quarter mile after sitting in line for 2 to 4 hours.

mmarshall

Respectfully, I don't agree with that. It's often the case with human nature is that people (especially immature young teens) will do whatever they can get away with...or think they can get away with. If they have to wait too long at the drag-drip (never mind the fact that racing their cars voids both warranty and insurance), they'll just go back to their old burnout-favorite spots on the street.

Films like Bullitt, The Fast and the Furious, Smokey and the Bandit, etc....IMO, don't help either. They glorify reckless behavior on the road, especially with those who don't have the maturity (like I did, fortunately, as a teen-ager) to watch that crap and know that it was entertainment-only, not a guide to real driving.

That's why laws have to have teeth. People who drive recklessly (perhaps after a warning) need to lose their licenses....and serve time if they get caught driving on a suspended or revoked license. Passing laws means nothing if they aren't enforced.

Aron9000

^ Agreed as well, better enforcement is needed.

However, I think its BS to tell somebody in Long Beach, Torrance, Santa Monica, etc that they have to drive 2 hours with traffic to Pomona if they want to legally race, when there used to be drag strips a lot closer and on their side of LA. The exploding population in So Cal has made the land too valuable, to where the owners of the drag strip sold to developers, or encroching housing developments(with neighbors who were pissed about the noise) shut down the legal places for people to race.

Anyways, lets get this topic back on to hot-rod pickup trucks. Personally I think there is a market for a stupidly fast in a straight line truck, provided you don't rob it of its utility. Once again, its another niche that nobody is currently filling, we have stupid fast factory SUV's, even ones that handle like a drunk elephant, like the Range Rover, its about as quick as a Mustang GT.

I've seen plenty of aftermarket "hot pickups", some like the Rousch Raptor that are built by a well known tuner. Some guys have just bolted on a huge turbo to a mostly stock(engine wise) early 2000's RCSB Chevy with the 5.3 LS V8 and run 10 second et's.

mmarshall

One of the interesting questions about high-powered performance trucks is why the manufacturers, for the most part, despite the huge power-levels, don't allow any towing them...even though they usually allow at least some towing even with the base engine. Perhaps the weight-reduction attempts to make those trucks dragsters results in too many parts removed that are necessary for beefed-up frame-strength and the stresses of towing.

Aron9000

On older sport trucks, the reason for reduced/no towing capacity was related to suspension designs. The engine/drivetrain would have no problem pulling the weight. Its the fact that they somehow think because they increased the horsepower, they must make the truck handle like a car, thus things like low ride heights, stiffer springs/shocks, the suspension is set up to handle, not to haul a load/weight in the the bed. As far as weight reduction, the solution was to use a reg cab/short box configuration, the bed, box, cab, frame, etc was all off the stock truck, there was no nod to weight savings because building the body or frame lighter would cost more money.

05ls430518

iTrader: (1)

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/amp21028358/the-hellcat-ram-is-real/