Your at a drag racing strip, the excitement in the air as the different types of vehicles revving up there engines, the sound of them screeching down the strip, hearing people shouting for there favorite cars to out perform there competitors. Then you see the next two cars getting ready to race each other. You notice the difference between them, which isn’t hard, since one is an American muscle and the other is an import. The question that most car nuts want to know pops in your head, which car will perform the best?
The American muscle has a V8 engine, rear wheel drive and is tuned up enough that it runs a little better than when it came out from the factory. The import has a four-cylinder engine and is front wheel drive. The gears on the import have been lowered, this way the car will take off quicker at the starting line, the bad thing about that though is the import won’t go as fast top-end speed as it used to. To fix that the import engine and the car it self would have to be modified in every way possible. The interior of the import would have to be stripped out and anything that won’t be needed in the car will come off. The import probably has nitrous oxide “a type of race fuel that is sprayed for short bursts of horsepower. The cars take off as the light turns green. The American car spinning its tires while it’s powerful V8 motor rumbles like thunder. The import chirps the front tires and jumps in the lead with swiftness. Both cars cross the finish line almost dead even. The import only managing to tie with the stock American car, now why is that?
Before the eighties American cars dominated both the street and the racetracks. As the new age is changing so have the cars, the imports have taken over the streets because of their good gas mileage, reasonable prices and dependability. With a lot of work there also starting to show up on the racetracks, but most of the imports are not worth the time, effort and the money to put on the racetrack. The American sports and muscle cars are all ready to race when they come from the factory because of their large and powerful engines. The reason that imports do not make good performance vehicles is that their much more expensive to make fast. While the American muscle cars are less expensive to build and there is more potential to start with. When the American muscle cars came from the factories they were a lot larger in size compared to the imports today, but the muscle cars came with a large, powerful engines, pushing 300 horsepower or higher.
There our some imports made from the factory that do go fast, such as the Toyota supra, the Mazda RX-7, the Honda s-2000, the Nissan 300zx and of course high performance sports cars like the Lamborghini and Porsche. The reason the imports are expensive is that there’s a lot of work that has to be down just to keep up with the V8. Most of the time imports will never reach the amount of horsepower that a muscle car puts out, especially if the muscle car is built beyond stock. One of the biggest flaws in imports performance is that there isn’t much torque in the engine. Since there is so little torque, import owners try to lower the weight reduction by stripping everything in a perfectly good car that isn’t needed, so make more horsepower. While the American muscle cars engines pushes their heavy bodies up the track with no problems, because the torque is there to keep it moving at higher speeds. The American muscle owners don’t have to worry about stripping the car for weight reduction unless they are extremely serious of drag racing. Some of the big things that imports can use to have more horsepower are adding a turbo charger, supercharger, blowers, and nitrous oxide. This will give the import about another 150 horsepower. The catch though is that American muscle cars can use the exact same things too, thus betting the imports once again.
As the new era goes on, kids will buy imports and waste there money trying to prove a point that won’t be proven. There will be some imports out there that can win against an American muscle, but they will only be broke for how much money they put in to the import. The answer is very simple, American muscles have more power for less money.
