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Originally Posted by KiwiBacon
There's a lot of misinformation in this thread. Especially regarding suspension.
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Care to elaborate?
The Live Axle is long dead, about 45 years dead. The idea that two wheels need to be connected to each other by a solid link is just stupid.
It is done purely for cost reduction and always has a negative impact on performance. At least Ford have been honest in admitting this, and by getting away with it have perhaps shown it is the American market that is the problem.
But when the new Honda Type R Civic comes out with beam axle at the back, and Honda still try and tell people its better than the last one, when it clearly isn't, you know something is wrong. For 12 years Honda made some of the best handling road cars in the world, and made the Type R brand name famous purely because of the handling. Even the very first Civic had IRS.
They still make great engines, but their current list of chassis designs have been a huge leap backwards to 1980, which was the last time they made cars with beam axles at the back.
There is a legitimate use for a solid axle in a limited number of racing types: Drag racing and Oval racing, where the ability to handle an un-even surface is less important than strength and simplicity.
There have been huge leaps forward in engine design outside the US, even by Nissan.
The current range of Nissan engines are far superior to previous generation.
The SR and RB engines might have been very, very strong, but only as a throw back to the over engineered, 1960s Mercedes engines they evolved from.
While they could make lots of power under lots of boost because of their strength, they were terrible motors with out it, and needed a lot of work to even get close to making respectable numbers n/a.
The new range of engines are lighter, better built, more powerful and a lot more efficient. The same is true for any of the Japanese, European and Korean car makers.
I'm not sure about the Americans though, the new Ford V8 sounds like it is popular, and a huge leap forward over the old one, while the reworked chevy small block is also better. But how do they compete with a Toyota, BMW or Merc V8?
I know he new chevy 3.2L V6 as sold in Australia is nothing special. It might be more powerful and more efficient that the old 3.8, but it is still just as responseless and dead to throttle changes.
As for a other American "sports" car engines, don't they just throw old truck motors into them, and hope the huge amounts of torque will stop people thinking about things like throttle response and usable power band?