Who remembers when our little turbo cars were not well liked?

[4timesT]

I've got some old drag racing videos. One of them was from 1986-1987. Lawrence Conley has his 86 GN black running 13 teens and it's not far from stock. In the videos Theres a bunch of late 60's and early 70's muscle cars. A lot of four speeds and a lot of f'ing slow ass cars. There were a couple cars that broke into the 12's. A few low 13 sec cars and a lot of 14-16 second turds. If your street driven non nitrous car ran anywhere near a 12 sec pass you were cleaning house back in those days. Id bet Conleys car back then was almost 100% stock. Probably had a cat delete and maybe a compressed fp regulator and adjustable wastegate actuator and open air filter with air box removal. I remember them putting a big fan in front of it between rounds. It was fun to listen to the idiots in the crowd boo when that Regal with AC and overdrive would spank the opposition almost every time. Usually by several bus lengths. The untapped potential of the standard LC2 layout is unparalleled by any engine in its nearly stock layout. We have seen full weight stock suspension stock block turbo Regals make 4 times the power they came with. Nearly 100lbs per min of air on an engine that was never designed to be over 40lbs/min. The only other engine that ranks up there is the 2jZ but usually in single turbo configuration. Huge untapped potential. The 86-87 turbo regals without a doubt were a large contributor to the turbocharged movement into the millennium. Many top dogs got their hands dirty wrenching and tuning turbo regals back in the day. When they applied the same technology to larger race oriented engines the impact on racing was astounding. Plenty of bitching and crying from the opposition. Go back as far as the mid 80's and look at Buddy Ingersols car. It was light years ahead of the whiney bitch competition that bitched and pissed and moaned to NHRA and got the car outlawed. If social media was back then what it was today the turbocharged engine would have had a much quicker run into high performance. Even in the 90's turbos were a little voodoo. Plenty of guys told me there was no replacing their big ci engines, turbos were cheating, what the hell is methanol injection. It doesn't work. Blah, blah, blah. A lot of them kept saying that to themselves but many of the same guys own turbo regals or turbocharged high performance cars today. I went to a track rental with a good friend last spring and it was fun to watch his GN clean house against his friends and family's muscle cars of the 60's. Most of them were a little skeptical but when the GN was driven there and running mid 11's on partial passes and most of them couldn't crack into the 11's with full hits on slicks off the trailer they were owned.


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I hear that bro. The majority of the 60s-70s muscle cars were only capable of 15 second quarters. Pretty cars no doubt but nothing to write home about.

I remember prior to buy my first TR watching a street race between a stock 87 Turbo T and a 1970 440-6pack Challenger. We were all standing by the finish line but could hear the Challenger doing his burnout. When the T did it's burnout, if it weren't for seeing the tire smoke, you wouldn't have known he even did one. At the finish line the T had half a car on the Challenger....

Aside from the great looks and performance of the TRs what I loved most about them was the exhaust note at idle. NOTHING I ever heard sounded like that. So I went and bought a used 17k mile 87 Limited in Feb of 88 for 13,600. They wanted 13.9K for it but my 19 year old ass said, give me your best price. LMAO Put 36K miles on it the first year....oh the fun I had with that car!!!

 

[trixdout]

Aside from the great looks and performance of the TRs what I loved most about them was the exhaust note at idle. NOTHING I ever heard sounded like that.

The idle note is what sold me when I first looked at the one I was going to buy. Unbeknownst to me, the TR's cat was gutted, but the rest was stock. Boy, that v8 rumble, with two less cylinders is something to aspire to for any v6 auto maker of today's age.

I honestly feel like I should have been born in the mid 1970's if not the early 1980's.

 

[fast86gn]

Ah the exhaust note from a TR nothing else like it! When I hear it I start looking around for one, I can always hear them coming. It may not be V8 loud but loud enough to hear it.

 

[V6sleeper]

I left the Omni Goes Like Hell off of my list because I knew that the cars I'd already listed were going to get the shady eye. LOL. No one wants to give any credit to a Dodge Omni. Its kind of hard to be proud of your car after it loses to a Dodge Omni huh?

lol yea, it front wheel hopped the whole 60' on me then gripped and was gone I couldn't keep up, must of been modded a bit-(at least that's what I kept telling my self)