q's and Z's

[l.leung at juno.com]

again, not to knock the Z, the best times I've seen posted for a stock Z was in the range of 7.4 to 60MPH and quarters in the 16's. The early F.I. Mustang LX 5.0's tended to hit 60 in a little less than 7.0 seconds (handily beating even the Scirocco 16V) and quarters in the mid-14's. They even have pretty respectable handling, particularly on the street, and they're overall sturdiness (shared with the VW) seems to hold up better over the long run than the lightweight Z's, which took the Colin Chapman approach to engineering. Great for performance, but tough for a street car. Unfortunately, I've never DRIVEN an early Z car, the only ones to ever show up at autocrosses were always less than agressively driven, so I have no idea of their actual potential. I do know back in the 70's, the BRE team did exceptionally well in SCCA Trans-Am racing with both the 240Z and the 510 2-door, but of course, those aren't street cars. 

LL - NY