I agree with most of that, except camaro owners use jegs, pushrods dont make it harder; just cheaper. And come on, mustangs dont ride that well either. Still, back to whats important, imports are stupid, pointless, and noisey, unless used what they were ment for. Daily transportation from work and back in the slow lane.  

I prefer dometic RWD v8s because they are affordable to build.

An import is just like any other car though.  4 wheels and an engine.  Most things with 4 wheels and an engine can be made to go faster no matter where it came from.  Make it light, put in a powerful engine, and get the tires to hook.  Works the same for a Chevy Monza or a Mitsubishi Eclipse.

yes, but its about the sound, and the feel. throttle steer over torque steer.  loud pipes over fart pipes  

Oh yeah, that v6 (and it's crappy gearbox) is a heavy old lump- and doesn't produce the power to make up for it- hence a 302 windsor and T5 box being a power AND handling upgrade (less weight near the front)

There's one of those datsuns kicking about the drags over here with a chevy motor- don't know much about it but there's a big trend here for people using 70's datsun skylines and toyota corolas with US V8 power.

I hate import threads.  

hey, horsepower is horsepower. i'd love to thrash on a 10sec supra or skyline. but i love the fact i can pull 10sec timeslips out of my fully, daily driven, '65 lemans. and yes the fart cans are stupid, but i love the sound of turbos ripping the atmosphere. i love the the domestic muscle and will only own american hotrods, but i will give respect were it is due. we know there are posers out there. and they are good for a laugh. as for the turbos?... they make alot of power on these rice rockets, and UNREAL horsepower on anything with 8 cylinders. i can't wait to bolt a pair on 469ci of pure pontiac. so long supra, bye bye skyline, 40 year old technology is about to rip your guts out!

p.s. the sept. '05 issue is going into my carcraft hall of fame. thank you thank you thank you. turbos with a carburator is EXACTLY what the doctor ordered.

The reason that imports are so dominant with today´s youth is that young people generally are into affordable late-model cars. And today´s affordable late-models are FWD econoboxes, with a bulk of them unfortunately being japanese. It´s been about thirty years since Mustangs, Camaros, Challengers and the type were "bellybutton" cars accessible to the masses. Sure some of them were produced after that, but they have been somewhat of "niche" cars and with the V8´s and all, not very accessible to many under the age of 25 as far as insurance goes. Personally I couldn´t care less about FWD, stick shift, and 4-bangers, or anything from the orient, no matter how fast or how many hp it has. I´ll just stick to my ´87 Caprice because RWD, V8s and automatics are my thing, and as long I have that I couldn´t care less what anyone else is doing. As far as HP goes though, I´d still think You can get 300 or even 400 hp out of an American-made V8 more reliably and at a fraction of a cost it takes to get that kind of power out of any 4-banger. Mere displacement works to that effect. The only problem though, is that the said horsepower figures in an American V8 are no longer sold at every neighborhood car-dealership.  

really, there wont be a need for imports in the future. v-8 rwd car of today are getting around 25 mpg and have reduced engine wear due to low cruising rpms allowing people to get long life out of their cars. and with the DOD and MDS technologies, the mpg figure goes up a bit and really competes with 4 cylinder cars in gas milage. sure it cost a bit more for a v-8 initially, but it will last many miles and have a lot more power as it wears down than a 4 or even 6 banger. shoot i got a 91 s10 with a 4 banger and 5 speed with 107,000 miles and get 23 mpg, but its already showing age with loss of power, harder starts, and occasionaly parts needing replacement, but the ol 79 gmc has a 350/t350 combo with 185,000 miles on it and doesnt lack power, gets 16-18 mpg, starts fairly easy, and gets down the road just fine (until it sheared the timing gear, can you believe it was made of a plasic fiberish stuff?). but it was swapped and runs again. point is, people will start to see this, and it is very possible the import market with drop off dramaticly.

you must not live in or near a big city.  It does sound like a good dream though, but that will never happen.  

Sure there is the new Chrysler 300 but as i tried to say in my previous message, like the current mustangs and last Camaro´s, they´re not exactly the bottom-of-the line, easy-to-upkeep cars for the young guys. They´re "niche" products, designed for the wealthy middle-age consumer. The stuff that the 20-year-olds are into today seems to be small, cheap buckets like Civics and such. Of course there also are those who are into V8´s and going through the trouble of working on a 20-40 year old vehicle just to have a V8, but they´re a small minority.

What You said about the longevity of Your truck engine however, holds true since theoretically,  a 5,7 litre V8 engine needs to work a lot less and gets to stay at a lot lower RPM range all its life to go 200 or 300K compared to, say, for a 2-litre inline 4 going the same distance. I don´t think this has so much to do what brand of engines might be compared, but merely the displacement advantage of the larger engine.    

maybe not, but hopefully they make all them city driver go to electric cars and we wont have to hear those fart pipes anymore. Nah, i dont live in that big of a city, Pittsburg is fairly small compared to say Kansas City. And Pitt is as big a city I would want to live in. Must suck living in a place with a small yard, sound regulations,  and lots of traffic.  

Sure the last gen camaros and stang arent exactly bottom line, but it would still probably be easier to work on than those 4 bangers. depends on what you mean by up keep. I had to replace a clutch in a 92 accord (or maybe it was a civic), anyways, that was a 2 day deal. but replacing a clutch in a 92 chevy 1/2 ton was soo much easier.

 ya, im not comparing a honda 4 banger to a chevy v-8 on longevity to prove they are better, thats why i used chevy on chevy. but it just seems logical to go to a larger displacement with a better overdrive and save wear. alot more fwd cars seem to be v-6's now and days

See you guys get to complain about poor kids driving around in Civics with shopping cart wings and such...and yes, its extremely annoying and there are plenty around here...but try watching a bunch of college aged kids get handed BMW's and put those fart pipes on them...wish my daddy could (not would) buy me a brand new 3-series...or 5 series like my neighbor...

Can you think of a better way to spend $40, 50, 60, maybe 80 grand...I can

What I meant by "upkeep" was that it´s generally difficult for younger people to afford insurance alone on a vehicle with a larger displacement engine, although I´d personally imagine an 18-yo with a 180-hp 2-liter Nippondenso is far more likely to cause an accident than an 18-yo with a 170-hp 5-liter Caprice, for instance. Where I went to high school in the early ´90s, out of the 200(?) cars at the school parking lot every day maybe half a dozen at the most were V8 cars. Nearly all of the kids with jobs and their own vehicles chose econoboxes because of the insurance cost factor alone. That is just one of the reasons why I´d imagine a traditional RWD V8 vehicle is simply out of reach for most youths today. Another significant factor being of course, that most vehicles of that type are now typically 20+ years old, and thus probably not the first choice for most people. I agree with You on that a RWD V8-auto vehicle is by far much more fun to drive and more interesting to work on, but I´d think on any vehicle the newer the model, the more computer-stuff there is involved and more cab-forward the design is, the harder it gets to do virtually any repairs, let alone upgrades on it regardless of the make and model. So a vintage vehicle depending on its model and parts availabilty, is definitely simpler to work with. I didn´t say You were making any kind of a comparison between an import 4-banger of any make and a domestic V8, I merely meant to point out that at the most extreme example, a high-HP per litre small-displacement "screamer" engine is much more prone to wear than a large V8 with its effective operating range typically around 2000 rpm. 

You ever tried changing the plugs on a 4th gen?  To do a motor swap you have to drop it out the bottom.  They're not exactly easy to work on either.