Iwas reading the latest issue of Car Craft and was not thrilled on the LS1 bashing.  When I purchased my 99 Trans Am with the LS1 I was scared to death about ruining the engine thinking that it was a hard to work on and extremely expensive engine to work on.  Last spring my husband was railing on it when he "accidentally" missed 4th gear and hit 2nd doing over 100 mph.  Needless to say he was lucky to have only damaged the heads and not the tranny or rear end.  Thanks to all the publicity of the LS1, tearing it down ourselves, rebuilding it, and in fact adding performance parts in the process was extremely easy and not near as costly as what I would have expected.  Now I have a car that not only looks and sounds  intimidating, but definitly holds its own with well over 400 horses.  Don't get me wrong, I love the old american muscle that the original small/big blocks with carburators put out (we also have a 67 Chevelle that hits the mid to low 10's at the track), but the LS1 is also a great motor and I was relieved to have all the coverage that I did in previous issues.  

 i have 2001 Z28 i have stock 323 gears 4000 stall,tsp heads and a 226 226 cam,it runs 730s with mickey thompson drag radials, it gets 19mpg and i drive it almost everyday.I really like these engines and i think they are our future.I use to have a 70 chevelle with a 400sb,after i switched to a ls1 i have never looked back  

Buffalo chips!

That's why Primedia publishs GM High-Tech Performance magazine. 

If CC is going to focus on late model engines, such as the LS-series V8s, then it should give EQUAL TIME (at least) to FORD MODULAR V8s.  After all, in MY 2005 Ford is going to sell CAMMER-STYLE MODULAR MOTORS in at least 50,000 Mustang GTs, 100,000 or so large cars, and a million or more trucks!

(Compare this to GM's ZERO F-bodies (Heh, Heh, Heh!), a few portly Aussie GTOs, a scad of mega-buck 'Vettes and Cadillacs and (yawn) some weird-looking, horribly-dated trucks with huge rebates and "Vortec" [say "SNORE-tek"]  power)

Most CC readers (excluding JEFF SMITH) want low-buck stuff in the book and until a bunch more F-bodies and GM trucks rattle and wheeze into junkyards, LS power is merely the dream of those technophobic Luddites who hate more than two valves per cylinder, despise more than one camshaft, and love the nostalgic Rube Goldberg monkey-motion of pushrods and rockers.  (if you're set on a nostalgia OHV mill, why not a real one?)

On the other hand, given the poor resale value and abysmal build quality of the last of the F-bodies . . . . 

7.30s?  Sticky Mickeys? Stock gears?  I'm thinking that wimpy Vega-Monza-love-child of a rear axle is about to blow . . . .  Soon he'll be "looking back" at his F-bod short on the wrecker's hook!

(Maybe while they're plugging in a stout Ford 9", MarksZ71 can bone up on punctuation and capitalization tips from e e cummings)

Just so everyone knows, I am a 30 year old woman that loves cars, motors, me racing, and any old thrill that comes along with horsepower.  I am not excluding the potential of any make or model of car.  The faster, the more powerful the better.  The next thing I would like to do to my LS1 is to supercharge it or throw a nitrous kit on it.  All I am stating is that the LS1 has alot of potential to be unleashed if you have the knowledge and CC is providing me with all my options.  I've changed my gears, my clutch, computer, tires, wheels, chips, exhaust, valves/springs etc and I have had a blast with all of my improvements.  Camaros, mustangs, are great but I love my Trans Am LS1.  

It's great that you are having fun with your Trans Am. Car Crafting needs more women like you (and fewer air-head SEMA babe models--unless they have the Ford-issued SILVER JUMP SUITS pictured in the current issue of CC (just kidding)).

But (you knew this was coming), brand rivalry is one of the fun things about Car Crafting.   What would cruise nights and racing be like without some braggadocio and trash talk to the brand X folks?  (Okay, it'd be like a Fun Ford Weekend . . . .)

It does seem that the GM camp can't take it, though.  When they can't rig the rules to ban or handicap the competition (e.g. how many Jon Kasse Ford mountain motors have you seen in NHRA Pro stock? Or Ford Cammers on your local dirt oval track? Or turbocharged Ford Cosworths at Indianapolis), then they complain about any objective discussions of their antediluvian technological shortcomings and make excuses why they don't have up-to-the-minute features. 

Note that the marketplace decided that the GM F-body cars were not worthy of continued production.  Just as the marketplace has halved GM's nearly 60% marketshare.  And it has made the Ford F-Series truck the number one vehicle for over twenty-five years.  And it will give Mustang a 197,000 to ZERO sales advantage over GM in the "pony car" market this year!

It's good that the loyal F-troops (and "Camaro Craft") keep pushing GM's dearly departed Camaro/Firebird/IROCZ/Z28/Formula/Trans Am.  We need somebody to preserve our memories of a truly excessive and excessively poor example of automobile design. 

Why dont you just go shove it where the sun dont shine and quit doggin on the GM products. There was nothing wrong with the late model camaros and trans ams other than the price. LONG LIVE PUSHRODS!!!!  

Well, 4th gens also looked like bloated Geo storms.  That's my biggest problem with them, they were FUGLY.  They were a lot faster than mustangs, but if you could have a fast pintostang or a slower torino which would you pick?  I'll take slower torino, cuz it's at least got decent looks.  Don't pay attention to him, he's one of those pain in the ass "turbos #### rock and everything else sucks" guys.  I'll take my nitroused big block thank you very much.

Why the hostility, man?  I don't own an F-body, but from what I've read, the main reasons it died did not have to do with "abysmal build quality." The St. Therese plant in Quebec where the F-cars were made was incredibly inefficient and should have been able to make around 225,000 cars per year.  I think it was making around 150,000.  Aside from everything happening in Quebec,  GM was determined to push its truck and suv lines and kill the V8, rear-drive cars.  3/4 ton trucks have a higher markup than anything on the lot, so I guess it makes sense.   I like the F-cars, I like Mustangs, but I usually like anything with wheels and an engine...

Thats not even a comparison. If your gonna talk like that, you might as well say a mustang is a larger civic. I see alot of mustangs with huge wings and neons. Both of those look like what I left in the toilet about 10 minutes ago. By the way, who were you refering to when you typed "Don't pay attention to him, he's one of those pain in the ass "turbos #### rock and everything else sucks" guys. I'll take my nitroused big block thank you very much." ????

I was referring to DR511scj, not you.  He was preaching about turbos in another thread. Hence the turbo lover remark. F-bodys weren't bad cars, but they were ugly.  There's no gettin around that.  Faster and ugly and more expensive, or cheaper and better looking.  That's what it boiled down to.  Most people today want something that looks good more than how fast it is. ( i'm not talking about hot rodders here, i'm talking about the general public ) Best combination for the market was the mustang, that's why it's still around.  The ls1 was and still is a great motor, but ugly is ugly.  What should we do?  Stick an ls1 in a mustang. ;-)

I thought the LS1 articles were great. 458 HP from a 5.3L? New LS2 crate engines selling for $5300? Simple head & cam swaps that yield over 450 HP in a daily driveable package? All aluminum, lightweight but rock solid construction? Yeah they may not be the prettiest engines, but with a little ingenuity and personalization, that can be overcome. What's not to like? Hell if I didn't like my little Turbo Buick V6 so much, I'd put an LS2 in my Grand National ;-)

One other thing....LSx engines are a lot less leak-prone than any Big Block or Small Block of any make.

Steve

Personally, I think they dropped the Camaro to bring hype about the GTO. The camaro will be back, but it just wont have the same name. (well, says a veteran GM worker, but he might of just been getting my hopes up). I still dont know how you can call the Camaro ugly. I think the new 05' mustangs are ugly. They got it right the first time.  

Dude! Know what you're talking about before your write.

They haven't made a "pintostang" since 1978.   The 1979-93 and 1994-2004 Mustang platforms had NOTHING to do with a Pinto.

I've driven both F-bods and Fox and Fox-4 Mustangs extensively.  Both brand new and used.   The build quality of the bloated GEO Storm-like Camaro/Firebird (1993-who cares?) was well below comparable year Mustangs.  Certainly, GM built some factory quick F-Bodies (quicker than Mustangs in some years) but who wants to work on a mill that's halfway under the windshield in a car that began falling apart BEFORE it left the showroom floor?  Plenty of Mustangs trip the strip in single digits with Ford power, so clearly THE Pony Cars had and HAVE serious potential.  

Furthermore, I don't recall suggesting "everything" but turbos suck.  In fact, I want CC to run a N02 with turbos-on-a-big-block story. 

BTW, I spied a nice '78 Trans Am at an auction a couple of weeks ago. Anyone want to guess where I found the F-body cracking (anyone who's spent any time with the second gen models ought to know this one cold) 

You need to be reading Super Chevy, Chevy High Performance, High Performance Pontiac, and GM High Tech Performance for LS tech.  

My only point was that CC shouldn't degenerate into yet another GMPP pamphlet, repetitively crowing about the "awesome Gen III,"  when most CC readers want JY-cheap tech and many want to see something other than chevy, chevy, chevy, chevy, chevy . . . .  

BTW, Richard Holdener pulled over 900 HP out of a stock-block 4.6 DOHC Ford in MM&FF last fall, so I can't get too excited about 458 measly ponies out of a pushrod 5.3.  Sorry.

I think a fair comparison build-off would be a 5.3 GM vs. a 5.4 Navigator vs. a 5.6 Hemi.  Everybody keeps stock heads and uses 92 octane, but everything else is open.  Let the dyno do the talking.  However, that's more appropriate for Hot Rod or PHR than CC.  

Why is it that even PHR's Engine Masters won't let "cammers" compete against "pushrods?"