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From: davew@shark.UUCP (Dave Williams)
Newsgroups: net.auto
Subject: Re: Muscle_car != Sport_car
Message-ID: <792@shark.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Jun-84 12:24:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.792
Posted: Mon Jun  4 12:24:25 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 6-Jun-84 06:49:41 EDT
References: <468@hou2h.UUCP> <899@eosp1.UUCP> <1972@rlgvax.UUCP>, <1550@uw-june>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 32


  It seems we are getting mired down in definitions.
Generally speaking, a muscle car was an intermediate sized
Detroit produced car with an engine out of a full sized or
high performance car from the same company. Some samples 
of these cars were:
	o	Pontiac GTO = Le Mans with 389 or 421 CID engine

	o	Olds  442   = Starfire  with Old's 98 engine

	o	Chevelle SS = Malibu with 454 CID engine

 Ford and Chrysler had similar packages. Some of these cars could
be had with handling packages. The larger, heavier engines did not
help the handling characteristics of these cars.

 The Mustang and Camaro were never called sport cars, but sporty cars.
With the handling pakages, both these cars were pretty good handling
machines. With the large engine options these were also muscle cars.

My Webster's New World Dictionary defines sport car as:

 a low, small automobile, typically an open car with a high-compression
engine and seats for two.

The Corvette has always fit that definition. It seems some peoples
definition of sport car includes limits as to the cars displacement,
number of cylinders and country of manufacture.

                                  Dave Williams
                                  Tektronix, Inc.
                                  ECS