Driving an SS for the week

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10-05-2012, 08:42 AM

#61

Anrosphynx

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Quote:

Originally Posted by nofearofdanger

Quote:

Originally Posted by asrautox' timestamp='1349277053' post='22055606

[quote name='fusionchickenleg' timestamp='1349246952' post='22054971']
So the vette and 5.0 mustang can't turn and brake? What about the boss mustang? A base Vette and boss can outrun the m3 on tracks and the 5.0 is about even with much better aftermarket engine tuning options and response.

Others have already addressed the interior comments regarding domestic cars as a whole, though nobody will disagree that the domestic performance cars' (sans new viper, cts-v, etc) interior is subpar relative to their competition, hell the main reason I didn't get a 5.0 mustang was the interior and I owned a 91 mr2 turbo, 2 Evos, and a MY2000 impreza with an STi powertrain - basically I don't care about interiors.

Some great points all around by the American side, not so much from the Aussies. Having driven the top 3 American Muscle cars and a few C6's, I would never argue that the interiors are up to european standard. No one would, that's just crazy talk. I would argue however, that the track performance per dollar is higher than any similar offerings from Europe. Those of us that buy these cars understand and accept that tradeoff. Also, don't try to bundle interior design with build quality. I've driven my SS for 18k miles without one single quality issue.

Exactly - from a performance perspective you certainly get a lot of bang for your buck, but you sacrifice in build quality, especially interior wise. The same thing could be said about other cars such as the LanEvo, STis, Focus RS etc. However, just because there is large performance and cheap pricing, it doesn't mean that build quality can't be criticize.

@Rockville - clearly it was implied that I was measuring up the GT500 and ZL1 against it's Euro and Japanese counterparts - C63, M3, ISF etc. I don't know where you go the idea that I was:

a. talking about "rental cars" - this was just a comment use by MotorTrend
b. talking about the US car market as a whole

@Fusionchickenleg - from what I've seen this kind of performance seems to be at tracks that are conducive to the American cars' dynamics, on other tracks this isn't so true.
[/quote]

I think where people are confused is the use of the term build quality.
Seems like you are using the terms interior design and build quality interchangeably. Everyone agrees that interior design is not up to European standards, but that does not mean that the build quality is bad, it just means that the interior design is not as good.

However, a Mustang GT can be had (in my area at least) for 25k-30k USD. To get similar performance in the European market, you are looking at an M3 which starts at ~65k USD. That is literally double the price. Are you getting double the interior quality? double the performance? double the build quality? Doubt it.

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10-05-2012, 11:33 AM

#62

dombey

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^of course not. That applies to almost any category of product... Diminishing returns. That doesn't mean anything by itself, especially for attributes with no quantitative measure... You can compare horsepower or torque (although curves matter and the peak power number can lie ), but interiors are impossible to objectively assign a score to. I'm sure the companies do testing with consumers and turn subjective reactions into numbers, but the point is that everyone will score an interior differently.
So, you may well have people who think an M3 interior is twice as nice as the SS. And they would be right. And wrong. Depending on who you ask.