Drew Dowdell

edited you for clarity. Sorry Drew. " Victories don't come any clearer than this. The GT350 is the easy winner of this Head2Head ". And the Z/28 is not a 5yrs old car. It came out for model year 2014. The Camaro came out in 2009... the Z28 is just the hot version of it.

edited you for clarity.

On the sport oriented stuff, GM has been under rating for a while. If it has a supercharger on it and built in the last 10 years, it is probably underrated...... one assumes that will be the case for the sport oriented Turbo V6es and Turbo V8 that are here or coming.

Everyone and their dog knows a chassis dyno is in no shape or form an accurate way to measure crank HP. And 75 grand and you lose a stoplight Grand Prix to a GT350R and Alpha SS. Crank horsepower is important in weed wackers and lawn mowers, but for motors attached to transmissions, they fail to tell the whole story. Drivetrain losses matter... that's the reason we measure car horsepower at the wheels in these types of tests. When measuring two cars on the same dyno and they show large deficiencies from stated horsepower (Ford) or insufficient drivetrain losses from stated horsepower (Chevy) means there is something up and needs to be looked into. We won't get the answer the questions here, but they are questions worth asking.

You really don't have a clue what I was getting at and with thirty years of Ford looking after ford first and Lincoln second, history is more on my side than you realize. Maybe the D6 platform with change that pattern but, as I just said, thirty years of these kind of promises by Ford on making Lincoln a real player through true innovation, tempers my enthusiasm just a slight. Sorry if you don't understand me not looking at everything through rose colored glasses on your favorite brand. Actually, I'd argue that Ford most of the time you cite, Ford was neglecting Ford as well. Except for the first generation Taurus, Ford was too busy with their foreign adventures of Jaguar, Land Rover, Mazda, Volvo and Ford Of German.... and that hurt Ford US a lot. Again, aside from the first generation Taurus, all of the decent Fords had heavy input from their foreign ambassadors. The original for Escort was an EU Escort that Ford of US butchered into the version we got. It got butchered even further and turned into the Tempo. The 90+ Ford Escort was based on a Mazda platform and thats the one that was good. The Ford 500 was based on the Volvo S80 platform, and today that platform is under the Taurus, MKS, Explorer, Flex, MKT, (am I forgetting any?) The Lincoln LS was largely co-developed between Jaguar and Lincoln. The Probe was a Mazda MX-6. The rest of the Ford/Mercury/Lincoln car line-up in the 80s and early 90s were basically 1970s farm implements. Later, Ford realized that Ford of Germany was better at designing cars than Ford of NA, so we got the Focus, Contour (Mondeo), Cougar (not a big seller, but not bad car), and Fiesta. So Ford of NA could be left to do what they did best.... F-150. No one is arguing against the fact that Ford has been neglecting Lincoln for a number of years now, but there is a renewed interest in reviving the brand. That said, there is no reason that Lincoln must get a particular platform first. Lincoln will get their new platform products as their product cadence dictates... they're not going to toss out an in-production car early.... that wouldn't be fiscally sound.

Eh.. maybe I'm not explaining it well or something. It is no where near as compartmentalized as you are suggesting. One brand can be the lead brand to work on a platform, but all the brands that are planning to use it have input. Cadillac took the lead here because priority was placed on making a world class platform for Cadillac, but the Chevy people (and Buick... and possibly Opel) were involved from the beginning. People talk about "GM Parts Bin" when referring to things like door switches and headlight buttons, but it is really much deeper than that (and at other companies too). A flexible platform means that many variants can be built off the same platform. Pick a front section, pick a mid section, pick a tail section, and then put your brand's skin around that skeleton. Since I'm not doing a good job explaining it, here are some pictures: Here is VW's MQB platform - Audi TT, Audi A3, VW Beetle, VW Golf, VW Jetta, VW Passat (last gen), Volkswagen Tiguen, Volkswagn Touran Here is Nissan's CMF platform - (Buncha Renaults and Euro Nissans)

I actually don't think it's out of production yet. The video said it will be soon and it's still available on chevy's website. Production ended November 20th.

Sorry if I am a bit repetitive in that last post, I'm typing in between cooking a second thanksgiving dinner for tonight and I don't feel like re-writing it.

Then you need to understand the automotive development process better as this is largely the way things are done at GM ever since Lutz. To a degree, it really started with the 5th Gen Camaro, born out of that team's frustration in not having a flexible enough platform to work with. For Alpha, Cadillac set certain specs like frame construction, hard points, electrical systems. After that, the Camaro team is free to do what they want within their own budget constraints. It's like building two spec houses that have nearly identical floor plans but entirely different styles..... and a different furnace. When they started on Alpha, the goal was to replace two aging and heavy platforms (Sigma and Zeta) into one and cover as many product lines with it as possible. That is what flex platforms are.... that's what VW's MQB and MLB are, that's what Ford's D6 is supposed to be... and so on.

Alone, perhaps not., But the many other virtues, like linear and instant throttle response, better steering feel, etc. might do it for you. No? It won, so, yeah.....better Better steering feel and better braking feel, I'll give you. But as they showed in the video, in terms of actual skill, the steering and brakes are pretty much unflappable in their performance in both cars. The fast reving while not in gear doesn't impress me any. The guy in the video talked about it in terms of "blip-ability".... and I'm thinking.... "so what? All you're doing it making noise, it doesn't really factor into the driving." When in gear, the transmission and what gear you're in are a far greater factor for how quickly the engine revs. I guess these are the things that I think about with this comparison: The brand new mustang beat an out of production Camaro that is riding on a chassis that began development in 1999 and the engine is from 2004-5... and yet in spite of the Mustang being brand new, it beat the mustang just barely and in no small part to non-performance related factors like engine sound and fast revving (as I addressed above). I'm a guy that likes sleepers.... swift and silent, where results matter more than showing off. That either makes me a terrible judge of Hi-Po performance cars or an excellent one as I am not distracted by "flair". In this case, the results are that a newly developed Mustang with just about every trick Ford has up its sleeve thrown at it just barely beat out an older out of production Camaro. Yes it won, but don't expect me to jump out of my seat in excitement. I'm not the kind of guy that likes ostentatious displays of potential performance. Things like loud engines and blipping of throttles are demerits to me because they don't actually contribute anything to the end result. Also, much of the time that performance is only any good in the hands of someone actually able to handle it..... most people can't even handle a Corolla at 7/10ths... so just sitting there revving an engine proves nothing. I've driven the ATS-V and CTS-V multiple times. Both cars are a remarkable improvement over the Zeta car. On the track I can keep right with a professionally driven Z-06 Stingray (Except on the straights in the ATS) and while I'm trained, I'm not in any way practiced. MT in another video calls the ATS-V the best balanced and best composed chassis ever built..... so I feel like I've had a sneak peek into what the Z/28 will be capable of.

You're missing the point. There largely is no trickle down. A well planned product portfolio means these cars are developed in tandem regardless of the order of their release. When things do trickle down, it is largely an unplanned thing. It could be a reaction to a sudden change in the market, or due to a new executive coming in (Lots of GM's trickle down in the previous decade was due to Lutz stirring the pot), or some regulatory change, or due to a larger corporate screw up as I think we'll see with VW in the coming years. Trickle down as product planning is undesirable and ideally avoided.

The sound of the Ford doesn't tickle my girdle any more or less than the LS7... They both sound great to me and I wouldn't be choosing one or the other based on their respective engine notes.

Out of production and cars still for sale are two completely different things and you know that. If and when GM produces something else, we can talk again. And you know that. So I trust we will see no more posts on rumored future Ford products then? The Z/28 is pretty much a given as most of the development work is done already. Weak sauce Drew. GM advertises the ultra premium Z on the website, and that is what was compared and that is what we are discussing. Talking future product is fine, and we all do it and we all know it. I did not in any way suggest we should not. Chevy also offers the 2015 Volt on their website even though it has been out of production for months. The Mustang won against an out of production but still offered for sale Camaro Z/28. Looking at that win and ignoring the fact that the Z/28 is coming is what is weak sauce. Maybe you'd like to post a comparison test between the GT350R and the old Pontiac GTO as well? It would make as much sense if you posted a "win" in a match up between the C-Max Energi and the 2015 Volt while ignoring that the 2016 Volt is much improved.

Building the 2017 Camaro Z/28 in three easy steps: 1. Copy - Paste chassis and suspension setup from ATS-V 2. Copy - Paste 6.3 liter S/C V8 from Corvette Z06 (Detuned to 640hp..... on paper) 3. Delete rear seat, speakers, and radio. Of course it's more involved than that in reality... but that will be the very basic formula. And looking at the ATS-V, it would mean a Z28 with 600hp - 650hp at around 3800 lbs. (I'm estimating weight to be the same as the ATS because of increased engine weight, counter balancing weight reductions elsewhere).

Out of production and cars still for sale are two completely different things and you know that. If and when GM produces something else, we can talk again. And you know that. So I trust we will see no more posts on rumored future Ford products then? The Z/28 is pretty much a given as most of the development work is done already.

Pontiac G6 or Saturn Aura or 2008ish Malibu. Reg doesn't like the 4-speed auto for some reason, but it's dead reliable which is important for someone shopping this type of car. Might even be able to find an elusive Pontiac G5 - the Coupe Only Pontiac Rebadge of a Cobalt. They depreciated like a rock, so you might be able to find a cheap and clean example out there.

Happy Birthday Mr Felt!

I agree with Wings on this one... the idea that a platform is developed for a certain car in a vacuum and then is trickled out to other cars in the future is largely a myth. There are some examples of it happening, but when it has happened, the results have typically been less than ideal. Usually a platform is designed with all planned variants in mind at conception. Where you may be seeing a "trickle" effect is when a certain vehicle's product cadence ends after another... thus the appearance of the Alpha camaro 2 years after the Alpha ATS and CTS. It is not that the Cadillac trickled down to Camaro really, but that the Zeta Camaro's planned production run wasn't yet complete at the time the ATS was released. That gave the Camaro team extra time to work on some more details and development..... but there was no real trickle down when it was planned that way from the start. Where trickle down went wrong - The Zeta Camaro is an example of it. GM made the most of it and re-launched one of their iconic vehicles, but the Zeta Camaro was always a reactionary move. It was built on a large luxury coupe/sedan platform that was not intended to be turned into a pony car.... thus, in spite of GM's skill in overcoming physics, it had a weight disadvantage from the start. Had GM planned for the Camaro to be on the Zeta platform from the start, they could have designed some weight out of it. Trickle up doesn't always work either - The Chrysler 200 is an example of this. It is built on a Fiat small car platform, and in spite of being one of the smaller vehicles in the mid-size segment, they had to throw so much steel at it to make it pass the safety regs that it is among the heaviest. It's a good car, but when you have other mid-sizers that are as cavernous inside as the Passat for less weight and better fuel economy, it puts the 200 at a disadvantage. As for the Focus RS AWD system - I am certain that it is tuned for the Focus and when used in a Buick will perform differently. The way it works just sounds like a good, safe, proactive system that will do well in Grandma's luxury sedan or in a sport minded hot hatch.... and it sounds like it is better than the Haldex systems too. Torque vectoring has been around for years. Acura offers it... even old dead Saab offered it. This new system does it a bit better, but the next result will be the same for the typical driver. Lincoln will not be the only one with torque vectoring... nor will they be the only one with a 400+ HP car with torque vectoring.

The Focus AWD system is developed by a third party supplier called GKN ... it is not a Ford developed technology. In fact, the same system is apparently the new AWD for the LaCrosse and XT5.... so yeah.

Had to clean up a bunch of posts and hand out some warning points. Keep it about the cars, not about the people.

The thing is... Lincoln will take risks when developing concept cars but they (so far) have completely failed to bring any of the most acclaimed concepts to market. The 2002 Lincoln Continental Concept would have completely revitalized the brand's status. It was built on the DEW98 platform, and while some of the things like the rear doors and the trunk would not have made it into production, it would have been a fantastic flagship for Lincoln..... and it was completely buildable. Had they built it, it probably would have come out as a 2004 and stolen a lot of thunder from the Chrysler 300 at the time. Then there was the Lincoln MKR. Also quite buildable and would have done a great job coming back as a Mark-Series. Both of these show that Lincoln has the ideas... they just don't have the willpower.

Thanks for those updates.

Average Transaction Price = ATP At least in this context. The XT5's new interior blows a lot of the competition out of the water. And this is the current number 1 seller.....