With spring almost in the air, the idea was to round out the various available four-seat convertibles at the $ 30,000 limit of the luxury price threshold and see what you get for that kind of money. Throughout several days of testing, our people kept wondering which car was better. The Mustang is scarier, but it handles big drops better, especially those that touch the front of the Camaro. The Camaro’s front suspension geometry may also be less affected by the narrow radius. It was a combination of the Mustang’s superior steering precision with the Camaro’s tighter chassis.
He would have loved the 700-foot slalom where the stiff, tired Camaro went through the cones at about the same speed as the smaller Mustang and with a looser suspension. By tossing a couple of different-weight chunks from some predecessor to the Empire State Building, he showed that an aluminum stock and a cast iron stock would fall at the same rate. Our manipulation tests were reminiscent of Galileo’s gravity experiments. This could also prove that four disc brakes are better than two discs and two drums.
The Mustang locked the rear brakes early in braking and then locked the fronts as the car slowed to a stop. It has larger tires and a better ratio of braking force, which provides slightly shorter stopping distances. With the test equipment still attached, the brakes were applied. The Mustang, of course, gives the driver a choice of 5-speed or automatic, and the round black knob between the seats is a lot of fun to play with, although getting out of line requires the right combination of clutch slip and clutch slip. tire. and throttle maceration. However, there is a clear difference in technique due to the Camaro’s automatic transmission and the Mustang’s 5-speed. Despite the similarity of results, Mustang and Camaro drivers will be able to spend days racing on a race track without determining a clear winner, which should make many racers and spectators happy. These two have been polished by 20 years of competition with each other on city streets and racetracks of all shapes and sizes.
Top speed was the first test and the closeness of the results would persist through tests of acceleration, handling and subjective evaluations. The Mustang was also the better commuter car of the two, with its 302 body more powerful than ever and revised. We found that in the icy bumps of Michigan back roads, the Mustang provided noticeably better handling. Our tests were completed at Ford’s Romeo Proving Ground north of Detroit with a new engine.
He died 100 meters from the groundhog. That was the end of that engine that had gone through many miles of Ford and magazine testing. The needle was somewhere very close to the 5,900-rpm redline, he said, when the strange noises began. The message was duly relayed to our driver, who has a penchant for big numbers. It so happened that our Mustang GT prototype was being run by Product Development Engineer Arch Cothran when it came to TRC. The Ford was geared higher with 5 speed and was running only 4200 rpm in 5th gear. On the back straight he had a chance to play groundhog dodge at about 145 mph.
As our powerful engineering editor whistled around the 7.5 mile bowl every 3.0 minutes, he was able to casually hit the button on the two-way radio and tell us that the water temperature was normal, as was the oil pressure. So impressive is the stability of both cars at those speeds. One hundred forty-eight miles in an hour. The Mustang stays tight all the way. The Chevy V-8 is tuned to produce that particularly American buzz put out by every V-8 that ever received a set of twin tubes and glass packs.
The Mustang is quieter at most cruising speeds, but makes more noise with the throttle wide open. It’s more stable when braking and those King Kong Goodyears have more traction. Only the timing lights in front of us could attest that the Camaro was more enjoyable to drive. The buzz turned to WHOOSH as the Camaro approached as fast as something in Cabbage Gaddafi’s worst nightmare and then disappeared. Click on the image above to see it in high resolution. Not to mention, all three were black. What a great photo. As far as we know, this is the only time and place where Detriot’s musclecar trio has been caught together on camera. Antoine was leaving the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, two bogies stopped: the Dodge Challenger SRT8 and the Ford Mustang.
