Re: alfa-digest V9 #66

[Stacy Faught <slfaught@domain.elided>]

>I wouldn't pay a whole lot of attention to this sort of idle
>speculation were I you, Luca. This one, especially makes little sense.
>The Corvette chassis is a heavy, hydro-formed (and very sophisticated)
>tubular chassis designed for a fiberglass skin and a big OHV V-8. What
>on earth would Alfa do with such a thing? And more importantly, why
>would GM allow their flagship chassis to be used by Alfa Romeo? They
>don't own the marque (yet) and if  Lucca di Montizemolo has his way,
>they never will (he wants Alfa under the Ferrari/Maserati group which
>is not part of the Fiat/GM stock 'deal.'). I've seen so many rumors
>about Alfa's immediate future that I tend to discount them all until I
>see a press release from Fiat.

<snip>

Having been party to the all-out war that occured internally when the Cadillac
studio purposed using the 'Vette chassis for their new $90,000 roadster,
I can say you've hit the nail on the head.  The Vette is so closely guarded 
even inside the GM corporate walls that I doubt it will ever see use in any other brand.
The mantra inside is that 'no GM car shall be faster or better handling than the Corvette'.
The battles about the Caddy roadster's engine displacement were even more entertaining :)

BTW--the Vetter chassis is not all that heavy---fiberglass doesn't save much weight (less than 200lb overall)
over modern sheet metal, and the huge 5.7L V8 is not light either, but yet the car comes in
at abut 3100lb.  It may not be as light as some, but the incredibly stiff chassis allows the use of 
smaller aluminum suspension components and smaller, lighter crash reinforcement, so overall
the effect is a lighter vehicle than one with a traditional frame.  A disporportonate amount of 
development time and money is spent on the Vette, with the one goal of better performance, so if
it hindered the car in some way, they would use the traditional (and cheaper) chassis.

>This is my take on the C5 Corvette. It has near state-of-the-art
>road-holding for a consumer car, but its not that much fun to drive.
>The best sports cars manage both (Ferrari 360 Modena). For the open
>road, I'll take handling over road-holding any day (after all the
>purpose of a consumer sports car is to ENTERTAIN the driver, not win
>races) and both if I can get (read that afford) them.
>
>George Graves
>'86 GTV-6

<snip, again>

Since you didn't say if you had ever actually driven a Z06 for an extended length of time,
I'll assume you haven't---one of the perks of working at the design center is that they have an
assortment of GM and competitor's vehicles available for employees to take home and have fun
with (this included a Vette until some moron decided to take an offramp at about 80mph, and 
planted it firmly into the wall at the Jefferson Ave. exit into downtown Detroit), so I feel qualified 
to compare it to a number of other cars.  I've never driven a Ferrari or any super-exotic, but hands
down it is a much more fun car to drive than the S2000, 911 turbo, M3, or Viper.  I've heard that the
new Viper corrects the one of the main problems of the car---you feel like you are sitting at a 45 degree 
angle to the road (quite uncomfortable after about 30 minutes), but even if the cars were priced similarly,
and I had 50 grand or so to blow, I'd still take a new Vette.  For a company that produces a lot of 
cars that leave you scratching your head, the Corvette is really an incredible achievement.
Sure, the 911 is a more refined vehicle---less road noise, higher quality leather and interior bits, ect...
but as a daily-driver, the Vette is more liveable--it performs nicely on city streets, soaking up bumps you
would feel in another sports car, while still delivering incredible performance at the limit.  The only thing
I might fix on the car is the magnasteer variable power boost---it's still not quite right at speeds under 30mph.
Still, the seats are very supportive and comfortable, the controls are layed out logically and easy to reach,
the shifter is nothing short of fantastic, and the steering is quite communicative at normal speeds.  
Were it to ever actually happen, Alfa could do a lot worse than to chose that platform to build a luxury 
sportscar on.  Give it to the Alfa designers to put great looking sheet metal on it, and mabye a V-8 based on
the 2.0L twin spark, or elongate the 250hp V-6, and you'd have one hell of a car---a modern day Montreal, if you will.

I guess we can all dream, huh? :)
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