DRIVING: that's what it's ALL ABOUT! A blog and website for automotive driving enthusiasts, featuring my interests as I see them: news and opinion about manufacturers of interest, significant enthusiast cars, and driving them hard and well.
But this one did, and thanks to very creative use of a custom editor for Gran Turismo 4 (courtesy of HunterVF via YouTube) we get to find out what it would be like.
This is a really nice peice of work. If you want to quibble on the details... the V-8 SHO wouldn't actually sound like this unless you spun it up to 9000 RPM (and hopefully the cams are welded!), and of course the tranny that is envisioned here is about 10,000% better than the terrible production 4-speed auto. So I like it!
Production SHOs are rarely seen on tracks. My '97 SHO did do Texas World Speedway - just once. My new '99 Cobra hadn't been delivered by Ford to my dealer yet (it was the first one in Central Texas, and we believe the entire state - and Ford delayed production for several months while some - but not all - of the bugs were worked out). So my daily driver SHO was all there was to drive (it's lease would run out a month later), and when I had the opportunity (I was an instructor in the LSRPCA Porsche club before they got too snotty to put up with) I took a few laps.
Clearly the SHO wasn't the worlds greatest track car, but it did stay unruffled.
What's the ultimate SHO? About ten years ago, I was lucky to have several laps as a passenger at Bondurant in their early V-6 SHO instructor car. With a opened-up engine, unrestricted exhaust, a Quaife limited slip diff, a fuel cell, and of course a great driver - the difference was astounding and the tremendous flexibility inherent in the SHO V-6 really came out. I wonder whatever happened to those cars... and I wonder what it would be like having one now for fun. It'd be easy to duplicate it. Anybody out there have a limited slip diff in their Gen 1/2 SHO?
Carscoop scored well yesterday with a W-12 powered VW GTI.. Cool, but not something any of us would be likely to build.
But today's post on a 3-rotor Wankel powered DeLorean hits home - this is something that we could do, and something that we would want to do. DeLorean prices aren't too bad... and as Carscoop says the 130-HP Renault motor is pointless. DeLoreans have long needed an alternative. This swap provides that, as well as the Porsche transaxle needed to make it work.
