Everything new is Rubbish... Sort of...

Good Evening!

I'm Tsume, and along with my good friends Iron_Fox and Monkeywrench, we've decided to start a sort of automotive show for the entertainment/education/annoyance of all on this board. This is our debut, so please be kind.

I'll start out by saying that the state of automotive performance in the United States today is absolute rubbish!

Let me rewind the clock 40 years. It's 1970.

Everyone knows about the LS-6 Chevelle, rated at 450 hp you can buy off the showroom floor, the 375 hp Camaro, the 470 hp Corvettes, the best and brightest of American supercars available to the masses as prices reasonably affordable by any yob with a job at the local Citgo; the fact is that ANY American car can be optioned with a genuinely high-performance engine just by ticking a block at the dealer's lot.

Oldsmobile, in a 4 door station wagon, offers a 365 horsepower 455 with a 4 speed stick
Pontiac has no qualms about doing a Grand Am with a manual trans and a High Output Pontiac 455
Buick sells a Skylark with a Stage 1 455 and a 4 speed stick
Chevolet will do you up a Monte Carlo or a Nova with a 400+ hp 454 engine if you know what to ask for
Ford, in a basic sedan, offers the high performance 429 Cobra Jet motor if you want it
Mopar offers a 4 barrel 440 cubic inch plant with a 4 barrel in any of its cars, from the Dart to the Monaco

If I go to the dealership today and ask Chevrolet for a manual transmission in anything outside the Camaro, it's a 6 cylinder and flappy paddles from a Maxxis controller from 1985

If I go to Dodge and ask for a Charger with the big motor, they try to sell me a $45,000 luxury sedan with a Starbucks finder and 18 way heated leather seats. Manual transmission? Sure, we've got these nifty paddles!

If I go to Ford and ask for a high performance sedan, they'll point me at a 6 cylinder Taurus with some hairdryers hanging off the exhaust manifolds. Not a manual transmission in sight. Technology? Out the wazoo. Sounds like a swarm of bees? Unfortunately.

Even in the truck market, the Big Three don't offer a proper manual transmission behind their V-8s anymore. Not even in the performance market, in vehicles like the Raptor or the Silverado SS.

It's not like these things don't exist either; Australia offers a BEVY of rear wheel drive V8 supercars in a wide variety of platforms; the Holden Monaro, the Holden Caprice, the Holden Maloo, the Ford Falcon; hilariously available in China, Australia and the Middle East but NOT in the United States where we're stuck with a bunch of heavy, useless front wheel drive based overpriced automatic transmission sedans, laden with Starbucks finders, crash beams, Facebook posting devices and butt-warmers.

In the modern American marketplace, proper performance vehicles with gearshifts you have to press a pedal to move that spin the rear (proper) ties are relegated to the 'boomers who can afford to relive their childhood through a $50,000 musclecar wannabee like the Challenger, Camaro SS or the Mustang. None of these are accessible nor available to the high-school kid who's "Saved his pennies and saved his dimes" as the Beach Boys song goes.

I submit that until America gets its act together and offers a V-8 rear wheel drive sedan that comes with a PROPER THIRD PEDAL... Performance and driving in the United States are dead.