Our previous virtual drag race between the Countach and Camry had the Camry winning by a hair. Of course, some thirty years separated the two, which showed how much progress has been made. But how about we go the other direction, back some twenty years before Countach, like a 1957 Corvette, rolling on skinny little bias-ply 6.50-15 tires? Lets line up the two at the virtual staging lights and place our bets.
We’ll pick the 1978 Countach LP400S, which turned in the following stats, based on two different tests:
1978 LP400S 0-60: 5.8 sec. 1/4 mile: 14.3 sec.
LP 400S (year unstated): 0-60: 5.9 sec. 1/4 mile: 14.6 @ 101 mph
And for the ’57 Corvette, with its new fuel injected 283 (4.7 L) V8 and four speed transmission, there’s a detailed test that Road and Track did. Admittedly, the Corvette was optioned to make best use of its new engine, which was rated at 283 gross hp, or roughly some 240-250 or so net hp. The Countach was rated at 355 PS, or 353 Bhp. The Corvette, although pretty light at 2880 lbs, was heavier than the the 2646 lbs listed weight of the LP400s. Here’s how the Corvette did:
1957 Corvette FI: 0-60: 5.7 sec. 1/4 mile: 14.3 sec.
Both cars had a similar final drive ratio, 4.11 for the Corvette; 4.09 for the Countach. That allowed both of them to make the 0-60 run in first gear.
Top speed? Well, as previously discussed, there is some considerable disagreement about the Countach’s actual top speed. It’s listed as 181 mph, but according to tests, actual top speed was in the 158-160 mph range.
The Corvette, lacking an overdrive 5th gear, topped out at 132 mph @6500 rpm. But with different rear end gearing, it had been driven to 150+ mph.
There’s little doubt that the Countach’s smaller 4 liter V12, was hampered by its lower torque (260 lb.ft) produced at higher rpm (5500) than the Chevy’s 290 lb. ft. @4400 rpm had an effect.
Given the lack of statistical significance in the results, we’ll be generous and call it a tie. But the Corvette’s status as the world’s fastest car at the time was secured.
Playing with these 0-60 times at zeroto60times.com can be…amusing. Speaking of Corvettes and Camrys, how about we face of the 1982 Corvette against a 1987 Camry 2.0 four cylinder?
1982 Corvette: 0-60: 9.2 sec.
1987 Camry 2.0: 0-60: 9.1 sec.
Ok; enough already….
Next you will be telling us there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Stop it already, I cherish my myths.
and in the 60s muscle cars were still faster 0-60 than most Ferraris.Just left behind on the bends…
But the times are coming from unreliable magazines. Are these geared on the fact that the magazines were exactly as unreliable about times?
Wow, that fulie 57 was a big jump from the 56, which Speed Age clocked at 8.4 0-60 and 17.12 for the quarter mile. The 56 came in second behind a 56 Golden Hawk (both of which beat a TBird and a 300B). But the 57 Fulie Vette was much faster than the supercharged 57 Golden Hawk, which was not far from the 56 in acceleration.
Is a tenth of a second difference really significant? Too many variables, like weather conditions, the track surface, and how skillfully the drivers launch their vehicles. Besides, the Lambo looks faster, which is enough for me.
Road & Track always made a big deal about the accuracy of their road test methodology in the ’50’s through ’70’s with their calibrated 5th wheels, etc. If I recall correctly, their 0-60 time of the first V8 Chevy sedan in ’55 was just under 10 seconds. So this Vette does seem very quick. But I believe it.
Bloomington Gold certified plate means that Vette won’t be accelerating up to anything beyond 10 mph unless it’s on a trailer 😀
You are probably right about that, but never say never.
I have a friend who had a ’71 coupe. He drove it 400 miles to a Bloomington show to have it certified as a “Survivor” .
The new Vette is the first one I’ve really liked the looks of since the ‘Ray. But the ’56/’57 is my all time fave. Very clean and aggressive.
If my eyes are right, the 82 Corvette was also 9.1. The 84 Corvette was much quicker with the same basic engine, but a manual transmission.
The automatic C4 (with 3.07 rear gear) ran with the manual too, often it was faster then the 4+3.
An American muscle car book my brother had listed the 60 Chev 409 as THE quickest accelerating American car ever 0-60 4secs dead, but of course you couldnt buy one sales were restricted to NASCAR competitors.
You would have thought that was extremely imaginative .. I mean the weight and size of the Chev body for a start ..the measured actual crankshaft output of the 409 (which didn’t have the greatest flowing heads compared to the later Chev big blocks ..the tyre sizes and rubber compounds used back then ..the ‘taller’ axle ratios used to compensate for direct drive top gear gearboxes ..and the near universal use of virtual ‘one-wheel’ drive (ie: did the Chev 409 set-up employ a lock-up differential to at least provide two wheel drive?
Even today, it takes a hi-tech big top-end MB with 12 cylinders and twin turbos and 600 horsepower to produce a zero to 60 time like that !
409 cube 409 hp 1 hp for every 8lbs of motor car 4 speed manual 4:11 rear end in 2 door hard top no primer stripped out form the weighed very little certainly far less than a modern Benz.
zero to 60 is more about traction and gearing and weight than horsepower. A Lotus Seven is very quick up to 60mph with a puny engine.
And yes, limited slip was very common on the high performance versions of American cars.
…it’s ALL about power to weight coupled with traction ..and nothing else !
…but i would be very surprised if a full sized American steel-bodied car with a super heavy cast iron engine was able to achieve a zero to 60 time of 4 seconds even, back in 1960 or ’63 or whatever, even with an LSD (can you prove me wrong?) : )
…i have actually got sitting in my garage a 640 kg little-used series 3 ‘Lotus 7’ (early Donkervoort), with a 186 cube six track engine and Celica 5 spd, and yes, it is indeed just ‘quick’ in any gear, although the diff seals do not last very long ..i would say it is a ‘Pitts 12 PF’ of the vehicular world – altho the Zonda or the supercharged Atom would give it a darned good run . .into the weeds probably !
Ok, here’s what I’ve found. My memory isn’t so bad after all. There was a special drag race version of the Chevy Impala offered in 1963 only. Think of it as an uber super sport or a super super sport, or an Impala SSS. You had to special order this mysterious sequence of numbers/letters to get the car…RPO-Z11. It had lots of aluminum and a special engine. By the way, my dad had a 60 Impala SS with 348 tri-power and a 58 Impala sport with a 60s era Corvette engine/tranny in it. This is why I have this obscure factoid about the 63 Impala in the way back of memory banks. Can’t find any acceleration data so far.
http://www.streetlegaltv.com/news/muscle-cars-you-should-know-63-chevrolet-z11-impala-427/
http://www.impalaforums.com/resource-center/243071-1963-chevy-impala-z11-427-and-impala-ss409.html
http://hanksz11page.com/
http://www.cargurus.com/Cars/1963-Chevrolet-Impala-Overview-c4313
The 409 did not exist when the 60 chevy was produced. Not until the 61 or 62 chevy was the 409 available. 63 was the fastest zero to 60 according to my memory.
Bryce, the first 409 engine was not built until late in 1961 model year. You’re mistaken. And it wouldn’t have been that fast either.
I think the confusion is coming from the 1963 Z11 Impala. It had a 427 cu in motor that was created from a stroked 409. It was not the well known chevy 427. Many people refer to this stroked 409 as a 409 even though it displaced more than four hundred nine cubic inches. The Z11 Impala had lots of steel replaced with aluminum. It was light.
This car was extremely fast and it is entirely possible it did a zero to sixty in the 4 second range. Since it came this way from the factory it could be considered a showroom stock vehicle.
I have heard/read before, many years ago, that this was the fastest American car ever produced. I do not know if it could still be true though. I would think something has surpassed it by now.
From what I can find online, in 1960 Chevrolets involved in racing were using 348 cubic inch engines. The 409 became available during calendar year 1961 (about May-June, but few were produced I think). I am doubtful that any stock engine in the sixties produced 0-60 times of 4 seconds. A 67 Corvette 427 is listed with a time of 4.7 seconds.
While it’s rather far-fetched that a 1960 Chevy could do 0-60 in four seconds, even if it could have had a 409, there’s something that should be considered about the rear gearing of some of those late fifties / early sixties’ cars. Some of them had some extraordinarily low (numerically high) rear gears. We’re talking farm tractor level here, like 5.88:1 (or even lower). With some radical rear gears, it’s quite possible that one of those cars would have very low 0-60 times. Of course, they likely wouldn’t go much faster than that, either, not to mention that the engine would be screaming at anything approaching highway speeds, too.
Nobody offered 5.88 gears from the factory. 4.56 was typically the maximum. I’ve never heard of 5.88 gears in an American car. Example, please?
I was just guessing on the number and, yeah, they weren’t OEM, but there was definitely gears in the fives offered as a dealer-installed option (and maybe even higher). I mean, it was an unbelievable number so, undoubtedly, anything with those kind of gears would scream, but, obviously, only up to a certain speed. And I think they were Chevys, too.
So, although they might not have been OEM, I can see some auto journo hack finding some outrageously low 0-60 times from a low-circulation magazine review of a ‘dealer’ car for the stats for his book.
My Cadillac history book indicates that a 4.75:1 ratio was available, mostly for San Francisco. 4.39:1 was standard, with 4.07:1 optional and 3.47:1 for very high speed (100+). This was from the 1930-1940 era. 0-60 was 20 seconds (V16 I think).
Well, you’re going way back. I thought we were talking about the muscle car era. Don’t forget, the further you go back, the taller the tires were. Those 40s Cadillacs rode on very tall 16″ tires. In the 60s, the rubber was drastically smaller, on 14″ wheels. That alone accounts for the change in gearing.
For the sixties, I don’t know with certainty, but I know axle ratios around 4:1 being available (like 4.11:1 perhaps). The Corvette brochures show a 4.56:1 available. With the overdrive manual transmission I think a 3.70:1 was standard (only available with either the six or small (283) V8). The 4.75:1 ratio limited the V16 to a top speed of about 85 MPH. A 4.56:1 ratio on wheels/tires of the 60’s would require about 7000 RPMs to reach 120 MPH.
KiwiBryce,
I used to have a muscle car book published maybe in the 1980’s by the Consumer Guide, that had little charts the showed the muscle cars performance. I recall in the book it listed the 1962 Chevrolet 409 (probably a Bel Air which had the light bubble top hardtop) with the 409 cid engine as having a 0-60 time for 4.0 secs. It also listed the 1/4 mile time, but I don’t recall that off hand. It did not source the times for that particular car.
FWIW, Chevrolet did offer light weight aluminum body parts for the ’62 Chevrolet to reduce weight. That said, in factory trim most sources listed these cars as having the 1/4 mile times in the mid to high 14 second range at nearly 100 mph depending on gearing. When raced these cars were running mid to high 12’s at 110 – 115 mph range. Perhaps these were these race cars were the ones that book was quoting with the 4.0 second 0-60 times.
“But the Corvette’s status as the world’s fastest car at the time was secured.”
Was it faster than the Testa Rossa?
I don’t know, but the TR was a strictly race car, not a production street car. Apples vs. oranges.
I think the Jaguar XKSS would be faster
Maybe not as much apples vs. oranges as one might first think. While the TR would likely be considered nothing short of ‘brutal’ when driven on the street, it’s not like a fuelie Corvette (especially one specifically set-up to go as fast as possible) was a luxury vehicle, either.
Of course it is. The TR was a race car, pure and simple, built in extremely tiny numbers for one purpose only. It didn’t even have a proper windshield, or any other normally-required street-legal equipment.
The Corvette was a regular production car, based on Chevy’s passenger car chassis and engine. The 283 FI engine was available in any ’57 Chevy sedan or wagon, and perfectly tractable in normal driving, and idled at 900 rpm. No, it obviously wasn’t a “luxury car”; it was a regular production sports car, perfectly capable of doing anything a passenger could do. Unless one ordered the special suspension, it rode like any other ’57 Corvette. This was not some one-off of limited production “special”. Just a different version of the engine.
Try driving a TR across the country and through rush hour traffic.
It’s like comparing a new production Corvette to the Audi LeMans racer (which the TR was). Apples and oranges.
I guess it was because I didn’t see the word ‘production’ in the ‘world’s fastest car at the time’ statement. Without that qualifying word, it pretty much encompasses anything that was built and driven, regardless of how genuinely streetable it might actually have been.
Here is a 1985 Testarossa(link) test. 0-60 is 5 sec and the 1/4 is 13.3.
Wrong Testarossa
I feel pretty good now with my ’91 Camry 2.0, faster than a ‘Vette! (I just won’t tell ’em what year!)
I’m enjoying your little “what’s heavier, a kg of lead or a kg of cotton?” game.
BTW, homely as that Camry looks, it’s peppy and plenty fun with a M/T. If you have the inclination… 3SGTE swap + some tuning= sleeper. What’s the 1/4 mile on those.
I’d still choose the Vette. You can make it stupid fast with little money. Or LS-FTW (© Sajeev) and… you get the point.
From your previous article, I think one of my friends with a WRX would be disappointed if someone showed up at the dragstrip in a recent V6 Camry.
Jack Baruth mentioned in article once having trouble in a stoplight drag with his aircooled 911 vs a camry V6.
Looking at the image of the Vette and Camry brought to mind a Richard Pryor story about running from bullies. He said he developed a cool run as not to loose face in front of the girls. ” Look! Richards running, Yes! but he’s cool”. I’ll take the Vette over the Camry any day.
Odds of the guy in the 82 vette getting laid? Pretty good. The 87 Camry? Not so good.
Well….A couple of rationalizations -First automotively speaking 1987 was not the best of times, and:
The Countach was -never- the fastest car- in any measure at any time of its production. Not fast, not quickest, never the best over any road course. The Countach has always been about ostentatious conspicious consumption. Hey! Look at ME!
So….
However, the incredible progess that computerization has permitted in both engine design and materials cannot be denied. The 1957 Corvette was designed by men with slide rules, and the 1987 Countach was designed by men with pocket calculators; the 2014 Camry was designed with super computers. The difference between the technological state of the art in engine design in 2014 and 1987 is much much vaster than the difference was between 1957 and 1987. Moore’s Law which states computing power doubles every two years can can give us some concept of the difference in design capabilities between 1987 and 2014. However, Moore’s Law wasn’t even formulated until 1970. The Apollo space missions were almost entirely designed on slide rules. I don’t think you can remove an artifact from its historical context and fairly judge it by current standards.
I am really enjoying this series of comparisons. I hope there are more of these to come.
+1, they have been fun. Especially cars that are so mysterious yet legendary like the Countach.
The boys at Top Gear ran a comparison in the same spirit a few years ago: E-Type Jag and an Aston Martin DB5 against a 2.4L Honda Accord. It’s at 2:55 in the link below. Or just sit back and enjoy the whole film!
http://www.streetfire.net/video/079-top-gear-jaguar-etype-aston-martin-db5_184129.htm
…the memory banks dimly recall a contemporary road test time of zero to 60 in 7.2 seconds for a full-bodied single 4 bbl 440/727 Mopar (Roadrunner?) circa ’69/’70…back then anything under ten seconds was considered ‘quick’.
I don’t think the streamlined lighter weight early E-types and Astons were any quicker than that big block Mopar, if as quick, up to sixty. .
…remember we are talking about a full-sized steel-bodied car with a big block cast iron engine ..and with regard to the legendary ‘409’, didn’t it have just more or less ‘flat’ cylinder heads ..with decent flowing heads not arriving until the later 396 cube-and-above family of the GM big block engines?
Yeah the 409 had Heron style heads, zero to sixty is such an overated thing as to be nearly useless in real life 45- 70 is real time overtaking acceleration times as for merging into traffic I have to lift off after on ramps to slot into traffic in my Hillman and it aint fast.
Agreed, 0-60 is marketing fluff
0-60 was very important for the young guys cruising the strip on a friday night. Their little show off races were basically just that…zero to sixty when the light turns green. Sometimes a little more. Maybe zero to 80.
Certainly 0-60 times by themselves are not particularly meaningful. Quarter mile performance is more useful. Your 45-70 is possibly meanful, but for a manual transmission do you downshift, and if so what gear? A automatic will downshift to what it is programmed to do.
Some cars require a quarter mile to get to 60.
In most tests those accelaration times are mentioned in both 5th and 4th gear (in a car with a 5 speed manual, obviously).
I agree with Bryce. Good acceleration from roughly 40 to 80 mph is way more important than from 0-60. For exactly the reasons he mentions.
…well it indicates the power and capability of the car basically ..the quicker to sixty, the more powerful (and traction bestowed) it is ..i think it is a great and universal yardstick measurement of a car’s performance actually (and has been since whenever) ..sorry if you guys don’t agree, but i’m not buying into ‘zero to sixty’ means nuffink ..that be BS ! … : )
if a vehicle is quick from zero to sixty, do you think it won’t also be quick from 40 to 70 or whatever?? …really??? … get real guys – c’mon now already ! ..lol
: )
Most turbo diesels are not very good at 0-60 mph sprints. But they’re damn good at accelerating from 50 to 80 mph while leaving the stick in 5th.
..diesel fuel is thermally more efficient true! ..but it is also ‘slow-burning! ..show me a diesel engine capable of running over 6,000 rpm ..it simply doesn’t exist to my knowledge ..whereas a petrol/gasoline-powered engine will rev out to 11,000rpm (if practicable, or even more, in some cases) ..and this means extraordinarily higher power outputs than diesel can ever produce cc for cc ..quite simply a forced induction petrol-fuelled engine will hose over any equivalent capacity forced induction diesel-fuelled engine, both in power AND in torque !
..and diesel is filthy stuff
have you ever enjoyed doing a 5,000km oil change in ANY diesel, regardless of age?? I doubt it . .
even a higher mileage petrol engine will have reasonably ‘clean’ oil after 5,000kms, even more true for an LPG or propane-fuelled engine !
for me, it’s high octane petrol fuel every time !
diesel is for ‘non-greenies’ who love slow noisy clattering dirty vehicles…lol
(excluding service vehicles which require the economy of diesel and don’t need to reach extremely high speeds in short spaces of time..lol)
Craig, that’s the good old “diesel vs gasoline” discussion which has also been here regularly and extensively. Paul N. wrote an interesting and comprehensive CC-article about the subject a while ago.
Oil change is every 15,000 km by the way. And yes, the oil already looks pitch black shortly after the oil change. Comes with the package, certainly with 280,000 (trouble-free) km on the odometer.
I like the qualities of common rail turbo diesels. And you prefer gasoline engines. Everybody happy.
This reminds me of an article titled, Soccer Mom’s Revenge, found at Grass roots motor sports. In this article they used an Honda odyssy minivan against a 356 Porsche and an E-type Jaguar, interesting read!
One of the magazines did a similar test here where a Toyota Tarago (overseas equivalent of the Sienna, slightly smaller) saw off a Porsche Boxster at the local drag strip