Big blocks in the 80's vs. rich kids....???

[Mikej89]

I'm probably romanticizing things but i love to hear stories like "in 1987 the pretty boy blonde QB of our HS football team was given a brand new 5.0 Mustang GT convertible from his rich parents but he lost to some grease monkey who took out his dad's 396 Chevelle from the pull barn...."

I mean gawd; in the 80's a smogger 267-305 G-body could dust 75% of cars on the road!

 

[olds307 and 403]

Yeah, the Mustang were the King of the Road in the late 80's early 90's when I was a teenager. Yeah, the rich kids got 5L HO 5 spd cars. I always thought they were ugly, didn't care how fast they were. My Ex BIL spanked a bunch of them in a 71 Chevelle with a done up 327, that car was fast but he blew the motor. The cars from the mid 70's were huge and underpowered. The late 70's, early 80's cars were embarrassing. The only thing a 267 chebby could beat was a 3.8 or Olds 260. We had an 82 Thunderbird with the 265 getting work done at a Ford dealer, it would have dusted the 267, surprisingly quick. It must have had the optional gearing or just been a good example. Most Japanese 4 cyl cars were way lighter and had a 5 spd and reasonable gearing. My 95 HP 1980 Toyota 1/4 ton weighed nothing, it was surprisingly quick. Add a 1000 pounds, terrible gearing and a V8, 260 or 267 barely made more HP in the G body than that 2.2 Toyota 4 cyl. It would have been neck and neck. The Camaro and Firebird, GM did weird things in those, unless you got certain years of the 5L, had to be TPI, not the TBI and a 5 spd or the TPI 350/700R4, they got left in the dust. It had a dog reputation compared to the Mustang but looked so much better, especially the Firebird with the body mouldings added. I rode with a guy who had a gorgeous red 92 5L TPI 5 spd Firebird with a few extras, it would have given any stockish 5L Mustang's a really good race, pretty quick and looked so much better. Our Oldsmobile and their V8's were the only cars we owned that weren't garbage. Our Ford's from the late 70's were terrible, just junk. Our Dodge's were finicky, like all Dodge's, ran like sh*t. Our GM trucks were Ok but didn't last near as many miles as the Olds V8's. Vehicles had a terrible 10 years, 75 to about 85 weren't great for performance.

 

[bracketchev1221]

Well my high school story actually involves 2 g-bodies. There was a kid in school that raced around in an early 80’s Grand Prix and it made noise. It had centerline auto drag wheels and mufflers at the rear end. I didn’t pay much attention to it. He was in one of my classes and was complaining that he got pulled over, “because it was basically a race car with license plates”. This got my interest and I had to know more. Turned out his uncle owned a junk yard and they pulled a 455 out of a station wagon or something and put an intake carb and headers. Apparently that was his definition of a race car. Me, coming from a drag racing background with my dad selling his Super Gas Nova just a couple years earlier tried to keep a low profile. Mostly because my dad threatened me if I ever got in trouble with the police with my car. My 78 Malibu had an 11:1 355 with a .533/.555 250/[email protected] solid flat tappet cam and could go low 12’s on the street. So one day I stayed home from school and me and my buddy drove up to the school with my car basically hoping I’d find the Grand Prix. Well I did and him and his friends laughed that there was no way a little 355 was going to outrun his 455 race engine. I ran him twice once from a roll and then from a dead stop and I had him covered by 3 cars by mid second gear both times so they were short races.

 

[olds307 and 403]

I almost forgot Jason's 78 Cutlass I believe, he had. His family owned a garage, his Uncle had a 69 Firebird. He swapped multiple Olds 455's and added nitrous until they blew. He was mentioning insanely fast speeds. Their dealer cost was like $150 at the time. He also swapped a 454 in 78 Camaro. He blew the stock TH350 the first hard pull. He heard the gears go zing, zing, zing then nothing. There was almost no GN's around, the G bodies couldn't compete. Three of my BIL had G Monte Carlo's, the 78 claimed it was a 305 2 bbl, pretty sure it was an older 350 2bbl, probably the quickest of the 3. The 81 305 4bbl was Ok but the 78 beat it, they raced. The 86 305 was decent, had better exhaust but he knew better to even attempt racing 5L Mustang's.

 

[303'505rollin]

Only a couple of dudes has mustangs in HS mostly every was all about Hondas, I had a 93 Silverado z71 single cab step side I was paying for working after school, I never got tickets but my dad's Gf was always ratting me out said I was flying all over the place. Any other muscle cars were novas 68-74 in a stink bug stance and jacked up shocks

 

[ck80]

No 5.slo cars at my high school at all. I'm thinking back but we had a 68 firebird, 69 gmc flatbed, 51 chevy truck, and 73 Ford pickup that were probably among the 'fastest.' My relatively new regal was one of the slower, albeit nicer, cars on the lot. (Nothing that prevented my tearing up the lawn outside the superintendents office instead of waiting behind busses to use the parking lot asphalt though mind you.)

 

[Ribbedroof]

My high school rides were 72 Chevelle SS 350, and then a 70 SS454 Chevelle SS. Missed a 68 428/4 speed GTO by a half-day for my first car.

Only rich kids I recall were the Olds/Pontiac dealer's kid and his buddies that worked for their dad's concrete business. They all drove new Black/gold T/A SEs

Everybody else drove the family's spare car or their rusty musclecar (NE Iowa in the 70's/80s was brutal to cars)

 

[DRIVEN]

My parking lot was full of lame cars. Mostly stock Civics and Jettas. A couple BMWs. Nobody raced. There was a guy a year ahead of me with a G-Malibu that was pretty cool. Another guy had a '56 F100. A buddy's girlfriend drove her dad's Scarab Z on occasion. I got my '35 pickup when I was a junior but didn't drive it to school much. There just weren't many car people there.

 

[86LK]

at least you had vehicles. we couldn't afford another vehicle, so I didn't buy one for myself until my 4th year of college in 1989. but as for high school we had all the old cars from the 70's. One friend had a Pinto, another had an old Honda Civic, one kid had a Porsche that looked like a Triumph....(googling...) just like this one (except white in color)...Porsche 914

 

[Ribbedroof]

914s....hated them in the 70s, kinda appeal to my weird tastes now...but. RUST BUCKETS