I wasn't being an *ss and please don't degrade this into name calling Randy, it doesn't help your argument, just stating the cold truth. The style, character, and feel are just pure nostalgia.Though I agree newer cars are ugly but that is only opinion and taste which has no effect on power or performance in any way. As much as I like Gbodies, they were not intended to be sports cars, and are not built that way. Despite being ugly to me, modern cars are built so much better than anything from the 80s. Even the Gbody frame is pretty thin, and when I changed out my body bushings I could wiggle the frame rails all around willy nilly by one hand with ease. Look up a guy named MAP on MCSS.com, he can point out what a soft platform G bodies are, they were built for comfort, not performance. You could spend big bucks on the new more rigid aftermarket Gbody frames that really improves handling and come with LS mounts. But by the time you spend all that money on a aftermarket frame, LS swap, brake and handling upgrade, you could buy a new car that will still out perform the Gbody anyway or any other older car.
I'm happy for you.LS swaps maybe are easier now than they were due to greater aftermarket support, but they still aren't cheap, simple, or all that easy if you need to do a legal swap. There are some illegal shortcuts one can do with an LS swap to save money and labor but that is not an option for everyone. The tech is completely different and you pretty much are changing the car from pre OBD to more complex OBD2 and really changing the car's classic character. You pretty much have to change everything out for a LS, mounts, crossmember, exhaust, etc. That is besides having to relearn everything to be able to work on and tune a LS motor or rely more on hiring outside professionals to do alot more of the work for you.
My old 1986 carbed SBC starts right up and idles fine in the heat, cold, rain, and I can't tell any difference between it's drive ability vs more modern EFI cars. Other than weaker brakes and handling than modern stuff it's not any harder to drive engine wise. Heck even my old 1946 tractor still starts right up on the first crank in the heat, cold, rain, snow, etc and idles fine and has no problem driving a 5 foot wide mower deck though 6 foot tall weeds. My point was simply that the LS is not as superior to the gen 1 block as you would like to believe it is. LS add ons cost more, not to mention the initial cost of installing it into your older car. The only reason the LS produces so much power in stock form is they all came from the factory with good parts. The stock cam's have .500 lift on them for crying out loud. The fact is if you put good parts in a gen 1 block you can make great hp just like an LS, and saying that you can't is false. Go to your local track and see how many people are running great times and making great power with "old" blocks. This entire arguement that an LS can do so many things that a gen 1 block can't is completely untrue. Same thing goes for the LT1. It's just a gen 1 block with reverse cooling and optispark that was only put there to fit under the cowl. Otherwise they are basically the same as a Gen 1