C6ZO6

Bottom line is that the ZO6 is a true machine made with near perfection. GM outdid Ford in the bang-for-buck department on a showroom car. 95% of the ford fans who are sour are upset because GM's success over the last 10 years basically forced SVT to shut down because they were spending more than they made. And they hate to admit it.

There are only 2 Fords I like. The Cobras and the old fox bodies.

If it weren't for those, I would probably be a GM guy.

Cool thread here. I look forward to reading the one on the future Supervette vs. the retired Ford GT.




Old Video
http://videos.streetfire.net/search/ford+gt+vs/1/fcd20abf-dc8d-49de-a946-bece142531cb.htm

How has this thread become the most posted in the GT500 section?? Kinda funny!

I want your ZO6

RICKS said:

Worrying about how well cars like that launch from a dead start, I mean, who cares?? Racing streetlight to streetlight is Honda-boy fodder.

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But on the other hand, one could also say - who cares about racing from roll? I mean really, the Z06 and GT are being bought mostly by 50-somethin' year olds - most couldn't care less if one car or the other pulled 3 or 4 car lengths "fruma roll". On a side note, roll racing is commonly, but not always associated with "Honda-boys" because it negates their torque steering, tractionless FWD layouts.

RICKS said:

When you own a car like a Z06, you commonly have fun hauling a$$ on back roads, nailing it through a few gears on straightaways, always getting that good 2nd gear pull leaving businesses, and basically enjoying the car everywhere you drive. BUT ASK YOURSELF... How many times do you do a FULL DRAG LAUNCH from a flippin' stop light or stop sign? How about, pretty much NEVER.... That 60-feet of tactil skill and applied engineering never really gets played with at all on the street, so how is it relevant to evaluating a car that you're going to primarily street-drive??

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If I'm being honest, I would also ask myself - how many times do I exceed 90 mph on public roads? Never. How many times do I street race? Never(anymore). So is having that extra 40-50hp that would help me pull 3-4"lengths" on someone from 100mph-150mph going to be noticed? Probably never. I would just enjoy driving a good looking car that is pretty agile on 60mph back roads.

I do have a little fun from stop signs on back roads because it allows me to experience the car pulling 100% for a lengthy amount of time without going 10000mph. I'll usually launch it the best I can, but not aggressively or with tire spin - just in a sporty type manner. I'll then pretty much floor it through 1st and 2nd. If I'm out on the interstate, it limits what I can do. When you're already going 60mph, what can you do? You can downshift and go to about 90mph, but that's not very fun. Now if I'm on the salt flats going 0-160+, it may be a different story

RICKS said:

Watching street cars launch at a drag strip is like watching paint dry. Even a 2.0 second 60-foot looks pathetic watching from the stands. The drama is when the cars are out of the gates, hooked-up, and full-power boogying. Then, "it's on", and that close race where one car nudges another is alot of fun to watch.

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I agree, but for most people they only have one "fun car" and drag strips are usually plentiful. It's a good way to go flog a car for all its worth in a legal/safe manner. And then if you've got a few buddies with fun street cars, the light hearted trash talking is sure to ensue....especially if your both fans of different brands. Once someone starts building a perpose built drag or purpose built "roll" car, it takes some of the competitive fun away. If I buy a Z06 and my buddy has a GT -- we are definately going to race at the track.

The GT will get you laid quicker.

The 07 Z06 has about a 6:1 weight to power ratio, while the 07 Corvette has a 8:1 weight to power ratio. The 07 GT500 is about 8:1 as well.

This whole standing-start or roll thing has gotten ridiculous, and is missing the point. When judging two cars, I like to eliminate variables that don't really add-up to real-world driving fun or performance. Spinning tires is alot of fun, but if the car doesn't boogie after it hooks up, then you're just "spinning your wheels", pun-intended... There's NOTHING more admirable or "real" between racing from a standstill, or a roll. Both are valid, there's no stigma on either unless you enjoy fantasizing that there is. The only reality is that if you're starting from a dead-start, traction will be key, and a slower car with better traction will be able to take the lead... for a bit of time at least.. There's nothing more to be said after that.

Starting from a roll is just starting from a roll, de-emphasizing traction, and placing all the emphasis on power, weight and gearing. There's not a damn thing un-glorious about it, unless you spent your late nights as a child dreaming about rubber compounds and tire manufacturers, instead of engines and camshafts, which would make you a weird kid...

3-4 lengths is ALOT, the type of performance advantage it takes to rack up that kind of lead within a 1/4 mile or by 120 mph is the kind of performance advantage that you can feel seat-of-the-pants and enjoy at all speeds, at all driving styles, whether you're just piddling around town, or going for broke at the track..

If you think that the old farts who buy these cars don't care about 3-4 lengths from a roll or from a standstill, you're highly dillusional. It has nothing to do with age, it has to do with some people (of the Ned Flanders mindset) saying "good gravy, that's enough power for me!!", and others that are after all the athletic ability they can harness, and find more fun with more acceleration throughout the spectrum. The car that makes speed happen EASIER, is usually the more fun car, in my experience. That's what makes the adrenenine go, is the ease at which you can create the g's.

That's the misunderstanding, that a half second on the strip or several car-lengths on the street only "mean something" when your pedal is on the floor. But the fact is that performance is something you enjoy at ALL throttle positions, i.e. the fact that a Z06 can run 11's at the track means that it's likely to be one hell of alot more fun on the street at 1/4 throttle than a Geo Metro at 1/4 throttle. If a car is clearly superior when pushed flat-out, then in all likelihood that car is going to FEEL STRONGER, noticeably, in all situations, both every-day communting, and every-now-and-then nutty fast back-roads, and hence be more fun to drive.

Anyhow, whether the race starts from a dead stop, or from a roll, either way you hope you've got enough room to let the cars duke it out, not just have a "grip contest", at which point we all may as well drive 4WD trucks, or get into rally cars like the EVO or STI.

BTW, I live in the country. 90mph comes and goes for me daily...

SVT98Snake said:

Bottom line is that the ZO6 is a true machine made with near perfection. GM outdid Ford in the bang-for-buck department on a showroom car. 95% of the ford fans who are sour are upset because GM's success over the last 10 years basically forced SVT to shut down because they were spending more than they made. And they hate to admit it.

There are only 2 Fords I like. The Cobras and the old fox bodies.

If it weren't for those, I would probably be a GM guy.

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+1

The base level 07 Corvette has the equivalent weight to power ratio of a GT500, so I don't understand what the fuss is about regarding the GT500. The Z06 would blow it away but with a higher price tag when you remove the ADM's for the GT500.

BLUE03GT said:

FORD GT BONE STOCK with DR's will run low 10's at over 134mph.... whats ur point?

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That is the funniest thing I have ever heard!

metroplex said:

+1

The base level 07 Corvette has the equivalent weight to power ratio of a GT500, so I don't understand what the fuss is about regarding the GT500. The Z06 would blow it away but with a higher price tag when you remove the ADM's for the GT500.

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Holy ****, I love this site, it is as almost as funny as comedy central. Our Basic Vette, the C6 beats your pride n' joy, this so called GT500 for about half the price, what a joke, I have never seen so many 13 sec slips out of a so called "500hp car". You poor ferd guys! Why don't you take new Z06 vs a new GT500, it is almost as funny as my car vs a new GT!

SVT98Snake said:

Bottom line is that the ZO6 is a true machine made with near perfection. GM outdid Ford in the bang-for-buck department on a showroom car. 95% of the ford fans who are sour are upset because GM's success over the last 10 years basically forced SVT to shut down because they were spending more than they made. And they hate to admit it.

There are only 2 Fords I like. The Cobras and the old fox bodies.

If it weren't for those, I would probably be a GM guy.

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Man, I couldn't agree more!!!! I am now looking for a 03-04 Cobra, or maybe after the lame craze of the GT500 flushes, I might buy one of those. So yall know, I have owned 3 Ferds, 2 5.0's and a 97 Cobra. All SS meat, no joke!

SSlither said:

Holy ****, I love this site, it is as almost as funny as comedy central. Our Basic Vette, the C6 beats your pride n' joy, this so called GT500 for about half the price, what a joke, I have never seen so many 13 sec slips out of a so called "500hp car". You poor ferd guys! Why don't you take new Z06 vs a new GT500, it is almost as funny as my car vs a new GT!

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I don't see the humor. If you compare the weight to power ratios, the 2007 base Corvette is comparable to the 2007 Shelby GT500. The 2007 Z06 is even lighter than the base Corvette, with 100 more hp. Basically, the 2007 Z06 is the GT500 on a 1000 lb diet. The biggest drawback to the GT500 is its weight. A 95-97 4-door full sized Crown Vic weighs LESS than the 2007 GT500. What's wrong with that picture?

A 07 Mustang GT found its place in my stables :SNSign:
FYI, our family has owned nothing but Fords for the past 30 years but the Corvette is an impressive car nonetheless: heads up display, higher quality leather, magnetic ride control, advanced stability control, and engines that pump out gobs of torque without using a blower.

3-4 car lengths up to 150mph+ would hardly be noticeable during normal driving - call me old, but getting my kicks from pulling 3-4 "lengths" at speeds well over 100mph lost its enjoyment many years ago (so many other things more important that I don't even think about it). Does that mean I'd take a Metro over a Z06? Well, that's apples-to-oranges of course. Those same 3-4 "lengths" translated to 0-60, 5-60, 30-70 etc., times is equivalent to a .1 or .2 advantage for the faster car. Wow – something couldn’t be less significant. At 1/4 throttle, even the best drivers would have trouble differentiating the two after back-to-back sessions at the wheel. Neither car will feel “stronger” and accelerate “easier”.

mattkimsey said:

3-4 car lengths up to 150mph+ would hardly be noticeable during normal driving - call me old, but getting my kicks from pulling 3-4 "lengths" at speeds well over 100mph lost its enjoyment many years ago (so many other things more important that I don't even think about it). Does that mean I'd take a Metro over a Z06? Well, that's apples-to-oranges of course. Those same 3-4 "lengths" translated to 0-60, 5-60, 30-70 etc., times is equivalent to a .1 or .2 advantage for the faster car. Wow – something couldn’t be less significant. At 1/4 throttle, even the best drivers would have trouble differentiating the two after back-to-back sessions at the wheel. Neither car will feel “stronger” and accelerate “easier”.

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Jeez, where do I start?

So, you don't run at a 1/4 mile track (where 60mph is just getting hooked and rolling in 2nd gear...)

You're too sophisticated to exceed 70 mph on the street... (I'm not endorsing reckless driving either, but there's a point where you may as well stay home and order pizza the rest of your life)

And here we are, on a GT500 forum, where the minimum h.p. is 500, the car absolutely BOILS the tires through 1st gear and most of 2nd unless you feather at fractioned-throttle, and you're continually talking about 0-60 times, and how you don't really notice or care about a 10th of a second within that silly envelope.

The only point I can glean out of all your non-tracking, non-racing, 0-60 is all that's relevant in real-life... just stabbing it through a couple of gears is all I ever do... is that a car like the GT500, or C6 Corvette, or Z06, or Ford GT, is indeed overkill for your needs. You don't need the big brakes in your envelope. You don't need the aero development in your envelope. You don't need the handling in your envelope.

I stand by my original claim, that 0-60 for a GT500 is like running an Olympic sprint for 5 meters. Just worthless. And if your argument is, "that's all you can do safely on the street", then so be it, then the car is a worthless street car because, following your argument, you just can't begin to USE it without forgetting what's important in life. If that's the case, why buy the damn thing? To look cool and do occassional smoky 1st-gear launches? Shoot, why not then buy a Porsche GT3 RS to take the kids to Dairy Queen?

High-powered muscle cars and sports cars aren't about stoplight to stoplight, EVEN IF THAT'S all that's SAFE on public roads. They are about extreme performance, that admittedly, you've got to hit a track to safely explore. But if you also live in an area where you've got some good wide-open rural expanses, you can have some pretty slick fun in these cars without making Al Gore get a mysterious twitch. Even if my car is fairly obscene for public roads, that's not the point. The point is the fun the car offers you behind the wheel, whatever your driving style may be, and whatever your senses communicate. Everbody's different. Some cars feel soft and slow to some, and scare the daylights out of others, it's all where you've been, and where you're going I suppose. And if I can easily discern the difference between two cars that pull up to 150 with 3-4 lenghts separating them, don't drill me because I can tell the difference like night and day. Heck, I get disappointed when the weather turns warm, because I can feel the incremental h.p. drop in my daily commute.

The performance renaissance we're currently enjoying has evolved by one car besting another one tenth at a time. It wasn't THAT long ago that us older Mustang players thought that the '87 5.0L Mustang exceeded our wildest dreams... Now, I drive a stock one of those, and it's a stone-plug. Besides, getting back to the original contention, it's not whether or not two cars are only a 10th apart, it's whether or not 0-60 is ludicrous and laughable for BOTH cars involved. If you don't have enough room to race two 500 h.p. cars on street tires, then just don't race and save yourself the ticket worry. Don't go 0-60 or 0-70, and think you've done something worthy of discussion... Leave that to the SRT-4 and Cobalt SS guys who can actually stick-it and reach a conclusion that isn't almost exclusively determined by grip.

RICKS said:

So, you don't run at a 1/4 mile track (where 60mph is just getting hooked and rolling in 2nd gear...)

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I do sometimes, but it's for fun - not about getting the best 60 possible.

RICKS said:

You're too sophisticated to exceed 70 mph on the street... (I'm not endorsing reckless driving either, but there's a point where you may as well stay home and order pizza the rest of your life)

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No. I said:

how many times do I exceed 90 mph on public roads?

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Getting well over 90mph is where I draw the line on the street. If that is sophistication than so be it.

RICKS said:

The only point I can glean out of all your non-tracking, non-racing, 0-60 is all that's relevant in real-life... just stabbing it through a couple of gears is all I ever do... is that a car like the GT500, or C6 Corvette, or Z06, or Ford GT, is indeed overkill for your needs. You don't need the big brakes in your envelope. You don't need the aero development in your envelope. You don't need the handling in your envelope.

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These cars are overkill on the street for everyone, but that isn't what they are about. They are about looks, exclusivity, bragging rights and having fun within the limits of a street car. The person reaching even 80% of what these cars are capable of on the streets doesn't need to be driving.

RICKS said:

I stand by my original claim, that 0-60 for a GT500 is like running an Olympic sprint for 5 meters. Just worthless. And if your argument is, "that's all you can do safely on the street", then so be it, then the car is a worthless street car because, following your argument, you just can't begin to USE it without forgetting what's important in life. If that's the case, why buy the damn thing? To look cool and do occassional smoky 1st-gear launches? Shoot, why not then buy a Porsche GT3 RS to take the kids to Dairy Queen?

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See the reasons listed above. I'm never going to go over 100mph on my way to get ice cream, drive it like I'm on the 'Ring on skinny backroads with who knows what around the next corner, or do 60-0 stopping competitions up to the next red light. I wouldn't do that in any car, but that isn't why I buy street cars. However, I can still have fun in a performance car.

Having that extra tenth 0-60 5-70 etc, is pointless to me. 3-4 car lengths up to 150mph is also pointless because like I said - I'm not going over 100mph. It may be fun in a bragging contest between friends, but it's not going to register on the ol' fun meter during daily driving at speeds under 100mph. An additional one or two tenths of a second 0-60, 5-70, etc, is like claiming a catback exhaust totally transforms a Mustang GT.

RICKS said:

Now, I drive a stock one of those, and it's a stone-plug. Besides, getting back to the original contention, it's not whether or not two cars are only a 10th apart, it's whether or not 0-60 is ludicrous and laughable for BOTH cars involved. If you don't have enough room to race two 500 h.p. cars on street tires, then just don't race and save yourself the ticket worry. Don't go 0-60 or 0-70, and think you've done something worthy of discussion... Leave that to the SRT-4 and Cobalt SS guys who can actually stick-it and reach a conclusion that isn't almost exclusively determined by grip.

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I agree 0-60, 0-70 is no more noteworthy than "pulling" a few lengths on the highway. Everything isn't always about besting the other guys car - no matter what someone will have a faster car. That doesn't prevent me from having fun though. If a SRT-4 has more grip that's fine with me - I'm not trying to have the ultimate hole shot car or the ultimate highway screamer. I will say that sometimes - driving a slow car fast is more fun than driving a fast car slow.

Suffice it to say that you're buying performance cars for some different reasons and motivations than me.

These cars are overkill on the street for everyone, but that isn't what they are about. They are about looks, exclusivity, bragging rights and having fun within the limits of a street car. The person reaching even 80% of what these cars are capable of on the streets doesn't need to be driving.

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I could care less about bragging rights, I like the performance because I enjoy exploiting it, exploring it, feeling it, being adrenelized by it, and I love driving, and I appreciate good engineering, execution and quality. It has little to do with the dork next to me revving his engine.

I could care less about exclusivity as it may concern others, but I do like exclusivity for my own reasons. I do like owning something rare, but I just don't care if anyone else knows that I own it, if that makes any sense at all...

Looks are important, but only to me... I'm uncomfortable when I'm getting eyeballed in traffic, but on the other hand, I'm a HUGE fan of automobile styling as art. As such, I buy cars that are beautiful to me, and if people on the street dig it, that's good, just please don't stare at me like my hair is on fire...

The safe operation of a performance car, on the street, is directly proportional to the skill and savvy and common sense of the driver. There's alot of pavement out there, much of it with extremely good sight-lines and almost no traffic. There's nothing anti-social about exploiting those good opportunities. Besides, a properly skilled and experienced performance car driver gets in ALOT less fender-benders than your average Joe Dunce who's out of his ability-realm just by being in traffic. I can't tell you how many times that by utilizing 99.9% of my car's potential, be it braking, or handling, or even acceleration, I'VE AVOIDED certain disaster. Don't blame the car, or say that it's potential shouldn't ever see public roads. Criticize drivers. If a person has high ability, and a good head on their shoulders, they can handle a Z06 and I'll never worry about them mowing over my kids. I'm far more worried about soccer-moms with cell phones.

O.K., that's it. I don't think we're that far off in some respects... Besides, the discussion was really about measuring car's performance. Whether or not you can safely do that on the street doesn't really matter or apply in my mind...

RICKS said:

The safe operation of a performance car, on the street, is directly proportional to the skill and savvy and common sense of the driver. There's alot of pavement out there, much of it with extremely good sight-lines and almost no traffic. There's nothing anti-social about exploiting those good opportunities. Besides, a properly skilled and experienced performance car driver gets in ALOT less fender-benders than your average Joe Dunce who's out of his ability-realm just by being in traffic. I can't tell you how many times that by utilizing 99.9% of my car's potential, be it braking, or handling, or even acceleration, I'VE AVOIDED certain disaster. Don't blame the car, or say that it's potential shouldn't ever see public roads. Criticize drivers. If a person has high ability, and a good head on their shoulders, they can handle a Z06 and I'll never worry about them mowing over my kids. I'm far more worried about soccer-moms with cell phones.

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You can be a great driver (a lot of people *think* they are), but that doesn't make the street a controlled envionment or a race track. There are many reasons why this is this case. I've driven some very bad performing cars and I've never needed to use 99% of the cars "performance" to avoid a situation. I consider myself a very defensive driver and I like to avoid situations by anticipating what can happen. By doing this, I believe I could drive just about any car safely.

O.K., I give up Ned Flanders... In retrospect, I don't know how I've made it to 40 without a wreck, since by virtue of having some track experience, I must be a menace to society and WAY too over-confident on the road.

Defensive driving is not a cure-all, it's not a replacement for knowing how to handle a car at its limits. Being a skilled driver, from a performance standpoint, does not default to being a reckless driver on the street. That's a completely different matter.

Fact is, you can be the most defensive-driver in the world, and you're not going to anticipate a truck-tire explosion directly in front of you on a busy interstate. You're not going see that drunk driver running a blind stop sign until the very-last-nano-second. The fact that the road IS a very uncontrolled environment only amplifies the advantages of having a high-performance car (in all aspects, not just straight-line), and knowing how to use it at its limits. When bad **** happens, that no level of defensive driving or divine premonition can anticipate, one's understanding and familiarity of the car's limits and abilities is often the difference between safe avoidance or a deadly barrel-roll, or sliding off the road into who-knows-what. Numerous times in my life, the car I was in, and my ability to use it, was the sliver of difference that kept me from being swept-up by an oblivious road-troll or tire carcass.

I'm not condoning reckless driving on busy streets. For people that live in metropolitan areas where traffic and congestion and pedestrians are a fact of driving, I can understand the trepidation. But for alot of us, we frequent stretches of road where the only living beings at-risk are ourselves, and whatever Racoons, Possums, Armodillos and deer may be in the general vicinity.

If you want a high-performance car, but you're not really into pushing it to any limits, be it a race track or not, go ahead and have fun, who cares? But don't be so presumptuous to tell others that all that matters with the car is banging a couple gears leaving the Steak & Shake within your own tiny realm of driving...

If you want to buy a Bazooka to shoot tin cans off a fence post in your back yard, more power to you.

But don't insinuate that those who have high performance cars, that actually USE them on occassion, that actually DO learn and enjoy the limits, actually DO keep safety and respect for others at the top of their minds, are irrelevant, unsafe and menaces to society. I see it on the road all the time, people who don't know any more about driving than what it takes to run with the cow herd through town, horrified by anyone who can navigate that herd more efficiently, assuming "that's just unSAFE!!", when they don't even know where their front bumper terminates within a standard-deviation of 10-flippin-feet.

In almost all SUV roll-overs, often deadly, the biggest contributing factor is, once the situation presents itself (tire blow-out, sudden obstacle avoidance), the driver is ill-prepared and completely un-skilled. They die much in part due to incompetence/panic, defensive-strategy be-damned.

Any-hoo, this thread's spinning WILDLY out of control, much due in-part to my rambling to be sure.

Yes, in today's world, opportunities to safely explore high-ability cars at speeds exceeding 70-90 mph are rare, and you really don't get a chance to "use" your vehicle in the manner it was designed to perform. I can't argue that.

But I maintain that it's just dumb to then relegate the measuring and comparing of such vehicles to the restraints of the "street", i.e. 0-60 times. Just because driving in the U.S. generally stinks, doesn't mean we hold everything within that context, and forget what a car can ACTUALLY DO if you were to really unleash the sucker, and get outside of the city limits, or onto a good track.

Buying an extreme-performance vehicle, you would hope, that you actually get to USE it from time-to-time, in a safe manner, whatever venue that requires.

But if you're buying it simply for "bragging rights", "looks", and being the first egomaniac on the block.... There's a word for that: posing.

There are thousands of old-farts diddling around the country in automatic-trannied Corvettes that support my assertion, but at least they're safe I suppose...

RICKS said:

Defensive driving is not a cure-all, it's not a replacement for knowing how to handle a car at its limits. Being a skilled driver, from a performance standpoint, does not default to being a reckless driver on the street. That's a completely different matter.

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I never said it did.

RICKS said:

Fact is, you can be the most defensive-driver in the world, and you're not going to anticipate a truck-tire explosion directly in front of you on a busy interstate. You're not going see that drunk driver running a blind stop sign until the very-last-nano-second.

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Those things are true, but many times having a performance car isn't going to be the thing that saves you. On the interstate I see people following trucks with about 1.5 car lengths between them and the truck - by doing this, no car is going to save you if something happens. That is why I tailor my driving style to the situation and performance parameters of the vehicle I'm in.

RICKS said:

The fact that the road IS a very uncontrolled environment only amplifies the advantages of having a high-performance car (in all aspects, not just straight-line), and knowing how to use it at its limits. When bad **** happens, that no level of defensive driving or divine premonition can anticipate, one's understanding and familiarity of the car's limits and abilities is often the difference between safe avoidance or a deadly barrel-roll, or sliding off the road into who-knows-what. Numerous times in my life, the car I was in, and my ability to use it, was the sliver of difference that kept me from being swept-up by an oblivious road-troll or tire carcass.

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All the benefits of having a performance car for safety are nullified if you drive like you're on a racetrack. The mortality rates say that sports cars are MUCH MUCH more dangerous than vehicles that couldn't perform their way out of a wet paper bag - minivans, midsize cars, luxury cars etc. That raises the question of why is that so? I'd have to think that aggressive driving has something to do with it. It's the mentality of "hey I've got a sports car watch what I can do - don't worry I can handle it".

RICKS said:

If you want a high-performance car, but you're not really into pushing it to any limits, be it a race track or not, go ahead and have fun, who cares? But don't be so presumptuous to tell others that all that matters with the car is banging a couple gears leaving the Steak & Shake within your own tiny realm of driving...

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It's a free country and people are free to choose what they want to do - be it right or wrong. Thus, I'm not telling anyone what matters or doesn't matter - that is their own choice.

RICKS said:

If you want to buy a Bazooka to shoot tin cans off a fence post in your back yard, more power to you.

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And if you want to buy an Enzo to win the race to work - I also say more power to you.

RICKS said:

But don't insinuate that those who have high performance cars, that actually USE them on occassion, that actually DO learn and enjoy the limits, actually DO keep safety and respect for others at the top of their minds, are irrelevant, unsafe and menaces to society. I see it on the road all the time, people who don't know any more about driving than what it takes to run with the cow herd through town, horrified by anyone who can navigate that herd more efficiently, assuming "that's just unSAFE!!", when they don't even know where their front bumper terminates within a standard-deviation of 10-flippin-feet.

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People are free to enjoy the limits of their vehicle - just not on the public roads that my family and I ride on and help pay for. Do I feel they should be able to enjoy the limits on public roads? Definately not. If every sports car driver was allowed to do what they *feel* is safe and respectful - I'd hate to think of the mess we would have. Smart people aren't immune from making dumb decisions.

RICKS said:

In almost all SUV roll-overs, often deadly, the biggest contributing factor is, once the situation presents itself (tire blow-out, sudden obstacle avoidance), the driver is ill-prepared and completely un-skilled. They die much in part due to incompetence/panic, defensive-strategy be-damned.

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And the fatality rate in sports cars is much higher - likely due to over confidence in being prepared, skilled, competent etc.