Originally Posted by Franc Rauscher
Your sure asking for a lot there Cgocifer. I had a vintage 30' car with a split window. It cranked out for ventilation, but there was no triangle at the base. It is more than that I think.
As to the underpowered thing, all the SRT guys say more, MORE MORE power. My wimpy little roadster handles itself quite respectedly. And don't forget, I have a 400HP SRT in the garage as well. Frankly all that smoke from the short life rear tires is a problem. Some of us drive daily. Too much muscle can be tedious.
Eric. Are we looking at one car or two extremes of one design? If it's one car, the market for a bruising high HP screamer is narrow. On the other hand a cute but wimpy toy will go the way of the Sky and the MG midget.
Sharing the same body doesn't make the Limited less desireable than the SRT, as the market has shown. So, unless you are building a true exotic, one dream machine version would not likely be economically feasable. Not at $35K
The current Xfire is an excellent, crisp design. But it gets the "sweet boy" and the "cute" label from time to time. It could use a little muscular meat on it. If it is a pit bull, then it should look like it.
My humble opinion.
roadster with a stick
Let me clarify.
I don't need "more, more, more hp..." that's why I haven't modded the engine. The standard Xfires are nice cars; but, their competition at the time had close to 300 hp vs. it's 215. The gap was too large between the Limited and the SRT. To be competative, it needed to have more HP IMO. It was priced in the same range as the 350Z, Z3/4, and didn't offer better performance. It was criticized for lacking the HP (not by me!). As for the split window, those are left to teh concepts because they aren't practical, nor are they safe these days. I was merely stating that the concepts used those as a nod to the past. I'm not saying that it needs 500hp, but at least 300 - 330 for the standard model.