I mean it was definitely less wild when the highest output Corvettes had like 180hp

The early 70s emissions standards crippled all American performance cars, it wasn't about the oil crisis.

It continued well into the 80s

There were always good European performance cars through that period but not much to brag about here.

When have we not gone faster?

What do you mean by that?

WRC Rally Cars are as fast or faster than Group B that got banned

Gimped F1 cars are faster than old school not gimped F1 cars

I mean, do you really disagree that this is a wild time for cars? Like every 10 years all the journalists will say performance cars are finished and then a few years later they're crazier than ever.

no within 5 years someone will break 300mph

standard

maybe within 2 or 3 years

there's a few people that wanna do it

DO IT!

Well maybe you don't relate to this but throughout the 60s American performance cars could be had with 400+hp in all shapes and sizes, and then in 1970 the clean air act was passed and it took decades for them to get back to that performance level while meeting emissions. Now we have more regulations than ever in every possible area and you can buy a mass produced platform from the factory with over 800hp for under 100k, that has never happened in any previous decade.

So I'd say that's a pretty crazy time for cars.

It's not like it's just been a steady climb.

I Love that act

not from a Cars angle though 😄

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not against the clean air act at all.

It put a barrier in just the right place, forcing companies to innovate

I'm more against the fact that engineers had such a hard time getting around it, so instead they just took the same big displacement engines and significantly lowered the performance.

At least initially.

yes

engineers move slower than pencil pushers

big fucking wow

so instead of making new engine in 10mins

they just took the same big displacement engines and significantly lowered the performance.

IMAGINE MY SHOCK

It's not like they had the technology readily available to do that

I'm not talking about 10 minutes, 14 years later the Corvette still had 205hp.

America's premier sports car.

Well I'm against the clean air act

The Countach was on sale here during that time and had about 375.

make a clean air act for ships and planes, leave cars alone

LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE

And that's also the era that Japanese sports cars were overtaking American ones

Same with the Daytona.

American manufacturers literally had to learn how to innovate

well I feel like it was regulation that made US companies complacent

Also yeah, targeting ships and having literally no emissions regulations on passenger cars we'd still be coming out ahead.

if there had been no regulation on cars at all, the US companies would have had to compete with foreign cars anyway, and properly, without any barriers