I do occasionally make the rare exception … heavy emphasis on the words “occasionally” and “rare.”

Far from it.

However, I am pretty smart (or so my IQ score of 138 indicates) and smart people like me refer to what you just did as “irony” and this “irony” makes smart people like me smile, sometimes it even makes smart people like me laugh … out loud … at people like you.

Apparently your rather limited knowledge of my great state is taken from what you’ve been told or from what you have learned from the media rather than from the standpoint of you having actually done any fact checking or research into the matter on your own.  That shows a severely lazy approach to both learning and personal education in general and it gives me even more insight into exactly who (and what) I am dealing with.

1)   The 1986 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am is a sports car that I fell in love with my senior year of high school when this Firebird was brand new and represented, at that time, the cutting edge of then still evolving American high performance technology.  I first fell in love with the 1986 TA when I saw the magazine advertisement (shown above) in an issue of High Performance Pontiac early in my senior year.  WS6 suspension, sixteen by eight inch wheels, big fat Goodyear rubber, T-tops, factory Recaro competition bucket seats, kick ass stereo system with subwoofer option, four speed automatic overdrive transmission, indestructible 9 bolt Aussie Borg Warner limited slip rear end that was stronger than even a Dana 44, strong 5.0 liter port fuel injected V8 under the hood and the kind of looks that would empty a convent in under a minute.  The design and the lines are classic and still remain so over a quarter of a century later.
 

2)   Way back in 1986, my TA represented one of the best performing, handling and best looking American built cars available to the American general public.  However, at over $18,000 brand new and with me working part time at a grocery store twelve to eighteen hours a week (in six hour shifts) for about $4 an hour there was simply no way that I could afford the purchase price (let alone the insurance on) a brand new 1986 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am way back then.  No, I just had to be happy (at the time) with my fully restored black and gold ’79 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, T-tops, WS6, factory custom interior, four wheel disc brakes, 10 bolt limited slip, and big Rochester Quadrajet fed 6.6 liter V8 under the hood.

It wasn’t a bad way to spend my high school years, in hindsight, however I always told myself that one day, when I was established in my career, when I had disposable income and space in the garage that I was going to get that black and gold 1986 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am that I saw in that magazine advertisement way back then in high school.  As fate and luck would have it, twenty years after I first saw the TA I wanted in that magazine advertisement I was flying to North Carolina, driving the car that I wanted a thousand miles back home and parking it in my garage.

What good are dreams if you can’t chase them and grab them with both hands? 

Better late than never.

3)   Today, the 1982 to 1992 Pontiac Firebirds are very rare cars, from a generation of GM F-body that people have almost forgotten about.  There are plenty of aftermarket parts and support for the first, second and fourth generation Firebird but the third generation is kind of the step child of the four which is funny since it was also the last American made Firebird (the fourth gen actually being an import from Canada).  Seeing a third gen F-body on the road today is rare simply because it was a generation that, while praised at the time, soon after was considered pretty much disposable.

Seeing a restored third gen, one that is well maintained and cared for, is even rarer.  When I drive my ’86 TA, I don’t see myself coming or going in traffic.  I don’t see another car like mine on the road, at the stop light, or in the parking lot at all.  That makes my TA unique and because I am eccentric I like driving unique cars, especially ones that no one else has, even if they aren’t the most powerful things on the road.  My TA gathers a lot of attention and a lot of offers to buy it.  Everyone rubbernecks when I pull up and it forms small crowds around it when I park it.  As far as I know, my TA is one of about 215 ever built optioned the way it is which makes it pretty rare from the start.  I doubt many of these ’86 TAs, spec’ed like this particular one was, still survive today.  If you see another 1986 black and gold, LB9, WS6, T-top, with factory Recaro interior equipped Trans Am, let me know.

Because so many of these cars have gone to the boneyard and beyond, there will come a time when collectors seek out the third generation F-body and when they do the mad race to find these cars and restore them will be on but it will be like the movie Jurassic Park, these come late collectors will be trying to resurrect dinosaurs, trying to resurrect an extinct species by sorting through rust buckets and decaying metal skeletons in junkyards.  Prices will start to rise and those who have these cars will be among the few rather than the many.  In that regard, I’ve already got mine, restored, protected, and enjoyed.  It’s nice to be ahead of everyone else, even if it looks like you’re driving an old piece of 1980’s pop culture and if the collectors never appear, no problem.  I didn’t buy my TA to flip it and make a fortune.  I bought it because I like it and it’s unique.  In that regard, my ’86 TA has been perfect.

4)   As for performance, my ’86 TA is now 27 years old.  It has 210 horsepower at 4400 rpm and about 270 ft-lbs of torque at 3200 rpm on an engine that has 70,000 miles and some change.  Match that to a four speed automatic with a deep first gear and a 3.27 geared limited slip pumpkin out back and she’s pretty fast … Stock way back in 1986 she’d do zero to sixty in about seven seconds, the quarter mile in about fifteen and had a top speed of 140 miles an hour.  Blistering performance way back then but completely mediocre by today’s standards.  She’s no road scorcher or Ferrari beater but she still has some guts left in her … she’ll still hang a corner better than a lot of newer hardware and she’s got enough power to pass on a two lane or a back country stretch of road no sweat when the long skinny pedal goes flat to the floor. 
 

5)   My TA is stock, not because I can’t do anything to it but because I choose not to.  When I go to a car show, I like to see cars just the way they were when they rolled off the assembly line.  Any moron can throw a big block between the fenders, slap a blower on top, chrome out an engine bay, tub out their rear wheel wells and paint their car some eye melting color … that doesn’t impress me.  Chrome hides a multitude of sins the first and foremost being ineptitude. 

What impresses me is seeing a bone stock car at a car show, a car with an original window sticker showing how much it cost, what it came with, etc. when it was brand new … that’s what I like to see at a car show.  I like to see factory literature about the car, I like to see magazine articles, magazine advertisements and dealer showroom brochures.  I like to see an old car as a snapshot back in time, a window to looking in on a particular year, a particular model, and I like to see that car preserved right down to the stock radio.  Preserving a car, from the past, for future generations to enjoy … that’s a challenge and it takes a lot of skill, patience and forbearance.  Keeping that car looking like it had just rolled off the dealer showroom floor, despite the desire to bring it up to today’s level of performance, that takes skill and commitment.

Now, if I wanted to go fast, really, really fast, well, I’d just take the cover off of my port fuel injected 406cid John Lingenfelter pro-built stroker small block, one of only three such motors in existence (Summit Racing has one of the other two in their Phaeton pro-rod tour car); that big mill has aluminum D-port heads (taken off of one of John’s own Corvettes), full roller cam, aluminum TPIS “Big Mouth” ported intake, aluminum ported SuperRam intake, aluminum 1000cfm throttle body and custom computer chip.  In an otherwise bone stock ’88 IROC-Z, this motor was pushing the Chevy to 12.11 seconds at 114.44mph through the quarter mile.  That was on street tires, worn out stock suspension and a somewhat slipping 700R4 four speed automatic transmission with stock converter.  I campaigned her on the street for a while, made some money off of her at late night meets then because I’m not a real big fan of Chevrolets or Camaros I yanked the motor and computer chip, sold the rest of the car and went back to Pontiacs and Firebirds.

Everything past about 1990 has sucked, in my opinion, and it has sucked in every category.  Oh, I remember the 1980’s quite fondly.  Those were my teenage and early adult years … high school and college.  America still had a working space program.  Good music, good president, good times, good movies, good TV shows, good food.  Women back then had long hair and ripped jeans.  Tattoos and piercings were still counter culture instead of pop culture and mainstream.  Harley Davidson was struggling to switch from being a three times failed motorcycle manufacturer to being a highly successful provider of a make-believe lifestyle.  Convertibles came back!  Neon was everywhere!  We had cool cars, a return to high performance, and there was even a factory horsepower war between the major manufacturers.  Computers came of age.  We had sex, drugs, rock and roll, video games and low gas prices.  Yeah, I went through a lot of cars, whiskey, gas, tires and pussy in the 1980’s.

Fond memories indeed.

No, I did not miss mentioning torque, John. 

In fact, in the area where I compare Honda’s offerings throughout the last three decades to Harley’s offerings throughout those same three decades, I clearly indicate not only the horsepower and the torque of each of the offerings but also the performance figures (link).  If you look at the comparison, you will see that the sport offering Harleys do indeed make more torque than their Honda counterparts yet the Honda sport bikes still have higher performance.  During the last part of my comparison, you will also see that my ’04 Honda CBR600RR makes the exact same horsepower as the much larger motored V-Rod (the current top of the line performance Harley Davidson) but makes only about half as much torque.  Just for grins, let’s step back about 8 years and look at the comparison that I did between the Harley Davidson V-Rod and my ’04 Honda CBR600RR. 

Why is that, John?

The Harley makes more torque but the Honda is quicker.  Why is it that a bike that makes the same horsepower but less torque can beat a bike that makes the same horsepower but more torque?  If torque is so important then how can a bike that makes less torque be faster than a bike that makes more torque?

It’s simple, really.

Torque is important, yes, but it isn’t all that is important.  Torque is only one aspect of going fast or making power, albeit a very important one.  Torque isn’t magic.  Making power and actually using that power effectively, those are two very different concepts.  All the power in the world is no good if you can’t transmit that power effectively to the street.  Harleys make power but they do not use that power effectively or efficiently.

There is an old hot rodder’s saying, John, and that is “horsepower sells cars but torque wins races.”  I learned that saying when I was thirteen years old and it has stuck with me ever since.  Even today I’m a huge believer in torque and while torque is important, torque isn’t everything especially if it’s the only thing that you have going for you in your favor and especially, especially if you can’t really effectively use all the torque that you’re producing. 

I am more than familiar with the Yamaha Banshee. 

I’ve ridden several and never had a problem with their stock performance nor did I try to modify them into something that they were never intended to be used for which is racing and going fast off road, not hauling lumber or dead animals.  For what it is worth I used to own a 1984 Yamaha RZ350, pro-built by an ex-motorcycle racer in Louisiana.  For a two stroke twin with lots of work done to it by a competent professional, that little bike would easily outrun bikes up to twice its displacement no sweat and I had a lot of fun on it until I got tired of going to college classes smelling like gas and oil.  I sold it in the early ‘90’s and bought a used 1984 Honda VF500F Interceptor … liquid cooled V4, and probably one of the finest Hondas I have ever owned. 

As for carbs, I stopped playing with carbs a long time ago, John.  The only thing that has a carb on it at my house is my riding lawn mower (which doubles as a Harley simulator on weekends).  Way back in the early-‘90’s I went with fuel injection and computer controlled engine management systems (something even my Pontiac TA had stock way back in 1986) and never looked back … I guess I just got tired of dealing with Fred Flintstone technology when George Jetson technology made life so much easier.

Harleys aren’t powerful, John.  They are simply designed for low end pulling power much the same way that a Ford tractor or a Dodge Cummins Turbo Diesel powered pickup is designed for low end pulling power, it has the power required not to go fast but to get a lot of weight moving at a reasonable speed in a short amount of time … or to pull a heavy trailer behind it or to yank an old stump out of the ground.  As I have said before, making power and actually using that power effectively and efficiently are two very different things.  Harley engines have never been known for either their effectiveness or their efficiency.  Harley engines are noise makers, they are window rattlers and attention getters … nothing more.

You praise torque but do you remember the old saying “there is no substitute for cubic inches?”

So, if there is no substitute for cubic inches, or to paraphrase that, no replacement for displacement, let’s look at two different engines … two very different engines; the 999 cc Suzuki inline liquid cooled, DOHC, 16 valve four cylinder found in the 2013 GSX-R1000 series super sport bike and Harley’s bigger Twin Cam 88, which is an 88 cubic inch (1449 cc, 1.44 liter) air cooled V-twin.  The Harley motor has almost 1.5 times the displacement (1449cc) of the smaller Suzuki motor (999cc) so you would think that it would make more power yet the Harley V-twin, the top of the line Harley V-twin that powers most of their offerings, only produces 62 hp and 70lb-ft torque. 

On the other hand, the one third smaller Suzuki motor produces 191 horsepower (over three times the horsepower of the Harley motor) and somewhere around 80 lb-ft of torque (or ten lb-ft more than the much larger Harley engine) so your argument is pretty much invalid, especially since the Suzuki weighs about half of what the average Harley packing a Twin Cam 88 motor weighs.

Performance isn’t just making power, it’s using the power that you make and in that regard bigger isn’t always better, John.  Elephants certainly are huge but you don’t see them building skyscrapers and space stations, now do you?

You talk about Harleys being powerful but that’s only the opinion of the uneducated riding something that they know nothing about and then comparing that sensation to the sensation that they are normally used to which is sitting on their fat ass in a big comfy recliner, drinking beer and watching syndicated reruns of “Hee-Haw” or “NASCAR”.  Compared to that, yeah, Harley’s are pretty powerful and they’re really, really fast.  Compared to something like a Suzuki GSX-R1000, a Harley is a joke in every single category.

The full dresser HD’s (appropriately named since they are the size of, weight of, have the performance of and maneuverability of full loaded oak dressers) are some of the most ridiculous excuses for a motorcycle to ever insult the American highway system.

As for not taking a Ninja across country I have to disagree, again.  Maybe a soft ass, luxury prone poser like you wouldn’t take a sport bike across country but I’d do it any day.  I’d take my ’04 CBR600RR from the east coast to the west coast and back again while having no regrets.  In fact, in the old “Iron Butt” endurance race, I once read about a 65 year old veteran who toured America on his big Kawasaki ZX-11 Ninja. 

His advice? 

“All old farts should have one of these.” 

Competition improves the breed.  Challenge weans out the weak and makes the strong stronger.  Sport bikes aren’t an afterthought, John, they are the driving incentive for most companies other than Harley Davidson.  Sport bikes are the experimental planes, the brand new rockets, the bubbling cauldron of cutting edge ideas where dreams become reality.  What Honda or any of the other major motorcycle manufacturers learns at the race track leads to trickle down technology being shared by other models in the corporate lineup to one degree or the other.

Companies like Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Triumph, Ducati … they are dynamic, they compete, they win, they lose, they learn, they create, they imagine, they engineer, they push the edge and they evolve.  Their designs evolve.  A company like Harley Davidson is stagnant … it creates a new model simply by rearranging existing parts and changing letters in the name.

Now, if everyone sold their sport bikes and bought Harleys then why did Harley recently have to beg Warren Buffet for money to avoid going bankrupt (again)?  If everyone was beating a new path to Harley Davidson dealerships everywhere to trade in their sport bikes for Harleys then why did Harley Davidson post an over 70% drop in profits when the economy tanked? 

I’ll tell you why, John.

You can go ride your Harley or your big metric cruiser if you want, John.  You can cruise in comfort on a suspension that not only soaks up all of the road noise but becomes totally deaf to changing, sometimes dangerous road conditions ahead.  You can depend on substandard brakes, a single tiny disc up front and a tiny rear drum out back.  You can hang your leather tassels from the handlebars and wear your sissy half helmet with your Oakleys and all of your funny stickers.  You can roll your throttle and make lots of noise and think that the noise you are making is a display of raw power when it’s nothing other than simple noise pollution.  You can dress like a cliché from a 1950’s make-believe biker film and pretend that you’re a bad ass outlaw all weekend long before you return to your six square foot cubicle on Monday and start writing out quality reports for some corporation in a 8 to 5 boring ass job.  You can advertise for free, from head to toe, for a corporation that charges you for the right to advertise for them.  You can ride around with your polished boots with your legs set high up on highway pegs like a teenage girl’s first time in the stirrups at the OB-GYN.  You can ride your big full dresser with your cruise control, your AM-FM Stereo 6-CD player, your CB radio, your Sat-Nav, your cup holders, your arm rests, your reverse gear because your bike is so damn heavy that you can’t even walk it five feet backwards out of a parking spot yourself, your 80 plus stick on accessory lights and reflectors that make semi truckers shake their heads, your heated grips, your heated seats, your variable windshield wiper, your dash vents and your trailer hitch to pull even more stuff because you ran out of hard storage on your rolling dresser to store crap that you didn’t ever need to take with you in the first place.

You do that, John.  

Did you even read that part on my website where I show you how the Terminator 2 Harley jump was done? 

Probably not.

Going back I see that I discussed this particular stunt way back in 2007 ... here's the link.  You'll have to scroll down about two thirds through the article to find the relevant information.

Yes, that jump, just like HD itself, was fake … it was smoke and mirrors.  James Cameron had to build a special rig with wires and pulleys which gently lowered the Harley from its take off point down into the drainage ditch because if the Harley had really jumped it would have broken its frame in half, smashed itself into pieces and probably hurt or killed the stuntman.  Everyone knew this.  Once again, Harley Davidson couldn’t perform what was required of it so it had to be helped out and saved by another company.  The whole custom special effects rig was used to fake the jump of the Harley.   Cameron wanted it to be absolutely safe so he took the first ride on the stunt himself to prove it and it worked beautifully.  With a lot of help, with a rig, a boom, pulleys and cables, that Harley flew on the silver screen which is ironic since so much of Harley Davidson’s performance heritage existed on nothing more than the silver screen. 

After the Harley Fat Boy’s jump, with the lowering rig, the pulleys and all the cables, after everything was shot on film, Cameron hired another company, a special effects editing company, to go into the final film and edit out all of the stunt rig.  That way, it looks like the Harley jumps by itself.  What you don’t see is the special rig because it has been carefully edited out of the scene and the film.

Magic!

And for what it is worth, Swatch was something that other people wore in high school and the television show you are referring to was called “Knightrider” … Knight with a “K” because the lead character was named “Michael Knight.”  If you’re going to try insulting what you believe is some piece of pop culture that is relevant to someone else, here’s another little secret; be sure to get it right when you do it otherwise you come off sounding like an idiot.

Knightrider. 

Maybe people like you, people who are used to a soft, comfortable life, need big, cushy motorcycles with cup holders and saddle bags to get you where you’re going.  Maybe you want to pull up at your local Starbucks on your big Harley, vibrating the window panes trying desperately to get noticed in your poser biker gear, pretending to be something that you simply aren’t while sitting on an irrigation pump powered recliner pretending to be a motorcycle … I mean, really, how bad ass can you be if you ride up to a Starbucks on your Harley wearing all of your catalog ordered gear, order a something something something something something latte mocha extra grande, pay for it with your platinum series credit card, stick your brew in your cup holder on your hog then roar away?

Not very.

People like me are laughing at people like you, John, because not only do you just not get it but you never had it to begin with.  You and those like you are posers.  Big, soft, fat assed, slave to comfort, image dependent posers who rely on other people to not only dress you like they feel you should dress but to also tell you what kind of motorcycle you should ride.  You’re soft.  You don’t want to be tired after a long motorcycle ride.  You don’t want your tender little tushie to hurt after an hour in the saddle.  You want to be able to ride your motorcycle and smoke your cigarette and drink your Starbucks and you want to look good while you are doing it.  The only reason someone buys a Harley is that they are so forgettable and unoriginal as a human being that they require a big, heavy, loud, flashy machine to get people to notice them.

Maybe more people need to make fun of HD, John, because the Motor Company certainly has gotten ridiculous since Willie G. and his Twelve Disciples bought his grandpappy’s company back from AMF.  AMF may have been the best years for the Motor Company, especially in hindsight.

As for me, I’m hoping to live long enough to see HD go completely out of business, to finally fuck up so bad that no one, not the government, not another company, not even a private wealthy individual, will be able (or willing) to bail them out of the hole that the Motor Company seems to dig for itself every decade or so.  I thought Harley was about to become extinct a few years ago but Warren Buffet stepped in and stopped the process of natural selection more out of pity than out of any national need to keep HD around.

Oh, well.

Closer and closer.

On the day that Harley Davidson does finally become extinct, mainly due to their own managerial incompetence, I’m going to go outside and dance a jig at Harley’s demise and I’ll probably be waving an American flag while I’m doing it.

HD does nothing but sell bikes to stupid people and stupid people like Harley Davidson because they don’t know any better.  Harley sells a prepackaged lifestyle to people who have no lives.  Harley depends on stupid people, uninformed wannabes, to stay in business.  Please don’t ever forget that … or think otherwise. 

The only people who don’t like me are the people whose feelings I hurt by exposing them to the truth and showing them that their world is based on make-believe.  I don’t spend a lot of time on the computer, certainly not on my websites and that is probably where I get the most hate-email, telling me to get off my butt and add new rants against ignorant Harley riders or build more models or write more stories or do something new with my bike or TA.  In fact, when I posted this email and my reply that was the first update to American Angst in nearly 3 years.