Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Yeah, I'm there now as well, but I do miss the GTI's manual.  Even the Hyndai has paddle shifters, which I almost never use of course.  It has a "mountain mode" which was pretty convenient when I was in the mountains.  That holds a lower gear on downslopes (and generates electricity).

I've mentioned before that my own idea of a sporty car is one with a manual and a rag top, and hopefully nice exhaust sounds.  

I will also note my wife was right, the GTI was low to the ground and starting to be a chore to egress.  The Hyundai is at a nice height.  The Corvette is even lower of course.

I think the C8 is an awesome car and incredible value, the Stingray.  The Z06 to me is more of a track oriented car.  

They were, I test drove one back in the day, it was incredibly slow.  They could have been decent, Ford basically did what they did to the T-Bird in a sense except making the model smaller instead of larger.  

Corvette did the same kind of thing but in reverse, they started bad and then developed a real sports car.

But this was during the fuel crisis, which was pretty awful, and folks clamored for smaller cars, for a while.  They barely got better fuel economy than the larger cars.  Putting an underpowered engine in a smaller car just meant folks had to use more of the little power available more of the time.

six guys could all be drinking beer in that thing and not bump elbows

We had driver's ed in a Olds 88, probably a 1973.  It had a bad habit of not going when you pressed on the accelerator for a second or three.  I recall we had four in our group and the teacher.  One guy learned in a car with a manual, and he constantly stepped on the nonexistent clutch pedal when he stopped.

I didn't know what a clutch was.  The 70s as we all know was largely a bad period for cars.

I recall when the Pontiac mantra was "longer lower wider".  They never said than what.  The "wide track" they'd claim.  My Mom was convinced that heavier cars would stick to the road better than lighter cars.

I recall when GM's different models had a slew of differing V8 engines, often same displacement but different designs.

Caddy had a 500.  The Chevy large block was a 454, often used in boats now.  They all used 350s, which varied significantly in design.  

Chevy also had large blocks at 427 while Pontiac had a 426 as I recall, and Ford a 428, maybe reversed.  Chevy had 400 CID engines both as large blocks and small blocks.