Other "REAL" Grand Tourismos & "not so" GTs

[tony barnhill]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]true Gran Tourisimo cars have to be Italian[/QUOTE]

Aw, man - once again, that puts me back to one of the favorite cars from my youth....Lancia HPE....one of the few cars I've ever regretted selling!! & if I could find it or another in like condition, well........

 

[Bret]

true Gran Tourisimo cars have to be Italian,

While I agree that Italy has produced many fine GT cars, I have to disagree that only they can be labeled as such.

While the G & T have adorned may cars over the years few rarely qualify. Here in the states domestic as well as some Nippon manufactures may sport the badging – it is usually used as a means of describing an elevated vehicle with more amenities, nicer level of trim and sometimes a bigger engine with a bit more power than the base model.

A perfect example is the Mustang: Save the materials - the back seats in the $47 thousand dollar Shelby Cobra GT are essentially the same as those found in the Base V6 Mustang at $19K.

Where as a true GT – like the Porsche 928, might have offered one or two different options over an above the basic vehicle (manual or auto, moon-roof delete etc). Sure the displacement & number of valves of the engine grew (4.5L, 4.7L, 5.0L and the 5.4L) with the passing of each year the basic concept remained the same as day one. In fact I think more options & packages levels of trim are offered on the 2007 base Mustang today than the 928 saw during it’s entire 18 year & 60,000 something unit production run.

True upper tier GTs in my view start out as GTs on the drawing board to begin with.