I love Eric Peters, but like all people who for one reason or another like crude, ugly, lousy-handling American muscle and pony cars of yore, he can be sort of eye-rolling whenever he makes a statement about automobile performance.

Here he is trying to paint the picture that a 5.7 foot tall (!), over two-ton, front-wheel drive platformed, 0-60 in 7.3 seconds, seven-seat SUV is some kind of performance vehicle. His basis is comparing it his 1976 muscle car Trans-Am, which I can virtually guarantee you drove more or less like a boat even brand new. The best numbers I can find are .83g on the skidpad, and 7 seconds 0-60.

In other words, comparing a modern car to his old muscle car is not exactly the highest bar.

It's like when my father-in-law was bragging about how quick and fast his father's old Ford Mustang was, putting down my 350z in the process (he hates my car, because it has a Japanese badge despite being designed in California). I looked that Mustang up, and it did the 1/4 mile in like 17 seconds, and 0-60 in over 8-- it was slower than the front-wheel drive Scion tC I used to own! It also had a live rear axle, so I'm sure handling was rubbish.

I'll go ahead and put my money where my mouth is: let's set a more reasonable bar then.

How about my .91g skidpad, 5.5 second 0-60, 14 second 1/4 mile 2003 350z? It's sixteen years old, so it's also not the best handling or quickest car around by today's standards. But if you're going to go on about the "performance" of some stupid SUV, why not compare it to a car which at least has some semblance of actual performance?

On new summer tires, I've comfortably taken my 350z at 60 mpg around cloverleafs: because of the car's 50-50 weight distribution and rear-wheel drive layout, it felt great! Try that in the afore-referenced SUV, with your butt sitting several feet off the ground, and with 60% of the weight over the front axle, and let me know how quickly you piss your pants-- after you're rubber-side up in the drainage ditch.

In any event, just felt like a rant over what's in reality a pretty minor pet peeve. The rest of his article is great, like pretty much everything he writes.