I think we can all agree that a lot of guys who buy vettes are indeed full of it. I'm glad for them-- it keeps the price of used corvettes nice and reachable.

That would be the best way to do it! What's your gut feeling, knowing the cars?

Horsepower numbers do nothing for me. The Boss Laguna Seca already can outlap the old, much more powerful GT500 iterations, with the ordinary GT only marginally behind, and even the lowly V-6 not too far below that. Consider, for instance, the C&D "lightning lap" series, which if imperfect is still fairly telling for cars like these. Power is no longer a serious consideration for most performance cars used on the road. Handling, on the other hand, especially perceived handling, is quite another matter.

It seems to me that in principle it should be possible to make a tasteful, good, neo-classical car, if by neo-classical we mean the cars of around 1925-1939, the pre-WWII generation: that is, the cars that had finally outgrown the horse carriage type but not yet reached the levels of mechanical sophistication and sleek enclosed bodywork that were to come. I think most people find the Morgan to be a tasteful version of this idea. Setting aside the vulgarity of so many of these cars, I think two basic problems present themselves:

1. the designers don't seem to be able to tell how much of the present day they are letting into the mix, or where-- this has always been a problem for revival design since the renaissance at least. But it seems to be much less bad for late 50s/early 60s replicars. Why?

2. the designers don't seem to be able to tell what divided a beautiful car from 1928 apart from a dud. It's like doing 2000s replicars that are part Maserati, part Aztek. Once the wheels and headlights emerge from the enclosed part of the bodywork, no further aesthetic judgement need play a part.

I'd rather drive a Panther Lima or Kallista than a Morgan. Similar styling without the pretenses and cost. Also, the Panther is just the faster and more comfortable car of the two. There was a comparison test between them in the July 2002 C&SC where the Panther did creditably well, actually.

Compare to the 28 Aston 1 1/2 litre driven by Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster:

Remember that a Mercedes SS/SSK was about the fastest thing on the road around 1930, i.e. just around the time Brooks Stevens got out of high school. Not hard to see why Stevens wanted to make one for himself, or why he made a car that could do sub-5 second 0-60 runs, pretty unheard-of back then. An original SSK:

These do at least make Excalliburs look tasteful. I was going to say they make Zimmers look tasteful, but then I google imaged some Zimmers, and they still take the cake. Here's an excalibur:

The photo makes it look like a film soundstage from the forties, except of course there were no caravelles back then. Also those tires aren't quite mounted right, are they? Apart from that, I can't see anything amiss in this picture at all.

I think you'd be lucky to find a complete one in excellent running order for less than ten grand these days. Which is cheap when you consider that even a GTV6 can run that much, and a Giulietta or something like a big Healey could run you thirty five grand easy now. The only cheap alfas left in the US are the late spiders and the 164. It's almost time to invest in a late 70s or 80s spider for a few grand, as running costs will probably pay for themselves when you resell it in five years.