Yeah, I know exactly what you mean about the size. I daily drove an 89 LX for 9 years, and it felt perfect to me from a size perspective.
My boss wanted to be at 10/10 all the time, especially running with the trackey. It never wanted to just relax, and it seemed to let you know just how unhappy it was if you were just trying to drive around "normally". The thing that really made me nervous about it was that the stability control would override the "full off" mode and turn itself back on if you brought the car to an extreme yaw angle. This wouldn't have been that much an issue, except that the car would take all of your throttle control away until you came to a complete stop. I found it to be really disconcerting and was a major reason why I never wanted to put it on a road course (I discovered it when I was drifting the car).
Haha, I can relate to the highway speed thing too. I used to work down in Westport and ended up terrorizing the Merrit parkway more often than not.
I guess they never addressed the hood thing either, mine used to flap around like that right around 140 too. The 89 would do it from about 130 or so.
They do sound absolutely fantastic above 5k though. I was running the open boss sidepipes and MAC axlebacks, sounded killer at 7500. I do miss that noise.
The old 89
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