That's the one thing that bothers me about my SVT. Because it's not a straight line performance car it doesn't get the respect it deserves. All of my friends/gearheads that follow racing and realize there is more to cars than just the 1/4 mile time love it. When my best friends father (who used to race for a living back in the day) took me for a ride in his 98.5, I was sold. It just took me until I was out of college to afford/find one...The funny thing is if we could get the svt to, say, a 13 second car with 3-4 K in mods the overall perception among riceburners, crapparo drivers, stang owners would change considerably. But that notion hits in part on why automakers take a great, well rounded performance sedan from europe, and remove or tone down everything to sell it to americans.
