0-60, where will it end?
Discussion
I'm currently reading a book called "And the revs keep rising" by Mel Nicols who was the editor of Car Magazine for a long time and is an extremely good motoring writer. They're a collection of his road tests from the seventies right through to the nineties. It's a great read.
I'm about a third of the way through, still in the seventies tests, and reading about the supercars of the day, Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari BB512, Maserati Bora etc.
Some of these were the real big hitters of their day, V8 and V12 monsters. But what's interesting is reading the performance stats from a viewpoint forty years into the future. The Bora for instance, a lightweight mid engined supercar with a V8 4.7 litre engine and a manual gearbox recorded a 0-60 of 6.4 seconds. It cost an astonishing £12,000 too! The really extreme stuff of the day was just about cracking 5 seconds.
Thing is, my 3.0 litre Mercedes will best that Bora to 60 now (just), and that's with a slushmatic autobox. And hot hatches are now cracking 5.0 to 60!
Watching Top Gear last night that extreme Lamborghini can apparently hit 60 in 2.5 seconds!
Which begs two questions.
Where will "ordinary" quickish cars be in another 40 years?
And where is the physical 0-60 limit for a "road" car? (Inverted commas because that Lambo last night wasn't road legal, but it's still a road type car and the Veyron will do 2.5 secs to 60, and that is of course road legal)!
I'm about a third of the way through, still in the seventies tests, and reading about the supercars of the day, Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari BB512, Maserati Bora etc.
Some of these were the real big hitters of their day, V8 and V12 monsters. But what's interesting is reading the performance stats from a viewpoint forty years into the future. The Bora for instance, a lightweight mid engined supercar with a V8 4.7 litre engine and a manual gearbox recorded a 0-60 of 6.4 seconds. It cost an astonishing £12,000 too! The really extreme stuff of the day was just about cracking 5 seconds.
Thing is, my 3.0 litre Mercedes will best that Bora to 60 now (just), and that's with a slushmatic autobox. And hot hatches are now cracking 5.0 to 60!
Watching Top Gear last night that extreme Lamborghini can apparently hit 60 in 2.5 seconds!
Which begs two questions.
Where will "ordinary" quickish cars be in another 40 years?
And where is the physical 0-60 limit for a "road" car? (Inverted commas because that Lambo last night wasn't road legal, but it's still a road type car and the Veyron will do 2.5 secs to 60, and that is of course road legal)!
I love reading old stuff like that.. puts things into perspective, doesn't it!
2.5 seconds to 62mph is an average of 1.13g, which for a four-wheel-drive car is damn close to the fastest road tyre adhesion will allow. So there, pretty much, is your answer.
Tyres are being developed, of course, and steadily improving but in honesty, significant improvement over that current performance will be very gradual. I haven't done the sums but would expect the fastest feasible for rear wheel drive to be 2.8 or so, and front wheel drive perhaps 4.0. Those two figures, as I say, don't have sums to back them up but that's what I'd guess likely.
Unless you go for trackday tyres, then race slicks, then proper sticky drag radials, you aren't gonna go any quicker than your tyres can propel you, so that's where it ends! Then 0-100mph will become the real playground benchmark, then 0-124mph, and so on
2.5 seconds to 62mph is an average of 1.13g, which for a four-wheel-drive car is damn close to the fastest road tyre adhesion will allow. So there, pretty much, is your answer.
Tyres are being developed, of course, and steadily improving but in honesty, significant improvement over that current performance will be very gradual. I haven't done the sums but would expect the fastest feasible for rear wheel drive to be 2.8 or so, and front wheel drive perhaps 4.0. Those two figures, as I say, don't have sums to back them up but that's what I'd guess likely.
Unless you go for trackday tyres, then race slicks, then proper sticky drag radials, you aren't gonna go any quicker than your tyres can propel you, so that's where it ends! Then 0-100mph will become the real playground benchmark, then 0-124mph, and so on
Have you ever been on a very fast accelerating rollercoaster? That's probably about the limit of the mechanical qualities of the materials used to make the rides and used effectively probably beyond most peoples abilities to properly control.
The limiting factor will almost always come down to the point of traction, so tyres will always be critical and I suspect electrical motor transmissions will ultimately crack the 2second barrier, with the weakest link at that stage being any human control or intervention.
The limiting factor will almost always come down to the point of traction, so tyres will always be critical and I suspect electrical motor transmissions will ultimately crack the 2second barrier, with the weakest link at that stage being any human control or intervention.
Ari said:
I'm currently reading a book called "And the revs keep rising" by Mel Nicols who was the editor of Car Magazine for a long time and is an extremely good motoring writer. They're a collection of his road tests from the seventies right through to the nineties. It's a great read.
I'm about a third of the way through, still in the seventies tests, and reading about the supercars of the day, Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari BB512, Maserati Bora etc.
Some of these were the real big hitters of their day, V8 and V12 monsters. But what's interesting is reading the performance stats from a viewpoint forty years into the future. The Bora for instance, a lightweight mid engined supercar with a V8 4.7 litre engine and a manual gearbox recorded a 0-60 of 6.4 seconds. It cost an astonishing £12,000 too! The really extreme stuff of the day was just about cracking 5 seconds.
Thing is, my 3.0 litre Mercedes will best that Bora to 60 now (just), and that's with a slushmatic autobox. And hot hatches are now cracking 5.0 to 60!
Watching Top Gear last night that extreme Lamborghini can apparently hit 60 in 2.5 seconds!
Which begs two questions.
Where will "ordinary" quickish cars be in another 40 years?
And where is the physical 0-60 limit for a "road" car? (Inverted commas because of course that Lambo last night wasn't road legal, but it's still a road type car and the Veyron will do 2.5 secs to 60, and that is of course road legal)!
0-60mph has a great deal to do with off the line traction, then the power to make use of the traction and suitable gearing and a quick enough way to change gears.I'm about a third of the way through, still in the seventies tests, and reading about the supercars of the day, Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari BB512, Maserati Bora etc.
Some of these were the real big hitters of their day, V8 and V12 monsters. But what's interesting is reading the performance stats from a viewpoint forty years into the future. The Bora for instance, a lightweight mid engined supercar with a V8 4.7 litre engine and a manual gearbox recorded a 0-60 of 6.4 seconds. It cost an astonishing £12,000 too! The really extreme stuff of the day was just about cracking 5 seconds.
Thing is, my 3.0 litre Mercedes will best that Bora to 60 now (just), and that's with a slushmatic autobox. And hot hatches are now cracking 5.0 to 60!
Watching Top Gear last night that extreme Lamborghini can apparently hit 60 in 2.5 seconds!
Which begs two questions.
Where will "ordinary" quickish cars be in another 40 years?
And where is the physical 0-60 limit for a "road" car? (Inverted commas because of course that Lambo last night wasn't road legal, but it's still a road type car and the Veyron will do 2.5 secs to 60, and that is of course road legal)!
Many 60's and 70's cars could be a lot quicker 0-60mph than the times they recorded back then. And that's because they were running crossply tyres, not radials. And only narrow ones at that. A Ferrari Daytona for instance would likely be shod on some 205/70's. Not all that grippy, so 0-60mph times suffer.
Today's tyre technology, grip and benefits such as traction/launch control mean the power can really be used. The DSG boxes also mean very little time is lost changing gear.
That said, a street car like this, with the correct tyres & suspension setup and modest power is also likely to be in the mid low 3 second range to 60mph.
Less specialist setups aided by computer attain similar or better results today.
king photo in the entire world, 300!I seem to remember a comment from a Tesla engineer in an article a couple of years back. The gist of it was that they were aiming to make quoting power outputs obsolete - the performance would be limited solely by the traction avaialble because the motor would always have sufficient power in hand to break it.
McSam said:
Unless you go for trackday tyres, then race slicks, then proper sticky drag radials, you aren't gonna go any quicker than your tyres can propel you, so that's where it ends! Then 0-100mph will become the real playground benchmark, then 0-124mph, and so on
This - as manufacturers get closer to ultimate adhesion limits of the tyres the times will plateau. The focus will start shifting towards the larger benchmarks for high-performance cars. e.g. 0-200kph will become the benchmark.
E24man said:
Have you ever been on a very fast accelerating rollercoaster? That's probably about the limit of the mechanical qualities of the materials used to make the rides and used effectively probably beyond most peoples abilities to properly control.
The limiting factor will almost always come down to the point of traction, so tyres will always be critical and I suspect electrical motor transmissions will ultimately crack the 2second barrier, with the weakest link at that stage being any human control or intervention.
Nah, Rollercoasters are designed on the lowest common denominator of rider, they could design ones that go much, much faster and generate huge G forces but only trained fighter pilots in G suits could ride them.The limiting factor will almost always come down to the point of traction, so tyres will always be critical and I suspect electrical motor transmissions will ultimately crack the 2second barrier, with the weakest link at that stage being any human control or intervention.
They use linear induction motors, these days, basically a flattened out motor that throws the cars down the track, all they need to do is supply more juice, use bigger magnets etc, they could be developed to be a lot, lot faster.
E24man said:
Have you ever been on a very fast accelerating rollercoaster? That's probably about the limit of the mechanical qualities of the materials used to make the rides and used effectively probably beyond most peoples abilities to properly control.
The limiting factor will almost always come down to the point of traction, so tyres will always be critical and I suspect electrical motor transmissions will ultimately crack the 2second barrier, with the weakest link at that stage being any human control or intervention.
I was reading about Disney's Rock 'n' Roller Coaster the other day and was amused to discover that it launches with a speed of 0-60mph in 2.8 seconds. That's slower than the MY13 Nissan GT-R (0-62mph in 2.7 seconds), which is a car many could go out and buy to use on the road. For those that have been on the ride, they will know that it's pretty fast! Crazy stuff.The limiting factor will almost always come down to the point of traction, so tyres will always be critical and I suspect electrical motor transmissions will ultimately crack the 2second barrier, with the weakest link at that stage being any human control or intervention.
Ari said:
Why? I suspect the current crop, whilst faster, are a lot more controllable than the seventies stuff.
Of course they are, brake technology.. Crash safety will continue to grow, the only thing that won't evolve in that time is the fleshy thing getting in the way of the onboard computer.But Ari, we are a small breed of performance car enthusiasts that thrive on the challenge of taming all the horses. Most people are not and you've seen the consequences of handing such powerful cars to idiots.. When all this power becomes much more accessible and cheaper to produce, it's just going to multiply and personify the inability of the regular fleshy things in these cars.
I think we are at the limit at around 2.5 secs, we will now see a move down to the 3.something from the next M3/C63/RS4, the latest Rs6 and e63 Mercs are in the 3's already.
Even some deisels are down in the 4's out of the box with none of the legendary mapping needing to be done.
The new 991 turbo S has been tested at 2.6 so we now have "normal" production cars that can nearly match the Veyron to 60.
The hypercars will have to find a new bench mark 0-200kph seems a popular yardstick.
Even some deisels are down in the 4's out of the box with none of the legendary mapping needing to be done.
The new 991 turbo S has been tested at 2.6 so we now have "normal" production cars that can nearly match the Veyron to 60.
The hypercars will have to find a new bench mark 0-200kph seems a popular yardstick.
Shadows said:
Ari said:
Why? I suspect the current crop, whilst faster, are a lot more controllable than the seventies stuff.
Of course they are, brake technology.. Crash safety will continue to grow, the only thing that won't evolve in that time is the fleshy thing getting in the way of the onboard computer.But Ari, we are a small breed of performance car enthusiasts that thrive on the challenge of taming all the horses. Most people are not and you've seen the consequences of handing such powerful cars to idiots.. When all this power becomes much more accessible and cheaper to produce, it's just going to multiply and personify the inability of the regular fleshy things in these cars.
Krikkit said:
This - as manufacturers get closer to ultimate adhesion limits of the tyres the times will plateau. The focus will start shifting towards the larger benchmarks for high-performance cars.
e.g. 0-200kph will become the benchmark.
That's logical but it hasn't happened. 0-40 was the bechmark, then 0-50 and 0-60 came in during the 60s and it's stuck for 50 years.e.g. 0-200kph will become the benchmark.
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