0 - 60 and other meaningless comparisons

[RM-S8]

Not sure where to post this.
But, my question to all of you, who cares of course
Why there is so much, in the industry, an infacuation/obsession with 0 to 60, 1/8, 1/4 and other drag race measurements?

 

[segbrk]

Not sure where to post this.
But, my question to all of you, who cares of course
Why there is so much, in the industry, an infacuation/obsession with 0 to 60, 1/8, 1/4 and other drag race measurements?

The same reason people are obsessed with arbitrary benchmarks for new computer hardware. It sort of gives some fuzzy feeling of how it will perform in real life maybe, and it's something people feel like they can really compare between products before spending money (or test driving time) on them. They are things engineers can concretely compare as well when designing/testing new products to know/show that they've made the "best" by some metric. We've gotta have standards to compare by, we consumers just have to try to keep in mind what they actually mean (and don't mean) for us in reality.

 

[Amster]

Sort of like EV range. Good for comparison between cars when you're considering what to buy, but not a reflection of real world numbers.

 

[Steveinarizona]

Not sure where to post this.
But, my question to all of you, who cares of course
Why there is so much, in the industry, an infacuation/obsession with 0 to 60, 1/8, 1/4 and other drag race measurements?

+10,000. I couldn't agree more. If one is going to monitor times, for me it would be 60-100 to cover passing slow moving vehicles on fast streets. Most luxury cars today move quickly from 0-60 but many run out of power as speed increases.

 

[Deisic]

Not sure where to post this.
But, my question to all of you, who cares of course
Why there is so much, in the industry, an infacuation/obsession with 0 to 60, 1/8, 1/4 and other drag race measurements?

Lots of people like fast cars?

 

[RM-S8]

Lots of people like fast cars?

Well, everybody likes fast cars.
That's not my inquiry.

 

[Deisic]

Well, everybody likes fast cars.
That's not my inquiry.

I'm sure it's some agreed-upon measurement for performance regardless. It probably has a high search volume. I have found myself now looking more to 60-80 too to determine the actual real world acceleration beyond off the line.

 

[momo3605]

Curious what your angle is as you drive two extremely high performance cars that are tuned mainly for the acceleration metrics you suggest

But anyway, I find 0-60 to be an outdated metric and not very useful metric now. Almost anything with AWD and 400+hp especially EVs can pull the feat in the 3.x second range. A model 3 performance and lucid air touring will both do a 3.0 0-60. except the model 3 will be at 115mph (on par with like a 3 series) at the end of a quarter mile and the lucid will be at 127. (on par with a last gen 911 Turbo) So even with the same 0-60, the high end performance is vastly different.

The obsession with those metrics is because they are standardized and makes it easy to see how much faster one car is to the next. No one's going to obsess over 0-50 or 70-95mph because that's just not the standard

What IS a standard that I find more helpful that you can find on Car and Driver and others that do instrumented testing --
1/4 mile trap speed - which shows how quick the car pulls at high speed and is unaffected by variables such as good or bad launches
50-70mph - this is great for passing performance on freeways that you can compare across models tested by press magazines
60-130mph - this is more arbitrary, but has kind of become the high speed "standard" like 0-60

 

[Electrified]

Not sure where to post this.
But, my question to all of you, who cares of course
Why there is so much, in the industry, an infacuation/obsession with 0 to 60, 1/8, 1/4 and other drag race measurements?

Why a Huracan when a Subaru BRZ can get you from point A-B?

 

[EXOTIC2]

Great scene from stripes.

 

[idiot900]

Agree with just about everyone in this thread. I'd personally need a stopwatch to tell the difference in acceleration between my Touring and just about anything else on the road.

 

[EXOTIC2]

I could tell the difference easily with my PLAID and then driving my Gallardo. Night and day from any speed. The sapphire would be same feeling.

 

[borski]

Agree with just about everyone in this thread. I'd personally need a stopwatch to tell the difference in acceleration between my Touring and just about anything else on the road.

Huge difference between the DE and a Touring. But if all you have to compare it to is a Camry, the Pure is a rocket

 

[Lucken]

Huge difference between the DE and a Touring. But if all you have to compare it to is a Camry, the Pure is a rocket

The question is where do you use all that additional acceleration? You need to live in or frequent areas where it makes sense. If you live in an area like N.Y., it’s essentially wasted IMO. The Pure already has more acceleration than I can use for the areas I drive through. In terms of passing acceleration, the Pure easily fulfills any safety margins I’d be concerned with. Truth be told, my i4’s acceleration is already all I really need.

 

[hmp10]

While an imperfect measure for the purpose, 0-60 times are a fair proxy for how responsive the car is to the throttle in a wide range of situations. I have had a wide range of ICE cars with vastly different 0-60 times, running from 4-cylinder econoboxes (think Plymouth Omni here) to some of the most powerful ICE cars produced, such as a Corvette, a Mercedes SL55 AMG, a Mercedes McLaren SLR, and two Audi R8 V10s. The vastly different 0-60 times of those cars were fairly reflective of the differences in their performances not only from 0-60 but across a wide range of driving speeds and conditions.

I have a Model S Plaid and a Lucid Air Dream Edition Performance, and I have had a loaner Air Grand Touring for an extended period. As @borski noted, there is a pronounced difference in the way the Air Dream responds to the throttle -- whether blasting away from a stop, when feathering speed up and down to maneuver in traffic, or when initiating a pass at high speed -- even when compared to something as powerful as the Air Grand Touring. While there are subtle differences in how and when speed comes on in the Air Dream compared to the Plaid, those two cars are closer in behavior under throttle at all speeds than the Air Dream is to the Air Grand Touring -- and that is reflected in comparing the 0-60 times across the three cars.

I don't decide whether to buy one car over another based on their 0-60 times, but I do look at 0-60 times before even beginning to consider a car for purchase. I. e., I would take the Air Dream over the Plaid any day of the week, despite its slower 0-60 time. But I never would have a started considering paying the price of the Air Dream if it had a 0-60 time north of ~4 seconds.

 

[hmp10]

The question is where do you use all that additional acceleration?

For me, driving is a sport activity as much as a utility activity. Throughout my adult life I have gotten up before sunrise on many a Saturday or Sunday morning to catch a favorite road while it had no traffic. I loved diving into a bend and blasting out of it, finding a dip in which to plant the suspension with the throttle, hitting a stretch where I could grab the gear stick and modulate the throttle to play the gears-vs-rpm tune to my heart's content. It's left me with a taste for more power than anyone needs for driving in the heavy traffic that prevails on most public roads today . . . and with an itch to know that power is there on the increasingly rare occasions when it can be used safely.

Yeah, playing with the gear shift and listening to the roar of a V8 or V10 is gone from the world of EVs. But the instantaneous torque and the low centers of gravity are more than a fair trade.

 

[Veritas51683]

For me, driving is a sport activity as much as a utility activity. Throughout my adult life I have gotten up before sunrise on many a Saturday or Sunday morning to catch a favorite road while it had no traffic. I loved diving into a bend and blasting out of it, finding a dip in which to plant the suspension with the throttle, hitting a stretch where I could grab the gear stick and modulate the throttle to play the gears-vs-rpm tune to my heart's content. It's left me with a taste for more power than anyone needs for driving in the heavy traffic that prevails on most public roads today . . . and with an itch to know that power is there on the increasingly rare occasions when it can be used safely.

Yeah, playing with the gear shift and listening to the roar of a V8 or V10 is gone from the world of EVs. But the instantaneous torque and the low centers of gravity are more than a fair trade.

Very well said, and +1 here.

 

[Lucken]

For me, driving is a sport activity as much as a utility activity. Throughout my adult life I have gotten up before sunrise on many a Saturday or Sunday morning to catch a favorite road while it had no traffic. I loved diving into a bend and blasting out of it, finding a dip in which to plant the suspension with the throttle, hitting a stretch where I could grab the gear stick and modulate the throttle to play the gears-vs-rpm tune to my heart's content. It's left me with a taste for more power than anyone needs for driving in the heavy traffic that prevails on most public roads today . . . and with an itch to know that power is there on the increasingly rare occasions when it can be used safely.

Yeah, playing with the gear shift and listening to the roar of a V8 or V10 is gone from the world of EVs. But the instantaneous torque and the low centers of gravity are more than a fair trade.

And therein lies the problem for people living in the NY Metro area or similar environs. Those roads and/or conditions simply don’t exist. In the rare event you can find a deserted highway at an ungodly hour, there’s a good chance a cop is waiting to ‘grade’ you on how impressive your performance actually was. No thanks, it’s just not practical in these areas.

The unfortunate truth for roads in areas like I travel, is that suspension quality far outstrips acceleration capabilities. No contest.

 

[Veritas51683]

And therein lies the problem for people living in the NY Metro area or similar environs. Those roads and/or conditions simply don’t exist. In the rare event you can find a deserted highway at an ungodly hour, there’s a good chance a cop is waiting to ‘grade’ you on how impressive your performance actually was. No thanks, it’s just not practical in these areas.

The unfortunate truth for roads in areas like I travel, is that suspension quality far outstrips acceleration capabilities. No contest.

Get a radar detector and take a 45 min weekend drive upstate! Lots of beautiful roads up here that would allow you to really enjoy a car's performance

 

[hmp10]

And therein lies the problem for people living in the NY Metro area or similar environs.

Get a radar detector and take a 45 min weekend drive upstate! Lots of beautiful roads up here that would allow you to really enjoy a car's performance

Righto. I used to live in Redding, Connecticut and drove to work in Stamford every day by cutting through Westchester County (Pound Ridge, South Salem). Those were some of the most wonderful roads I've ever driven, winding through hilly, wooded countryside with light traffic. I also used to drive regularly over to the Croton-on-Hudson area, again on some of the finest driving venues in the country, often without another car in sight.

Even in Los Angeles, I used to live just off Mulholland Drive in Studio City, so it was possible even there to find some exciting roads with light traffic at certain times of day. (You could see Dead Man's Curve across the valley from our house. That was the road where our Mazda Miata really came into its own.)