How fast things are now

Driving my 325 HP Mustang on the street is often a lack-luster affair. By the time you are having any fun you're breaking enough laws to be arrested, not just ticketed. I know that increasing weight offsets the HP numbers some, but it seems like 500+ would be more of a PITA on the street than any fun. I remember guys in the first S197 GT500s who were turning up big boost saying that first gear was useless, second gear was great for killing tires, and third gear was you're real attack gear. They would commonly get walked by a basic bolt-on GT on the street because they had so much power you couldn't really race till you were over 75mph or you just roasted the rear tires.

If a car enthusiast wants to build a 700hp car, that's great. An enthusiast has an idea of what that means, and how to treat those horses with respect. When any schmuck with a 600 credit score can go finance a Hellcat, I start to get frightened.

I'll have to find the article, but the main topic was "Beware when hellcats get to their third owners."

Don't get me wrong, cars are just getting better and better, but way too many of them now are beyond their drivers abilities, even with active stability and such.

-Hans

ultraclyde wrote: Driving my 325 HP Mustang on the street is often a lack-luster affair. By the time you are having any fun you're breaking enough laws to be arrested, not just ticketed. I know that increasing weight offsets the HP numbers some, but it seems like 500+ would be more of a PITA on the street than any fun. I remember guys in the first S197 GT500s who were turning up big boost saying that first gear was useless, second gear was great for killing tires, and third gear was you're real attack gear. They would commonly get walked by a basic bolt-on GT on the street because they had so much power you couldn't really race till you were over 75mph or you just roasted the rear tires.

I'd rather drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow. Being able to drive your car at 7-8/10 on a daily basis is more enjoyable to me than driving at 5/10. I went from 430hp to my current 185hp and I've not been disappointed at all because of what you stated.

Vigo wrote: It's like 'horsepower inflation' where the weight of modern cars means a horsepower don't go as far as it used to.

Hit the nail on the head with this one.

I always read the "slow car fast" thing. I don't get it. Any car, on the road or track, is limited by grip. You're basically picking a machine for driving around four tires. I'd rather drive a car fast or slow, that can come close the the limits of grip in an entertaining and practical way.
The thing with 'slow' cars is they're fun while turning and under braking. Fast cars are fun under turning, braking, AND acceleration.
I would say that high grip cars can be less interesting on the street because of the accelerations needed to get close to the limit of the tires, but that's true of fast and slow cars.

This was about 15 years ago, but I got walked by a Nissan Maxima in my 87 Corvette

mazdeuce wrote: I always read the "slow car fast" thing. I don't get it. Any car, on the road or track, is limited by grip. You're basically picking a machine for driving around four tires. I'd rather drive a car fast or slow, that can come close the the limits of grip in an entertaining and practical way. The thing with 'slow' cars is they're fun while turning and under braking. Fast cars are fun under turning, braking, AND acceleration. I would say that high grip cars can be less interesting on the street because of the accelerations needed to get close to the limit of the tires, but that's true of fast and slow cars.

It has to do with having to back out of it when there is an abundance of power. You can spend longer extracting the maximum that a slower car has to give acceleration-wise before you have to back out of it.

What fun is chucking a car into a corner if you cant plant the pedal to power out?

My 79 capri made just over 300 hp and was a blast. On normal rock hard tires it spun if you floored it anywere below 25 mph. I dont need the crazy power some people want but i can sure say id like to have atleast that in my wagon. 88hp is slow car slow, theres nothing fast about it after the first ten feet!

What fun is mashing the gas if nothing happens? I've owned and driven plenty of both, and cars that can leave two big black stripes are more fun. This is why an LS Miata is more fun than a stock 1.8 Miata. Not because of how it stops or turns, but because of how the loud pedal reacts.
I get that some people want to just mash the gas and make loud noises without the car being dangerous or breaking the law, but 150hp and 500hp both get to 60 by winding out second gear. I guess one could argue that having 10 seconds to enjoy getting up to speed is twice as much fun as five seconds, but I'd disagree.

In reply to mazdeuce:

The gist of "slow car fast", in this discussion, applies to street use. What's the use of a brazzillion horsepower, if you can't apply it, without smashing into traffic or attracting the attention of Johnny Law? With 34 horsepower, you can wring the living snot out of it, have a ball, and none will be the wiser.

I really see this pain being felt when I watch a group of HPDE instructors standing around in the morning, confronting a class of novices with 400 to 500 HP cars now. People that used to persuade their new students that they should go without the traction control are now flat out requiring it. One guy described it as working on your own roof year after year, even though you're getting older -- and the house gets one story taller every year.

To each his own.

Personally, I'm convinced that the primary reason normal mass market vehicles are available with as much power as they are these days, is because the vast majority of people don't know how to use more than a fraction of the available power. So they think they need (want) 300+hp, and scoff at the idea of only having 100hp, when that's all they'll ever actually end up using.

With 117hp, my Fit is more than capable of making the vast majority of traffic on my daily commute seem like a stream of rolling traffic cones...Well, when it isn't bumper to bumper, that is. I can still at least stretch those horses' legs enough to have a bit of fun while making my way through, yet without (in my opinion) being a d-bag about it. Driving in my wife's surprisingly sporty 276hp RAV4 mostly results in being further underwhelmed by the lack of sensation of speed and power if driven no faster or more aggressively than the Fit. With the alternative typically being some form of d-baggery, that can quickly and easily enough push into higher levels of illegality. So for my own commute, I just don't see the fun in having 300+hp when being almost continuously stuck behind an endless stream of vehicles never using more than 100hp. Not to mention the extra fuel still being burned (wasted) the vast majority of the time when I'm not able to enjoy the extra power. After spending a week in my wife's car, I realized that I actually don't even want as much power as it has in my commute around here.

I suppose significantly more power might be able to mean equivalently more fun for <1% of the time I spend driving, and may be functionally useful an additional <1% of the time I spend driving, but the rest of the time it's just a waste. And yes, I have come to feel somewhat similarly about uber-sticky tires for daily driving as well, regardless of high vs low hp...Although it's worth noting that tire grip on most cars on the road is pretty directly proportional to acceleration potential.

That doesn't mean I don't desire and enjoy such things in my 'toys' though.

my old Fiat Spider only had 85hp.. I had a Hyundai excel with a blistering 65... I think there are lawnmowers at HD that have more hp than that thing did

When I was in college in the 1970s a friend had a 1965 Toyota. He liked how he could drive it everywhere as fast as it would go, and no one would notice.

I once fought a speeding ticket based on the fact that my 1978 Triumph Spitfire would not go as fast as the cop said I was going. I lost, but the point was valid. That 55 hp E36 M3box was the funnest car I ever owned.

Slow car fast>fast car slow all day every day.

But on real roads the limits are things like speed limits and other drivers and sanity. It doesn't much matter if you're in a Miata or a Viper, if you don't like the back seat of a police cruiser you're not driving much different, you just get up to speed faster. Or do you mean that a car with less grip is more fun than a car with more grip? I would agree with that, because rallycross is clearly superior to autocross and dirt roads are superior to paved roads purely for grip reasons. Snowy parking lots, wet grass fields, all of the fun stuff at sane speeds is about grip, not power.

This is one of the reasons I stopped collecting FC RX-7s. The work/fun/performance ratio got out of whack enough that there are better projects and drivers out there.

I'm not changing my avatar, though. That's the first engine I ever built solo.

I think part of the reason i've been so totally ok with mostly owning FWD cars is that I've always embraced the fact that it works fine up to the level of driving that i do 99% of the time on 'normal' roads, and more importantly, the highway. I know some people here are complaining about cars that don't hook until 50+ mph, but that's fine with me. I don't really care about racing from stops much because it's so driver-dependent, whereas when you are racing at 60+ you are racing cars, not drivers. Unless you're racing cars that spin easily at highway speeds in which case #firstworldproblems and I don't care. That sort of power IS well and truly useless to me in a street car.

Brett_Murphy wrote: I'm not changing my avatar, though. That's the first engine I ever built solo.

I always thought that was a painted barbecue grill...

It's this:

In reply to Brett_Murphy:

I see it know that you pointed it out to me, I guess I never really looked that close before. Squint your eyes, look at your avatar and tell me you don't see a grill with racing stripes

Also to stay on topic a little bit, put me in the slow car fast camp.

I think that the majority of the posts on this thread are people subconsciously trying to justify their slow cars to themselves. Don't worry, I'm doing it too. Mostly though, I'm thrilled that 1000hp is the new 500. That 7 second hurican makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. If I could swing it, I would dd the e36m3 outa that thing.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Not true, in a miata you can wring it out all day long and be lucky to break a speed limit (at least the 1.6's ive owned). Now i drive a turbocharged 80's goodness and while 200hp isnt alot, its double those miatas and i cannot drive it the same way as the miatas. I even have to be careful passing people on two lane highways or ill be bumping against 90mph, never had that problem in a miata. Now change that 200hp volvo to a 400-500hp viper? Yeah your going to be driving like a grandma to not speed and also its a magnet for police because higher profile and louder(eh debatable). See what im saying here?

In reply to sesto: i dont own a miata but ive been on both sides of this debate as im sure most people here have too, slow car "fast" is more fun than poking around in a viper,vette, mustang, whatever where if you want to hit redline it better be first or second gear, or 3rd on a highway or youll be breaking speed limits...

I think both sides make some good points, it's fun to sling a low hp low grip car around on the streets without ever breaking any laws, although on a closed course type scenario give me all the lateral G's and giggle inducing acceleration I can handle.

My stable of 2 are polar opposites: a 90hp diesel vw on squishy skinny tires and a 500whp vette on 12" wide sticky summer rubber. On a normal daily commute 99% of the trip is spent trundling along at highway speeds which both cars maintain without issue. it's just that the on/off ramps are different experiences in 1 vs the other.

I never get tired of matting the skinny pedal and getting up to speed in the c5 whereas in the tdi acceleration is simply the thing you do to avoid getting run over by a semi and then you set the cruise control. but on back twisty roads of late I find I almost enjoy the tdi more. Yea the straight sections in between are more boring but not by much because you actually have to speed up, slow down, and drive the car, the vette can handle most of the 55mph roads around here without managing to be exciting, hold the pedal at 55 and turn the wheel.

Cars/Tires/Suspension/Limits have raised so high that on the road at legal speeds it's tough to push modern stuff anywhere near their limits. so for street use I vote miata is still the answer