FUTURE PROOF
Zero to 62mph times are a farce, says TopGear consultant editor Paul Horrell. And here’s why...
Ever fantasise about following some of the journeys we feature at TopGear? Nice idea Except for the one we talk about most often You’d be daft to repeat it in your own car and we know that you know that It’s the one from to mph Though we talk about it we ahem don’t actually do it very often for ourselves
The American media bred out of a drag racing culture obsessively measure acceleration times but of course The Germans bred out of a culture where what cannot be measured cannot be considered obsessively measure it too except kph which is mph YouTubers do it managing to stretch a quick fivesecond squirt down a runway into a yawning gibbering minutes of footage through which we all rapidly scrub
At TG we usually quote the manufacturer’s figure That’s because measuring is highly abusive of any car with manual transmission liable to burn clutches snap driveshafts and ruin tyres It’s also inexact depending on surface weather temperature and the skill and luck of the driver It demands expensive facilities and equipment and we understand you’d rather we spent that time and money testing on good roads and gathering beautiful photos
But wait What if we’re quoting a distorted figure if the manufacturers are making bent claims? Well remember we
“I CARE LITTLE FOR THE MEASURED ACCELERATION. WHAT MATTERS IS THE FEELING OF ACCELERATION”
have to borrow cars from them If they lied about the time they’d probably also nobble the test car’s engine quietly chipping for more power so we could match their times So we’d have to control for that by doing a dyno test as well Another expensive timeconsuming and abusive business
Anyway what are these acceleration measurements? In the US they use a ‘onefoot rollout’ the clock starts ticking when the car has travelled one foot So duh it’s no longer doing zero And we must consider launch control a lengthy sequence of button pushes and pedal jabs before you even set off on the actual timed run To match the manufacturer’s quoted an American magazine had to spend ages lowering the Cadillac CT Blackwing’s tyre pressures and experimenting with its launch control’s rpm and tyre slip parameters In the famous case of the emperors of the Teslas you have to do a lengthy battery conditioning process While you wait for all that to happen I think the clock should surely be ticking And I’d already be at the far end of the runway having walked there
But more than all that times simply don’t matter
I care little for the measured acceleration What matters is the feeling of acceleration Does the car answer the accelerator promptly? Overtake well? Make nice noises as it goes? And is that acceleration at its best over the speed range I require?
If I floor it from let’s say a steady mph how long do I have to wait for the turbos to spool up the auto box to thump down and then to accelerate up to or indeed whatever speed I need? It’s all way beyond the compass of the digits You need a wordy description and that’s my job