I was looking through lap times of different production cars, and there are some wildly out of place cars doing ring laptimes, some cars are faster than they seem they should be, while others are slower than they should be. Which got me thinking how some cars truly get tested in showroom condition, and others get the “marketing” treatment to produce a laptime a showroom car would never touch, solely to sell more cars. Then I found this article that talks exactly about just that.
https://www.thedrive.com/porsche/11012/nurburgring-times-dont-matter
Exactly. It’s a marketing gimmick and it has 0 relevance for end consumers in the real world. Similarly, 0-60 times are also irrelevant for real world driving.
The 0-60 is important to GR Corolla Morizo owners so they can flex that it’s just as fast as a dark horse.
0-60 is just to make AWD and launch control equipped cars look way better than they are in the real world
Don’t tell the STI guys that their 5-60 is slower than a Golf GTI and a GR86
STi is somewhere around 7 seconds 5-60, I feel like the new Prius might be faster 😬
If the race goes to just 60 I don’t even think the Prius has to be new to win lol
“0-60 times used to be relevant when the cars I liked did good times but now that EVs are here they are irrelevant.”
-Car enthusiasts
You can add the German autobahn no speed limit showcases to that too…
Not to mention, I think James May is/was right. Every time cars are “developed” on tracks they’re always painful in real life. Only caveat is cars with adaptive suspension can be good in comfort mode.
0 to 60 is important if you merge on hiways and interstates.
you merge onto a highway from a standstill?
Surely you mean 30-80 is the speed you’ll be going when merging
Around here it’s 30-50 on the onramp and just rip in front of people doing 15-20 below the posted speed limit…
When turning left from a stoplight.
Most on-ramps in bigger California cities have metering lights. You have to accelerate in a pretty short distance often.
The ones onto the 405 in OC are fucking terrible. I have to give it like 75% throttle to merge safely even in pretty quick cars. I swear at least half the reason there are so many Teslas here is due to the fact that the average OC commute has like 4 drag races in it.
Each way has one on the on-ramp and another just to get into the lane for that on-ramp
Well, I would dare saying that 0-60 matters in one weird spot, in merging into high speed traffic when standing still, something very common in NYC highways.
But yes, it’s meaningless otherwise.
Yep. 5 to 60 is more relevant for real world driving. At least for daily driving.
NJ and its ultra short freeway merges say that 0-60 is the all important number, at least for those of us living somewhere with bad highway designs.
Merging onto 1&9 off of 35 in Woodbridge and having to immediately cut across 2 lanes to make it to route 9 taught me how important that 0-60 really is
😂 merging onto 295 was always a good time in my lighting on 315 radials, except the one time there was snow on the ground… that was sketchy.
Nope. It’s still 5 to 60 that’s more relevant unless you’re doing a 5k clutch dump with flat shifting or using launch mode.
None of these times are relevant for real world driving. My car needs 17 seconds from 0 to 60 (more in the eco mode I’m always using) and it’s always fast enough to keep up with traffic.
Especially in the world of launch control where the turbos pre spool
or 0 to 30. that’s where most people notice slow acceleration.
I’d say 0-40 is a good metric. Basically how long does it take to hit cruising speed.
0-30 and close to weight capacity. I bought my Rav4 as a work vehicle, and you would be amazed at how much difference not having 400-500 lbs of tools/parts in the back makes.
You don’t want to start at a moving speed as it creates other variables to take into consideration that will affect the time. Starting at 0 will give the most consistent start each time and give replicable results for others.
Nope. You can get consistent times from 5 mph starts. Of course it creates other variables, but it’s more representative of daily driving since a lot of people will regularly floor their car.
But they’re not using launch mode or dumping the clutch from 5k rpm which is what you get when you do 0 to 60 times.
It’s a good stat for a 911 GT3 RS, it’s a useless stat for a BMW X5 30d.
Maybe you want to take the entire family around the ring?
Big Pete 💪💪💪
Carries 7 lads 'round the ring in no time atall
If we’re very very honest, it doesn’t really matter for the GT3RS either. Yes it’s cool to see how fast Porsche and others can make their cars go, but a super tiny amount of buyers will actually push these cars and an even tinier fraction will be able to drive them to their limit. The majority of people who seriously “care” about these stats are kids and keyboard warriors, both of which mostly have very little acutal knowledge about cars. I’d take an E92M3 GTS over an M4GTS any day of the week, even though the M4 is faster around the ring. To me, there’s a lot more to a car than lap times and power.
There was a great ad in the 90s about the Minneapolis bus beating a Porsche from the city to the suburbs. All because traffic and bus lanes.
Meh, 0-60 tines are definitely relevant, so long as each car is tested without shit like rollout and torque braking and prepped surfaces etc.
Every car should be tested in a controlled environment at sea level on the same surface under the same conditions.
I wouldn’t say irrelevant, but not as important as the focus on it. 5-60 or even 5-40 are more helpful but since they’re not used no one knows what a reasonable time is.