Performance: An Entirely Relative Science

We are primarily a performance-oriented website here at CarThrottle. The amount of people interested enough in minivans to go on the web and read about them is pretty small, so performance cars it is.  What does get a little old after a while, though, is the constant one-upmanship of performance manufacturers with each other.  Look at Nissan and Porsche and their fight over Nurburgring lap times, which is about as relevant as comparing car's fuel injector rates as a measure of performance.  Or the whole Camaro vs Mustang V6 power wars - GM re-rated the Camaro's V6 after the Mustang got a new V6 so it would have 7 more horsepower.  Who cares about 7 horsepower?  Couldn't they have spent that money on making it easier to see out of the Camaro?

Still can't see out of it, but now with 7 extra horsepower!

Manufacturers spend ad dollars bragging that the Piepuncher 324ZZYZX-Turboface can sprint to 60 mph a tenth of a second faster than it's closest competitor.  Do you know how brief a tenth of a second is?  Do you really care?  Will the consumer not be able to sleep at night because that blasted 324ZZYZX Turboface has a statistically insignificant advantage on paper?  I doubt it.

But what really gets me is that people obsess over these numbers so hard, like some sort of holy grail, and they're a moving target.  The performance of a car is relative, and it's related not to the clock but to the other cars out there as well as the expectations of the driver.  What's considered average performance today would've been unbelievably quick in the mid-70's when everything was performance-choked with emissions equipment that even the manufacturers didn't know how to set up properly.

Slower than a Honda Odyssey.  Roll that around your head.

Back when my dad was younger (which, as he likes to say, was when the whole world was black and white and dinosaurs roamed the land) a car that could do 0-60 in under 10 seconds was fast, and a top speed over 100mph was respectable.  These days it's remarkable if a car can't hit sixty in under 10 seconds.  Hell, the truck he uses to haul his camper - a diesel dually that weighs north of 7,000 lbs - did a 7.7 second 0-60 bone stock with less than 1000 miles on the odometer, according to a data acquisition program on the iPhone.  Car & Driver tested a new Honda Odyssey - that'd be a minivan - as doing 0-60 in 7.3 seconds.  Minivan.  Faster than a MkII Golf GTI 16v.

But it's not just between the 60's and today.  It's between the 90's and today.  Going back to cars my dad drove for  a minute, for a while his daily driver (in Indiana!) was a 1993 Ford SVT Mustang Cobra, the first SVT product released.  By the standards of 1993, it was a mean sonofabitch.  It had a tweaked 302ci Windsor V8 with EFI, GT40 heads, a pretty solid cam, big fat sticky tires, a heavy five-speed stick, and no traction control or ABS or any other namby-pamby butt saving measures.  Ford quoted the Cobra as being capable of a 5.9 second 0-60 time, although he could never get it below 6 seconds - even with a Steeda short-shifter and 3.55:1 rear end gears.  Today, you can buy a diesel BMW 3-series that would blow the doors off that Cobra - while getting twice the gas mileage.  And not beating you to death.

And that new V6 Mustang I was talking about earlier?  It'll outrun an '01 32v Mustang Cobra to sixty, in the corners, past the gas pumps... everything but top speed, because the V6 models are limited to 114mph for tire equipment reasons.  The V6 Mustang used to be synonymous with "secretary special," with the Cologne SOHC V6 that got it up to highway speed eventually, and an exhaust  note like an iron lung patient.  It's a bit different now: this is a new 3.7L Mustang, not a GT, for reference.  Not exactly something old V6 Mustangs had an easy time doing, for sure.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAr8Apqa6ss

Just to ruin your childhood a little bit, here's a chart.  We all like statistics - clearly - so here's a few things to keep in mind.

*electronically limited due to tire speed rating

Sort of sad to realize that a V6 Mustang is faster to 60mph than a Lamborghini Countach. Or an original NSX.  Or an M6.  Also of note - OK, the Countach posted some of the worst mileage numbers in the history of the EPA (it makes a Ram SRT-10 look efficient), but the V6 Mustang is neck and neck with a 48v Countach through the quarter mile, while returning 3 times the mileage on the highway.

Meanest car of the 80's, whooped by small BMW's today

Back in 1987, the fastest accelerating car you could get your hands on was the built-for-the-strip-and-not-much-else Buick Regal GNX.  That car posted an incredible 4.7s 0-60 time when Car & Driver tested it, which held the record for fastest-acceleration productions sedan at least until the year 2000.  (side note: cars with a B-pillar mounted to the body are Sedans, even if they only have 2 doors.  So the Regal Coupe is a sedan according to the EPA.)  But to get that number, sacrifices were made: an ECM tune that gave it a rough idle, a ladder bar/panhard rod rear suspension that was really only good at brake-stands at the drag strip, a larger turbo with more lag, etc.  It was a one-trick pony: but hey, it was really good at that one trick.  Today, a BMW 135i will pull a 4.6 second 0-60 with a manual, while being a perfectly reasonable daily-driver with luxury goodies, nice seats, and BMW comfort and poshness.

And let's not forget the absolute variability in all these numbers.  Arguing that a Corvette Grand Sport is better than a Shelby GT500 because it's 2 tenths faster to sixty is ridiculous.  Factor in changes in altitude, ambient temperature, track surface temperature, friction coefficient of the track surface, regional differences in octane content in gasoline, and your car could be an entire second slower somewhere else.  And unless it's a twin-clutch automated manual with electronic four wheel drive and automated launch control, just simple driver error can change the numbers for the better or the worse.

What's the point of all this rambling and statistical overload?  To remind you that if you're buying that Evo X MR because it does 0-60 1/10th of a second faster than an STI, you're missing the point.  If you're buying a car, you should find one that you enjoy driving, and buy that, and then drive the hell out of it.  Don't get caught up in the numbers - they're gonna pass you by before you even make the first payment.