The demise of small cars...

[VtecMini]

Actually, a pallet of clay bricks (more than enough to build an outhouse with) weighs around 700kgs, the mortar needed for that many bricks would weigh around 500kg, so strictly speaking it probably weighs about the same as two brick sh!thouses.

[Misho]

yeah, i remember this thread. back in the time we were all still young kids !!

[IWantAnAudiRS6]

The RS6 is not that great

woteva... lol ......

[Olli]

To me you have to have a balance between the two because lots of power and little weight are good things

[Radoman]

I'm with Egg Nog. screw these oversized, bulbous, worthless excuses for "sports car"s. The whole point is to be Nimble, Agile and Quick. sure, it's sometimes fun to unleash ungodly amounts of power, but people keep forgetting that you don't need a huge bloody V8 to go fast! and Lotus, underpowered? any 0-60 time under 6 seconds is NOT "underpowered".

[jcp123]

I like em big, but not in the truck sense necessarily. I like my cars long and low, not really tall though. And while speed is fun sometimes, when it comes down to it, I love to cruise. Yet, I love a bigger engine for that just for its effortless, understressed manner.

Case in point: 1958 Cadillac Fleetwood Series 60S (my dream car).
Wheelbase: 133" (3,38m)
Overall length: 225" (5,72m)
Weight: 4930lbs (2236kg)
Original engine: 365ci (6,0l) OHV Pushrod V8
310 gross hp @ 4800rpm
(about 200net?)
Engine I want: 394ci (6,5l) OHV Pushrod V8
~300 net HP

Don't get me started on the Fleetwood 75's

[teatako]

i don´t know....i love cars i really do, but i realise it is absurd to own a 2-ton vehicle if 80% of automobiles carry exactly 1 person per trip. when you talk about car weight, a lot of issues should come up, not the least being the environment and the use of space on the planet. right now,the car is king and cities arent designed for people to live in, but for the people´s cars. look at the US where there arent sidewalks in a lot of areas and cities are all spreaded only connected by highways. how much more space could be saved if we didnt depend on a 4 and a half meter ton and a half monster to move ourselves from point a to point b, however close these points may be? How much safer could passenger cars be if they were lighter, shorter, lower and more responsive? How much safer could our journeys be without any SUV´s and pickups driven by tailgating assholes on the road? for example, what if every car on the planet was a smart? how much safer would the public roads be? the truth is cars are a really bad urban mobility solution.

Then theres the undeniable fact we are running out of oil. does anyone realise how much effort has to be made for their camaros to waste all that fuel? when will we all realise we must change our way of life before people start dropping dead around us while walking on the street because of pollution? ultimately if it were up to me, there wouldnt be any cars at all that werent sports cars! and there would be plenty of publicly available tracks all over where everyone would have tons of fun in a car, which is what cars do best. we would ride buses, trains, bikes, motorcycles...imagine how much less overweight people there would be if we did a lot of travelling by bike, for example. we would see tons of hot chicks in tight shorts pedalling and making themselves hotter...

[QBridge]

And you really can't complain about a car that does 0-60 in around 5 seconds and gets milage in the neighbourhood of 50 MPG.

You said that twice now. I'm not saying you're wrong but the Elise gets 23/27, At least that's what they say. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/2005s...005&make=Lotus
I like the car too. Small, light, RWD, fast, beautiful and economical. They need to make more cars like that because I'm in the market for one.
Where does it say that it gets 50MPG?

[Forever92]

Wow, old thread... uhh, didn't read all of it but this stuck out to me.

You really DO NOT want to own a Speedster. When it rains, the water comes in the cockpit.

Del Sol... MR2... small car, fun, and it's a targa. I miss them days. No problems when it rains either.

[Guest]

You said that twice now. I'm not saying you're wrong but the Elise gets 23/27, At least that's what they say. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/2005s...005&make=Lotus
I like the car too. Small, light, RWD, fast, beautiful and economical. They need to make more cars like that because I'm in the market for one.
Where does it say that it gets 50MPG?

egg nog owns one i believe...

[QBridge]

If he got 50MPG it has to be highway driving and if he did it's probably wrong. It's impossible to get that even with that small, light car that runs on gasoline. If it was diesel I would believe it.

[Egg Nog]

If he got 50MPG it has to be highway driving and if he did it's probably wrong. It's impossible to get that even with that small, light car that runs on gasoline. If it was diesel I would believe it.

No, I was absolutely wrong. I did say it twice, but it was based on both of my wrong predictions. I definitely wouldn't have said it if it had been more recently, but you must realise that when I posted this the Elise wasn't available in North America yet at all, and thus I didn't have much to go by except for European stats.

My guesses were based on milage figures for the Toyota Celica GTS (same engine) and the weight of the Elise. I was also talking about a completely different gallon, since the rest of us don't live in the US

50mpg for us is more like 40mpg for you

23/42 (8.8) is reported for the 111R British Version (from RSportscars.com)

I don't own an Elise by the way. I wish They won't even be any driving around Vancouver for at least a couple months.

[QBridge]

They won't even be any driving around Vancouver for at least a couple months.

Why not?

[Volvoman]

I think smaller cars are they way to go with the rising petrol prices. Look at it this way. I own a 1985 Volvo 240 sedan that weighs 1800KG just sitting there. With me in it, a passenger, tank of fuel, luggae in the back, your talking somewhere in the vicinity of 2000kg. This cars weighs more than my mothers Toyota Hilux 4WD. I haven't paid less than 121.9cents per litre in over 12 months! I get about 10-12L per 100Km. Not great mileage really. If petrol prices were like this when I bought the car, I probably would have gone for a smaller car lke a Chysler Neon. Smaller 4 cyl that I know is not a powerful but would get better mileage and can run on unleaded petrol. Plus you've got the added benefit of a boot as well. Smaller hatchbacks, as far as I'm concerned, just strike me as being unsafe is any sort of accident really. I'm talking smaller cars like Toyota Starlet and Nissan Micra et all. But this includes your sportcars as well. Like someone mentioned before, your driving along in you Lotus Elise and get hit by a Nissan Patrol for example. He isn't just going to hit you, he is going to run you over. Death for sure. I'd like to know that the smaller car I drive is at least going to get me to my destination safely. But that is just my veiw.

[Matra et Alpine]

Like someone mentioned before, your driving along in you Lotus Elise and get hit by a Nissan Patrol for example. He isn't just going to hit you, he is going to run you over. Death for sure. I'd like to know that the smaller car I drive is at least going to get me to my destination safely. But that is just my veiw.

not entirely true
A car with larger mass will MOVE a car with smaller mass.
Cars with equal mass will deform equally.
A car with lighter mass hitting a larger mass car will not move the heavier car very much at all.

As well as deformation zones and passenger cells the force vectors in crashes are important BIG hurts small when small can't move. ie crushed up against other vehicle or wall
(still awfully simnplistic)