huh, you're right. Not sure where I got that from.
huh, you're right. Not sure where I got that from.
I dont if I'll make home tonight
But I know I can swim
under the Tahitian moon
'76 Cadillac Fleetwood Seventy-Five Limousine, '95 Lincoln Town Car.
G37 & G35 Coupes are "pigs". You'd be amazed, but the sedans themselves are slightly faster & pull harder, or so the G37S one is. A G37S sedan pulled away from me like nothing, and a G37 has defeated me pretty easily before the exhaust.
My car is no lightweight, coming in at 3,600lbs. I've run a G35 Coupe with only the intake, and I still started pulling on him at 80Mph. They get really fast though, when they're properly modded, but you'll rarely see them with anything more than a cat-back exhaust system & intake.
2007 Acura TL Type-S (AEM V2, R-V6 Race/J-Pipe, ATLP Quad Exhaust)
2011 BMW 328i Coupe
Well but if we didn't have that much power we wouldn't need heavier parts.
And there's the case of gadgets, if I want to be comfortable I have to put up with gadgets. And if I don't want gizmos I need an uncomfortable sportscar.
And that's the main problem as I see it. Lighter cars are safer in their own right. But alas since we to kill everyone around us, lighter cars aren't safe anymore. And then everyone has to have a big, fat SUV.
And then there's issue of lighter cars having better active safety than hevy ones.
Lack of charisma can be fatal.
Visca Catalunya!
I think comparing a Mazda3 to a 599GTB, even weight wise, is a bit of a stretch.
and a Mazda3 is heavy on its own: the new 2.0 (150bhp) version weights 1.335 kg, while a Fiat Bravo 1.4 t-jet (150 bhp) weights 1.275 kg.
Now the fiat has a smaller engine, but also a turbo, and it isn't based on a very light platform as a start.
KFL Racing Enterprises - Kicking your ass since 2008
*cough* http://theitalianjunkyard.blogspot.com/ *cough*
Are Smaller Cars as Safe as Large Cars?
By Mike Hudson, News Editor and Ronald Montoya
Consumers shopping for a fuel-efficient vehicle will probably gravitate toward smaller cars. But by doing so, will they put themselves at risk in the event of an accident?
The cold hard facts show that smaller, lighter cars are generally less safe than larger, heavier cars. However, there is still a lot you can do to choose the safest small car. But first, let's start with a little background.
Assuming you're a safe driver, your chances of getting in an accident are really in "the other guy's" hands. You are driving across an intersection and get broadsided by someone running a red light. Your odds of survival, or avoiding injury, are up to the design of the car and the safety equipment you've chosen. At that instant you will hope you have made a good decision and chosen a safe car.
Still, you can't protect yourself against every danger. And life is full of trade-offs. You want to save oil and reduce emissions, but you also want to be safe. What do you do? You choose the safest car you can afford that also provides good gas mileage. Here are a few factors to help guide your decision.
The keys to a car's ability to keep you alive during a crash involve safety equipment, the vehicle's weight and its resistance to rollover. While small cars don't roll over easily, they lack weight and are less likely to have advanced safety features like stability control or full side curtain airbags.
Furthermore, the numbers don't bode well for small cars. Below is a chart from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) showing the latest fatality rates for the different vehicle sizes. (The mini car category wasn't included because the sample size of registered vehicles was too small.)
Driver deaths per million registered passenger vehicles 1-3 years old, 2007. Source: IIHS
Vehicle Size/ Rate
Car — Small 96
Car — Midsize 62
Car — Large 64
Car — Very Large 35
Pickup — Small 104
Pickup — Large 90
Pickup — Very Large 86
SUV — Small 48
SUV — Midsize 41
SUV — Large 43
SUV — Very Large 47
The rest of the article:
Are Small Cars Safe?
Andreas Preuninger, Manager of Porsche High Performance Cars: "Grandmas can use paddles. They aren't challenging."
I just have to add this because I find it so outrageous: Complete wiring on a Mustang GT weighs 412 lbs, as confirmed by FRPP.
No wonder manufacturers want to go 42v instead of 12v
Turning money into memories.
I hope you realized the article is biased in first place, saying the car's weight is one of the keys to keep you alive...by which arguments?
You know, from a journalist, I would espect something more than carrying on the old way of the American thinking "the bigger the better".
those statics are also pointless, as they don't take into count the difference between each vehicle, the usual driver for each category and even their diffusion on the market.
Let's start with it: small cars in America. do you really think they are as good as those sold here? Just think of the Focus, which isn't that small tbh.
Second, which is the most sold kind of vehicle in America? Trucks and SUVs. no wonder if automakers put more money in the development of those instaed of small cars's.
Third, the very article underlined a right point: assuming you drive safely, it's "up" to the others. So, if they drive a panzer, you're screwed. And it's not your fault.
Fourth: since when smaller cars aren't well equipped?
We get small cars which are equipped with more airbags than ECUs, and perform better in crash tests than bigger cars (again, Q7 comes to mind).
Fifth: you would assume than in heavier vehicle you're safer...and if another vehicle as heavy as yours hits you? Do you still think you would be safe?
The answer is no:
It's easy to play the big guy when weighting 3.000 kg and facing a 1.000 kg compact car.
You have an higher CG, a higher impact structure and, wityh comparable speeds, carry on more energy. it's all going to be discharged on the smaller car.
If you have to face an impact with an equal vehicle as yours, not only the energy in the crash will be much higher, but also, you would have to absorb all you energy, and probably even a part of the other, if the accident isn't the one on a million which happens exactly like the folks governing safety rules hoped.
Finally consider this:
The Pininfarina Nido, a concept car, but nothing out of the world. Smaller than a 500 iirc.
It features an external shield, very rigid.
A series of internal shocks insulate the cockpit from the body of the car.
In case of an accident, the energy of an impact is elastically absorbed by the shoks, without transferring to the cockpit and its passengers.
No consider this abstract situation:
the Nido has an accident with an Hummer H1, both going fast.
Given all the already stated consideration, let's suppose in the first case, A, the Nido adopts impact structures, while in the suppose it's very solid on the outside, with the shocks inside.
In the impact, the H1 discharges all its kinetic energy on the Nido. two possible situations:
A- The impact structure is calibrated even to face silly high vehicles (or better, their silly high impact structures), and by destroying itself during the impact, it dissipates all the energy.
Never wondered how hill climbing safety hooks work?
While deforming themselves, they starts acting as elastic objects at first, then they turn they behavior into plastic. The deformation now requires much more energy, and the deformation now is permanent. In this process the energy possessed by a body falling (gravitational or potential energy, don't know the right english word) is completely abpsrbed by the hook which in turn is on its way to be broken.
B- the energy of the H1 is enough to launch the Nido, since it' externally rigid and won't dissipate any part of the energy in deformation. Given the Hummer is heavier, it's not going to be moved by the Nido. Seems unsafe?
it might be, but now the Nido is just traveling (uncontrolled) a speed is going to loose easily (difficulty it will still run exactly straight on its tires), and even in the hypothesis of an impact, the energy it's carrying on is way lower than that generated on the impact, due to the inefficient movements it's now following.
With the internal shocks and say a carbon fiber shield on the outside (without an impact structure) passengers would just been shacked.
Think of a motorbike: even in high speed crashes, the chassis is usually intact, and it weights...don't know, 50 kg?!
I'm aware this isn't the reality.
But I showed as with the technology available even a very small car can be safe.
do we have this technology really available? No, but on th other hand, is it really "fair" that small cars has to be so over-engineered just because there are heavier cars not properly engineered?
By "not properly engineered" I don't mean that trucks aren't good vehicle, or not efficient or whatever, but they aren't designed to face smaller cars as a bulldozer is designed not to face objects, but just to move them or destroyed them.
On the other hand, a small car HAS to be capable to resist to a full-size SUV (...) or it will be unsafe.
As a final note, compare minivans with SUVs.
Even if I'm not very inot American minivans I'm think they would be more similar to a car than to a truck from the designing point of view. In such case, while still be heavier than a sedan, they usually are less safe, mainly because of a larger internal volume to protect with similar dimensioned chassis' parts. and while still maintaining the impact structure's height of a car (making possible a comparison during the impact).
there is so much more than weight into an impact.
Last edited by LeonOfTheDead; 04-22-2009 at 11:18 AM.
KFL Racing Enterprises - Kicking your ass since 2008
*cough* http://theitalianjunkyard.blogspot.com/ *cough*
the only word to describe this (someone used it earlier) is indeed, overengineered. there are way too much computers, electronic (non-mechanical) gizmos in the cars.
the mechanicals are packed in real close together to make space
we are getting lazier, expecting satellite navigation, heated seats, and a bunch of other interior uneededs that added together is another chunk of weight
safer cars are heavier, so i can not blame them for that. safe is good
it was actually me who killed vasilli zaitsev, heinz thorwald, carlos hatchcock, and simo hayha
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