I dunno… I automatically like a car company more for cheating on emissions.
To me it says they value their (and to an extent our) money more than to comply with the government’s bullshit. Apparently two components that make up 78.09% and 20.95% of our atmoshere (that’s 99.04% of our atmosphere), when combined, is bad for us. Seems legit.
I like the Rally Mirage. Since by today’s regulations, the rally car has almost nothing to do with it’s original base vehicle; it just has to look sort-of like it… it makes sense to take your smallest car and make it into a purpose-built rally vehicle. That’s what everyone’s doing now. Ford droped their Focus for their Fiesta, VW’s using the Polo, and so on. Mitsu’s just going with the flow here.
I miss the time where Rally cars were just modified production vehicles, with a roll bar, some mild engine tuning, a bit of suspension work, and some epic tires.
I don’t really want to fuel the classic “Muscle vs. Import” charade… but let me be the voice of reason here. Both sides tend to significantly exaggerate their claims.
The Toyota Supra is a good, capable vehicle, with an very innovative, reliable, and well-built engine. The staged-turbocharging system alone is worthy of praise… but it isn’t this untouchable super-car. It’s fairly quick for it’s ~325hp, and sets respectable lap times… but the R32 GTR hands the Supra it’s ass. I completely agree that the Supra is over-hyped / over-rated… but it is indeed a good vehicle, but certainly not the best. The R32 GTR is/was. Lap-times stock, and in JGTC prove that. JGTC is a very good indicator because they were extremely restricitve about what could be modified on the car. It was nothing like today with purpose-built race-cars and a carbon-fibre body that sort of looks like a chopped production car.
The Muscle car era has it’s charm. They’re fairly primitive vehicles, but they’re also significantly older and produced in America where racing had a different concept than it does today. They generally speaking aren’t cars that do well on real race tracks because they tended to use live-axles and a body-on-frame design. They were produced for quarter-mile times and comfort. They tend to do well in drag races because America had no displacement regulations, and manufacturers were free to create engines as large as will fit into these vehicles. That said, do not forget that horsepower ratings changed drastically in the mid-70’s. The difference between Gross and SAE was around 20%. So that 400hp of 1970 was closer to 320hp. So the classic “The Charger had 400hp and a Supra has just 320hp, so of course the Chargers is faster” isn’t true. If you want to compare engines, you need to use the same ratings. If you want to use Gross for the Charger, then you use Gross for the Supra; which would be around 390hp. That said, peak horsepower ratings don’t even mean anything. The curve under peak makes a huge difference in the acceleration of a car, and both cars had a good, flat curve; the Charger because of it’s displacement, and the Supra because of its turbochargers. You can test this in Automation if you like… I remember building two engines that both made 300hp at the same RPM, and the turbocharged one with a flat curve was over 2 seconds faster to 100km/h.
I really don’t understand why people have to eat at each other about this. They’re different cars from different eras, built for different purposes. They shouldn’t even be compared to each other at all.
Staged turbocharging is nothing new or innovative. Porsche did it with the 959 and Mazda has with the Cosmo and FD RX-7.
And no, an R32 will not hand the Supra its ass, thats just fanboyism on your part. The 32 was simply the best at its time there was nothing like it. Competition caught up quickly.
And the Nitrogen and Oxygen comment really? Sodium and chloride are nasty stuff in pure form, combined it becomes table salt. Its simple chemistry dude.
No, staged compressors aren’t new; they’ve been used in WWII era engines… but it is something fairly rare, and certainly an effective system. To be honest if it weren’t for that, the Supra has no other redeeming qualities going for it besides reliability, durability, and decent handling.
As for the R32… yes, I am a Nissan fanboy, so I may be baised… but I’m also a Nissan fanboy because of the R32’s lap times and records. The competition never caught up. Nissan’s AWD system was simply banned from motorsport because R32s were winning even with the 200kg weight penalties that BMW and Mercedes lobbied for. R34s in JGTC were RWD, and only then did the competition start being… well… competition.
My comment about NOx was tongue-in-cheek… I should have made that more obvious. I know there’s a difference. I also know that any high-temperature oxidation produces NOx… like volcanos and lightning… which produces almost as much NOx as the world’s vehicles on a daily basis. I also know that modern catalytic converters reduce NOx emissions by orders of magnitude… so I really don’t consider it significant enough of a problem to plauge our lives. I’d rather us ship cargo ships of converters to the 3rd world, which have no emissions controls at all, and produce orders of magnitude more “harmful emissions” than either the US or countries that have at least Euro-2 emission standards.
If you had mentioned the R33 or R34 I would have agreed, but the R32 is a car that doee 8:22 on the Nur. It is beaten by 30 seconds by what is considered to be the worst generation GTR namely the R33. That’s not very quick is it.
Also I’m not too familiar with Group A racing but was only a nuke because it was going up against 190Es and M3s, both of which are far from the R32s equals. Besides, a 3000GT and 255 hp RX7 are able to give it alot of trouble if not outright beating it.
Well true that cars contribute little in the large scale, but how many cars emit said little bit of NOx into the air every day. If 7 billion people took a collective shit into the oceans for a year, eventually it adds up.
I would not consider the R33 the worst generation by any account. It may have had the most “boring” aesthetics of any GT-R, but it was an evolution of the R32. It had the same mechanics, plus a fully electronically controlled rear differential, and better tires, so naturally it should have a better lap time. I consider that fairly quick, seeing as the R32 beat the NSX and C5 Corvette by over 10 seconds. The R33 being faster than Vipers and Diablos as well.
The R32s were up against Porsche, Ferrari, Lancia, and Supras as well in Group A. It just seemed to be that Mercedes and BMW were the most vocal about it, as they vowed to quit if sanctions againt Nissan weren’t implemented.
Not saying they don’t add to NOx… but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to half the world’s cars without even basic catalytics… sometimes without fuel injection for that matter… or every motorcycle, or every lawnmower, chainsaw, ect. It’s always “our” cars that catch shit for it; even though a modern car’s emissions are orders of magnitudes less harmful than simple lawnmowers. I’m just sick of how heavy-handed regulations have become against cars. They’re asking for something that is simply unreasonable. They want cars to pass ever tightening emissions, while passing ever tightening safety regulations, while passing ever tightening fuel economy regulations… and it still has to remain afordable and drivable for the everyday man. That isn’t going to be possible in the next few years. They want cars to eat less than… 43mpg US I think it was? while making cars as large and heavy as tanks to pass hitting a bunker at 100km/h, and emitting emissions equivient to a human yawn. I struggle to meet those demands in Automation… and if it does pass… that is certainly a car I would never want to drive.
@Deskyx alright calm down you guys we were just pointing out why fanboyism to certain cars is really obnoxious, we weren’t going to say that any one car is better than the other (or at least I wasn’t) because that depends on ones taste and willingness to modify. In the end, I have a certain degree of respect for the engineering of any car, because if it were me making shit then the cars would have been like a Nissan Sunny chopped in half and mated to the rear end of a Robin using zip ties.
Yeah, sorry, went way off topic there. I’ve had a rough week and I guess I was just drowning my mind in a discussion.
Anyway… I thought of a few more cars for the actual topic at hand.
Likes
Realistic concepts. Most people like the “cool stuff”… but I prefer seeing cars that actually have a chance of being produced. Doors that unfold at a 123 degree angle, 405/10/R28 tires, and a touch-screen steering wheel don’t amuse me.
Isuzu VehiCROSS. I love that thing.
Dislikes
Chrysler PT Cruiser. Shudder
Aston Martin. I just see nothing in them… even less so than most “supercars”.
IMO regulations are necessary because the car buying market is bigger than ever, and old cars aren’t going away. Thus the new cars entering the market should be cleaner and safer to compensate for them sharing the road with the older cars.
Or they’re trying to drive prices up to take cars out of the hands of the average citizen.
As for Aston Martin… sorry… not impressed. It looks cute; I like that they’ve gotten shorter now compared to their older boat the Vanquish… but almost twice the price of a Nissan GTR for a 44 second slower lap time? Not interested.
An 09 ACR is faster than a GTR Nismo on Laguna Seca, and the N-attack was only 4 seconds quicker despite being 6 years newer on the Nurburgring, and they go for 80K these days. And you can buy a Miata/C5 Z06/RX7/F Body, gut the interior, throw some slicks, add a massive aero kit and beat the ACR for much less. It ain’t always about the lap time to $$$ ratio.
Didn’t know Vipers were actually competitive. Okay, I’d rather have a Viper than an Aston.
Indeed, lap times aren’t everything for a “daily driver” car. A purpose-built race-car struggles to be a daily driver though.
So what does an Aston Martin give me over a Viper or GTR?
It looks better than the GTR; I’ll give it that, but that’s also just an aesthetic choice and may not hold true for others. All I see is more money and more problems. Prestige means nothing to me.
This brings me to why I don’t like “supercars”. They’re nothing but a tool to show off that you’ve got money, and you’re not afraid to throw it around.
Hmm I really like anything made by Noble or koenigsegg bit it’s more because they both used underrated ford engines.
I really like the d22 Navara and having worked as a service manager for Mazda/Subaru then going to ford/Nissan I love stock Subaru the best cars for warranty and reliability.
I hate anything commodore especially anything v6 with a chev badge. They look like toys.
And Pajero. …check what Pajero means. That sums up exactly what this car is
we were just pointing out why fanboyism to certain cars is really obnoxious, we weren’t going to say that any one car is better than the other (or at least I wasn’t) because that depends on ones taste and willingness to modify. In the end, I have a certain degree of respect for the engineering of any car, because if it were me making shit then the cars would have been like a Nissan Sunny chopped in half and mated to the rear end of a Robin using zip ties.
