I’ll debate that. I see no amazing engineering or design in the Veyron whatsoever. It is a fat sled with 1,000 hearsepower. It went roughly 23mph faster than a Mclaren F1 using 382 more horsepower, and a bloody Nissan GTR with run-flat tires is 2 seconds faster than it on the ring. What am I supposed to be amazed at?
Any car with good aerodynamics, the Veyron’s tires, and that much derp power will have just as fast of a useless top speed as a Veyron at half the price or less. The same GTR is a prime candidate for that project.
As I’ve stated before in the concepts thread… I also am sad that the Dart SRT-4 has been aborted. The Dart was sexy. The Dart was progress.
Us 'Mericans went as fast with less development time with projects like the SSC Ultimate Aero and Hennessey Venom GT. And those are also more engaging to drive. Making a car that’s comfortable at 253 mph seems pointless, as the only people who will get close enough are used to the rough rides of track cars, and won’t need that extra junk anyway.
The Veyron wasn’t about comfort, it was about prestige. Hence why it sold “well”. By no stretch of the mind is it comfortable, you’d be better off in a 50k minivan.
The Mclaren F1 only went 26 more mph more than the XJ220 with 87 more hp, 300 kg less, two times the price of an XJ220 which had a 5 speed gearbox and the engine out of a Austin Metro. What am I supposed to be amazed at? We can do this with every car.
If you knew anything about physics, you would know that drag increases exponentially with speed, which means a Veyron at top speed is facing significantly higher resistance than a Mclaren F1 is. Not to mention the Veyron’s much larger front area and drag CD (0.36 at it’s lowest plays 0.32 of the F1). You need significantly higher HP to go 1 more KM/H at 400 km/h than at 300 km/h.
And the Viper ACR destroyed the Mclaren P1 and 918 on Laguna Seca. Does that somehow make them both shitty engineering?
Take a Fox Body, build it to 1000 hp and watch it destroy everything on the highway for less than half the price of a GTR and have leftover money to build a Miata track car that will whup it on the track. That doesn’t make the GTR useless does it?
Late to the party here, but that looks like a HR-V, Juke and a Prius got into a drunken threesome.
I’ve taken my eyes off the lap times lately. Can you show me where you got this info from, coz that sounds like it would have caused a minor nuclear fallout on some forum somewhere and I feel like giving myself brain cancer
This is tremendous and makes me happy that there’s empirical evidence that there’s more than one way to skin the proverbial cat. Keeping in mind that the ACR with the Extreme Aero package and its specialised custom built tyres are just that and maybe not quite so much daily driveable, but also keeping in mind that it’s less than a fifth the price of the cars it beat.
But yes, the comments thread gave me brain cancer. Good thing I went and found the antidote in the form of actual data that is the telemetry.
[quote=“Deskyx, post:453, topic:494”]
The Mclaren F1 only went 26 more mph more than the XJ220 with 87 more hp, 300 kg less, two times the price of an XJ220 which had a 5 speed gearbox and the engine out of a Austin Metro. What am I supposed to be amazed at? We can do this with every car.[/quote] Yes, you can… and that was half my point. Top speed doesn’t pose any real issue.
[quote=“Deskyx, post:453, topic:494”]If you knew anything about physics, you would know that drag increases exponentially with speed, which means a Veyron at top speed is facing significantly higher resistance than a Mclaren F1 is. Not to mention the Veyron’s much larger front area and drag CD (0.36 at it’s lowest plays 0.32 of the F1). You need significantly higher HP to go 1 more KM/H at 400 km/h than at 300 km/h.[/quote] I know this very well; don’t assume I don’t. It doesn’t change the fact that any car with no more than 0.36cd will reach the same speed as a Veyron. The GTR will likely go slightly faster with it’s 0.26cd. This is why I was saying that top speed isn’t an engineering feat. It just requires stupid amounts of power, some sense of aerodynamic efficiency, and special tires.
This is the main reason why the Veyron irritates me so much. People tout it as the 8th wonder of the world and equate it to putting a man on the moon, when it has nothing revolutionary in it at all. It just has a thousand fucking horsepower, and that’s it. That is all it has going for it besides it’s record-breaking price-tag and the amount of unnecessary and arguably wasted engineering VW has blown on it. No one needs that abomination of an engine. The car’s only purpose is to show off VW’s long shlong in a rather underwhelming manner; simply by producing a thousand horsepower engine.
[quote=“Deskyx, post:453, topic:494”]And the Viper ACR destroyed the Mclaren P1 and 918 on Laguna Seca. Does that somehow make them both shitty engineering?[/quote] Not shitty… but less impressive; sure.
[quote=“Deskyx, post:453, topic:494”]Take a Fox Body, build it to 1000 hp and watch it destroy everything on the highway for less than half the price of a GTR and have leftover money to build a Miata track car that will whup it on the track. That doesn’t make the GTR useless does it?
[/quote]I consider your two examples to be too different to the GTR to really compare to it. The Mustang is just a drag car and won’t be able to do shit on a track; while your Miata track car will likely not be street-legal by the time it can beat a GTR… so… kind of not a fair comparison. You can bring up the Radical SR8 that did beat the GTR and is “street-legal”… but look at the thing. It’s a mini LMP car. You can’t use it for anything but a run on the track.
Also, way to go Dodge. When the simple brute-foce method actually works… it’s always amusing.
OFC it has a big bunch of horsepower, but it also has barely road legal tires and a fuck load of aero. Dodge designed the ACR from the get go just to be a very fast car on the track, so they could tell everyone they made the fastest track car on the market. It’s probably the closest thing to a road legal GT racecar.
The hypercars aren’t designed for track times, they’re designed to go very fast and look cool. Their track times just happen because they are very fast.
It’s a hypercar, I don’t think a lot of people here think differently on that point, doesn’t mean the car isn’t a very well engineered one.
Edit: And to quote the slowest man in the world, the Veyron, at least back when it’s only competition in terms of speed where cars like the Hennessey, was the only one that could go that fast without feeling like it was going to fall apart.
Adding a shit ton of power to go very fast is easy. Having a car that stays comfy at that speed is more complicated. Even though it’s completely pointless from any practical POV, it’s still a well engineered car.
Ferdinand Piech, actually, also YES, Him personally, not the VAG group.
I doubt you know the history of the car, and why it was made the way it was (In fact I see by your posts that you do not have a SINGLE CLUE), but that just makes me say “Do not make statements on things you do not know”, because what you said is completely wrong, unresearched, understood ass backwards, and more so, plain stupid. Learning some engineering, motorsport and plain automotive history will go a long way if you’re to keep talking about cars in your life.
Aaaand what happened? Only caught fire on Top Gear and was outperformed on the track (which seems to be something you keep mentioning?) by an M5. After that, it swiftly moved out of the hypercar spotlight.
