Why IS Zero To 60 SO Important? AND Whose Idea Was It Anyway?

[cawimmer430]

Why IS Zero To 60 SO Important? AND Whose Idea Was It Anyway?

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Miss ? boom! Congratulations, you've just hit 60 miles an hour. Or would have if you were piloting a Bugatti Veyron.

Instead you're behind the wheel of a Chevy Aveo, giving you time to recite the name of the state 10 times before reaching that speed, with lingering pauses to take in the scenery.

Few car statistics are as time-honored ? or hoary ? as the 0 to 60 mph test. Car lovers are obsessed by it. It's a verdict that can end (or begin) an argument.

Like all of my auto-writing brethren, I dutifully recount the 0-60 times for every vehicle I drive. With no racetrack or high-tech equipment at my disposal, I most often rely on the honesty of the carmaker's data. (Companies never fib, right?)One of the fastest last year was the Ferrari Italia at a nausea-inducing 3.2 seconds; slowest was the languorous Nissan Cube at about 10.

I absolutely adore speed and agree that we need a yardstick. But I'm not sure the tenths of a second are as important as we pretend they are.

The matrix seems a bit random, somehow. The speed limit, after all, is often 35, 55 or 65. And while I suspect 60 was outrageous in 1921, any econobox can ride down the freeway at 85 today.

"Frankly I don't know where the hell it started," says Csaba Csere, a former editor-in-chief of Car and Driver for 15 years and the kind of guy most likely to know. "I started at the magazine in 1980, and it was certainly well-established by then."

"It's older than the hills," agrees David Caldwell, Chevrolet communications manager for two fast cars, the Corvette and Camaro. "It's like baseball's batting average. It might not be the single best measurement, but it is the first thing you see on the back of a baseball card."

After years of testing cars, I have a pretty good "butt meter," giving an idea how quick a car is off the line. But even those who test performance data for a living admit they can't tell the difference between tenths of a second.

It sells cars, though. A Mississippi-slaughtering Lambo Superleggera is several tenths faster than the base Gallardo model. It's also $35,000 extra.

Autos that do well have plenty of torque, a good power-to-weight ratio and the ability to gain traction right away.

Yet speed isn't just about straight-line performance. The real world has curves and corners. A 1,000-hp drag racer has a heck of a forward thrust, but best of luck getting it to turn.

Publications like Car and Driver go through considerable trouble testing 0-60 times. "It's still a pretty good measure of a car's every-day performance," Csere says. "After all, we all accelerate onto freeway ramps. Sixty straddles the national speed limit, so it is genuinely useful."

Still, your base 911 might not get anywhere near Porsche's posted time (4.7). Variance includes type of tires and tire pressure, exterior temperature and, of course, driver ability.

Caldwell says that Chevy analyzes its cars in a way that is realistic and repeatable. But testing methods can be contentious. "Put a bunch of car geeks in a room to discuss methodology and it can come to blows," he says.

A major case in point: The 1-foot rollout. Many car companies and publications replicate the process of racing on a drag strip, where cars have about a foot to begin rolling forward from a standstill before the clock actually starts.

"With a rollout, in truth, you get maybe a 3-60 time," Csere says. Some consider it the industry's dirty little secret, but it is a long-standing legacy.

Edmunds Inside Line, a car site, chooses to start its test from a dead stop. Times are often three-tenths slower.

If you are wondering why 0-60 caught on, you can of course blame the media.

The first journalist who is widely credited with doing his own performance testing was Tom McCahill, a writer for Mechanix Illustrated magazine.

In an article looking back on his career, McCahill said that carmakers rarely lent out cars to evaluate, so in 1946, he wrote, "I donned my Liar's Club suit" and pretended to be a photographer. Whisking the cars away to be shot, he tested them instead. (One was returned with a blown engine, another with a crushed-in roof.)Each McCahill review had a 0-60 time, from a 1950 Studebaker Champion sedan (17.6 seconds) to a Volkswagen Beetle ("Top speed is 66. Zero to 60 takes a long 42.1"). His still-hilarious reviews can be found at blog.modernmechanix.com/tag/mccahill/.

McCahill died in 1975 and probably deserves the final word. Judging from a review of a 1950s Austin-Healey, it seems that while 0-60 times have dropped, many other things remain the same.

"Zero to 60 averaged 12.3 seconds," he wrote. "I didn't get a top speed run because of traffic conditions and over-interest in my work by the law after my acceleration trials."

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110203/AUTO03/102030356/0-60-is-a-figure-that-sticks#ixzz1DBcjIsRw



Link: http://detnews.com/article/20110203/AUTO03/102030356/1149/rss26

[AltinD]

Yes, the rollout start is a scam.

[MX793]

Personally, I think C&D's 5-60 metric is the most meaningful to everyday drivers.  Gives an indication of how quickly the car accelerates up to highway speed when you don't use an extremely aggressive, tire-screeching dragstrip start.

[ifcar]

I'd have guessed Europeans established 0-100 as a nice round number and that American journalists adopted the closest translation.

[cawimmer430]

How many people here even use the 0-60 abilities of their car in their daily driving?

I don't. 

What I regularly use is midrange performance for passing. I use that far more often than 0-60.

[Onslaught]

How many people here even use the 0-60 abilities of their car in their daily driving?

Almost every time I take off. And on some roads I go past 60 

[cawimmer430]

Almost every time I take off. And on some roads I go past 60 

Yeah, but do you really need to slam it everytime? I think the real value of 0-60 is simply for competitive racing events. I still have a hard time believing it's vital to merging unto freeways in the US.

[Onslaught]

Yeah, but do you really need to slam it everytime? I think the real value of 0-60 is simply for competitive racing events. I still have a hard time believing it's vital to merging unto freeways in the US.

Do I NEED to do it? No
Do I do it? Yes

And with the way people drive here you do need all the 0-60 power you can get. I use every drop my RX has to get around and by these idiots on the Interstate to work.
If I had 100hp more I'd use it too.

[MX793]

How many people here even use the 0-60 abilities of their car in their daily driving?

I don't. 

What I regularly use is midrange performance for passing. I use that far more often than 0-60.

I suspect it's used far more in America than in Europe.  We don't have many roundabouts, so practically every intersection is controlled by either a stop sign or traffic light.  There's a road just behind my place that is 55 mph and has a couple of traffic lights thrown in.  Turning onto a busy 55 mph bi-way from a stop sign also requires you be able to get up to speed quickly or you'll cause a pile-up as cars have to slam on their brakes to not run into you.  In contrast, passing zones around here are generally short and far between.  Get stuck behind a slow tractor-trailer on a 2-lane road around here and you'll be stuck for a while.

And as I've said several times before, a car that is slow from 0-60 is also going to be slow in "mid-range" acceleration.  A car that is quick from 0-60 is also generally going to be quick from 40-60 too.

[cawimmer430]

Do I NEED to do it? No
Do I do it? Yes

And with the way people drive here you do need all the 0-60 power you can get. I use every drop my RX has to get around and by these idiots on the Interstate to work.
If I had 100hp more I'd use it too.

I think you guys need better driving schools. 

Sounds like you have to many left-lane-hoggers over there.

[Onslaught]

I think you guys need better driving schools. 

Sounds like you have to many left-lane-hoggers over there.

Our people can't get out of normal school. So driving schools won't help.

And yes, we've got many left-lane hoggers here.


But even if we didn't have them I'd still floor it every time I took off. Unless I was in the city or near a school. It's the way I drive and my gas bill shows it.

[cawimmer430]

I suspect it's used far more in America than in Europe.  We don't have many roundabouts, so practically every intersection is controlled by either a stop sign or traffic light.  There's a road just behind my place that is 55 mph and has a couple of traffic lights thrown in.  Turning onto a busy 55 mph bi-way from a stop sign also requires you be able to get up to speed quickly or you'll cause a pile-up as cars have to slam on their brakes to not run into you.  In contrast, passing zones around here are generally short and far between.  Get stuck behind a slow tractor-trailer on a 2-lane road around here and you'll be stuck for a while.

Makes sense, but I still have trouble completely believing it. Maybe I need to see it with my own eyes and experience it. But I have friends there who have slower cars and they've told me they never had any problems merging unto freeways and such (with cars like Benz 240D W123 or 300SD Turbodiesel among others).

And as I've said several times before, a car that is slow from 0-60 is also going to be slow in "mid-range" acceleration.  A car that is quick from 0-60 is also generally going to be quick from 40-60 too.

What is "slow" in America?

An average VW Golf TDI will do 0-100 km/h in about 8/9 seconds and their midrange passing power is really explosively quick. Here such performance is considered good. Some of these lower-end Golf or Polo TDI's are even quicker than the BMW 118i I am driving at the moment.

[cawimmer430]

Our people can't get out of normal school. So driving schools won't help.

And yes, we've got many left-lane hoggers here.

But overtaking on the right is legal in the US, right? It's illegal to do that here. The cops patrol the highways in unmarked cars ranging from entry-level BMW 3-Series' to POS 1980s Opel Vectras and people caught hogging the left lane or overtaking on the right are stopped and fined or their license is revoked (when they're caught overtaking on the right).

[Onslaught]

But overtaking on the right is legal in the US, right?

I'm not sure about that one but I "think" it depends on the state. But everyone here does it. If the cops had to pull over people who did it in the US then the roads would be cleared of people.
I don't like doing it. In a perfect world I'd never even need to do it because people would use the left lane for passing only. But I don't live in a perfect world. So I do it every day.

I'm not going to ride behind someone until they get over because they will just throw rocks up on my paint! And I already know the SOB isn't going to get over anyway. I really think that many people
these days don't know that the left lane is for passing. Just like many of them don't know that left hand turns yield to coming traffic.

[cawimmer430]

I'm not sure about that one but I "think" it depends on the state. But everyone here does it. If the cops had to pull over people who did it in the US then the roads would be cleared of people.
I don't like doing it. In a perfect world I'd never even need to do it because people would use the left lane for passing only. But I don't live in a perfect world. So I do it every day.

I'm not going to ride behind someone until they get over because they will just throw rocks up on my paint! And I already know the SOB isn't going to get over anyway. I really think that many people
these days don't know that the left lane is for passing. Just like many of them don't know that left hand turns yield to coming traffic.

I wish I could complain about people hogging the left lane here, but they don't. I've rarely encountered anyone who drives on the left lane just to hog it. A few weeks ago there was an Italian family in a BMW 320d Touring that pulled out of the slow lane to overtake a truck, but once they've overtaken it they didn't pull back into the slow lane. A simple high beam flash on my part made him aware of me wanting to overtake and he moved over.

[68_427]

Stoplight drag races of yesteryear mang.

[Raza]

How many people here even use the 0-60 abilities of their car in their daily driving?

I don't. 

What I regularly use is midrange performance for passing. I use that far more often than 0-60.

I do, everyday.  Well, maybe more like 10-80, but it's close enough. 

[MX793]

Makes sense, but I still have trouble completely believing it. Maybe I need to see it with my own eyes and experience it. But I have friends there who have slower cars and they've told me they never had any problems merging unto freeways and such (with cars like Benz 240D W123 or 300SD Turbodiesel among others).

Highway merging is a test of mid-range acceleration anyway, not 0-60.  We still have merge ramps on limited access highways, although ours tend to be shorter than those on the Autobahn and ours are designed such that cars entering the highway and accelerating often share the same lane as cars that are slowing and trying to exit the highway.   

Where I grew up there is a busy cloverleaf interchange between two highways where the combined merge/exit lanes are only 300 ft (100m) long.  People manage, but it can get hairy in rush hour if you have a slower car.

What is "slow" in America?

An average VW Golf TDI will do 0-100 km/h in about 8/9 seconds and their midrange passing power is really explosively quick. Here such performance is considered good. Some of these lower-end Golf or Polo TDI's are even quicker than the BMW 118i I am driving at the moment.

My point is that a 9 second 0-60 car isn't somehow going to accelerate as quickly as a 6 second 0-60 car when you test their mid-range acceleration capability.  If one car is significantly quicker than another in 0-60, it's still going to be significantly quicker going from 40-60 or 50-70 or whatever.

[the Teuton]

The Northeast is a whore hole when it comes to accelerating from a standstill up to highway speeds quickly.

The farther you move west (or to a more modern city), the easier it gets.

[sportyaccordy]

To me the 40-100 test and the quarter mile are much more relevant. You get a feel for launch, midrange and top end. Outside of engine specs I don't think there's much of a metric to really test low end.

But yes Wim people care about these specs. We've been over this before. Our on ramps suck, and while "speed limits" range from 55-65 people actually drive anywhere from 70-90 MPH. So many times you go from 0 to 90 over as short a distance as possible. So yes Wim acceleration is important. I would say an "acceptable" 0-60 time would be about 8 seconds. Hardly anything extravagant, prob not much faster if at all than the avg car in Europe.

[MX793]

The Northeast is a whore hole when it comes to accelerating from a standstill up to highway speeds quickly.

The farther you move west (or to a more modern city), the easier it gets.

That's another factor.  The older road structure in the Northeastern US has led to less than optimal highway ramp configurations.

[SVT666]

How many people here even use the 0-60 abilities of their car in their daily driving?

I don't. 

What I regularly use is midrange performance for passing. I use that far more often than 0-60.

Every single time I leave a stop sign or stop light where I'm first in line...which is quite often.

[Tave]

0-60 is nothing more than a proxy for general acceleration. You guys are overthinking this way too hard.

And as I've said several times before, a car that is slow from 0-60 is also going to be slow in "mid-range" acceleration.  A car that is quick from 0-60 is also generally going to be quick from 40-60 too.

Bingo.

[AltinD]

And as I've said several times before, a car that is slow from 0-60 is also going to be slow in "mid-range" acceleration.  A car that is quick from 0-60 is also generally going to be quick from 40-60 too.

LOL, it's all in the gearing and a car 2 sec slower in 0 - 100 {kph) might be 2 sec faster in mid range acceleration (80 - 120 kph) then that other car.

[the Teuton]

Case-in-point: The Saab 9-3 Viggen.

It was moderately fast to 60 mph, a little under 6 seconds.

But from 60-100 or something like that, it could smoke a 911 Turbo.

[MX793]

Case-in-point: The Saab 9-3 Viggen.

It was moderately fast to 60 mph, a little under 6 seconds.

But from 60-100 or something like that, it could smoke a 911 Turbo.

The 9-3 was faster than the 911 Turbo in 50-70 mph acceleration from a top gear roll-on.  If I'm trying to accelerate quickly, I'm not going to leave the car in top gear, I'm going to downshift.

[Raza]

That's another factor.  The older road structure in the Northeastern US has led to less than optimal highway ramp configurations.

What!?  You mean the left lane merge isn't ideal!?

[cawimmer430]

Highway merging is a test of mid-range acceleration anyway, not 0-60.  We still have merge ramps on limited access highways, although ours tend to be shorter than those on the Autobahn and ours are designed such that cars entering the highway and accelerating often share the same lane as cars that are slowing and trying to exit the highway.   

Where I grew up there is a busy cloverleaf interchange between two highways where the combined merge/exit lanes are only 300 ft (100m) long.  People manage, but it can get hairy in rush hour if you have a slower car.

Poor road planning?

Seems a little risky, the way those roads were designed then if there's literally no room to "merge/exit safely".

My point is that a 9 second 0-60 car isn't somehow going to accelerate as quickly as a 6 second 0-60 car when you test their mid-range acceleration capability.  If one car is significantly quicker than another in 0-60, it's still going to be significantly quicker going from 40-60 or 50-70 or whatever.

I understand that. But in my experience, I've never had any problems merging unto Autobahns with a 9 second 0-100 km/h BMW 118i Automatic. The midrange performance is quite sufficient for quick bursts of speed that allow me to merge safely and overtake quickly. Granted, people here also move from the slow lane to the fast lane, if possible, to allow people to merge unto the Autobahn, but sometimes this isn't possible and in such situations I've had no problems gunning the car, accelerating quickly and merging unto the slow lane where people, on average, drive around 120-140 km/h. I've had no issues getting the car up to that speed in no time.

Where the 118i becomes agonizingly slow is at around 160 km/h upwards. When you hammer it at that speed the acceleration is really, really slow. It takes awhile to reach 200 km/h....

But that's not really important...

[omicron]

Highway merging is a test of mid-range acceleration anyway, not 0-60.  We still have merge ramps on limited access highways, although ours tend to be shorter than those on the Autobahn and ours are designed such that cars entering the highway and accelerating often share the same lane as cars that are slowing and trying to exit the highway.   

Yes, I still can't believe you have roads designed like that.

[sportyaccordy]

I understand that. But in my experience,

You seem to have a problem with understanding that your experience, desires and road conditions don't apply to everyone else.

For one, your 118iA does 0-60 in 9 seconds empty. I imagine it being a complete dog fully loaded up with other people. Americans tend to take long trips in the cars they commute in, so our demands for power are higher.

Not to mention, again the Autobahn has like 2km long on and off ramps that would give an original Beetle enough of a runway to hit 160km/h. Our road system is shitty and does demand higher performance for safety.

Plus in any case, most importantly, as u posted in that other thread Americans generally buy 4 banger cars. A 4 banger Camry is not exactly a rocket. But with a 6AT it's good enough.