What defines a fast car in 2020?

sideways14a · 31 Dec 2020 at 20:16

dacads said:
Doesn't take much except bucks to get any decent AWD car to under 3s 0-60 these days

I think it's over 100mph when you can really measure what's quicker I.e. 100-200mph times.

Aye thats really the deal, 4wd makes a quarter time easy with even modest (say 250hp) power.
But getting a hot terminal speed of above 110 mph out of a fwd or rwd car is hard and needs power.

And anything above say 110 to 115mph on the quarter is ******* fast...

Unisol Magic · 1 Jan 2021 at 16:55

I’m told my Nissan GTR (LM20) can achieve 0-60 in 2.5 secs and top speed of 205MPH but haven’t tried either (yet!)

Gibbo · 1 Jan 2021 at 17:16

sideways14a said:
Aye thats really the deal, 4wd makes a quarter time easy with even modest (say 250hp) power.
But getting a hot terminal speed of above 110 mph out of a fwd or rwd car is hard and needs power.

And anything above say 110 to 115mph on the quarter is ******* fast...

Fast and feeling fast can be very much down to the car.

My S2000 is slow most modern hatches would leave it standing but to drive for me I find it plenty fast, it’s raw, fizzy and feels absolutely alive, to drive it feels quick, it only feels slow to go up against another car, like an S3 will leave it for dust but having owned a Golf R capable of delivering 0-60 in around 3.5s and 0-100mph in 8s. On paper that’s bloody quick! But to drive it feels boring whereas the much slower S2000 feels alive by comparison.

Now the 458 is proper quick, 130mph terminal in quarter but also feels epic fast to drive even if you stick to legal speeds, amazing playful chassis.

sideways14a · 1 Jan 2021 at 17:19

Gibbo said:
Fast and feeling fast can be very much down to the car.

My S2000 is slow most modern hatches would leave it standing but to drive for me I find it plenty fast, it’s raw, fizzy and feels absolutely alive, to drive it feels quick, it only feels slow to go up against another car, like an S3 will leave it for dust but having owned a Golf R capable of delivering 0-60 in around 3.5s and 0-100mph in 8s. On paper that’s bloody quick! But to drive it feels boring whereas the much slower S2000 feels alive by comparison.

Now the 458 is proper quick, 130mph terminal in quarter but also feels epic fast to drive even if you stick to legal speeds, amazing playful chassis.

Cannot agree more, its like that with my 5.
I mind testing evo's and Scoobys a looong while back, i got the impression that they were very fast and capable but lacked a little driver appeal.. hence why i went RWD.
Then again RWD has scared the four X out of me a lot of times, it can and will bite even with todays very capable cars

hawker1986 · 1 Jan 2021 at 17:28

Squidward said:
I'm not sure how super cars come in to this. A RS3 with a few bolt ons can run 2.9s to 60 and 0 to 100 in 6.xxs. The Rs3 is a regular hatch and hardly a super car

Squidward said:
You can pick them up for around 35k with 2k of mods. A far cry from 50k.

These are ridiculous statements, an RS3 is not a “regular hatch” and you speak about throwing 35k at a car like it’s nothing....most people will never have this amount of money to spend on a car and even if they did most wouldn’t be interested in this performance. Pretty much anything being talked about here is fast in the real world but in the end it’s all just subjective.

Nasher · 1 Jan 2021 at 23:03

It's a regular hatch with a tuned up engine in it. Not something bespoke or special.

They accelerate quick but they don't corner quick, or have much feel/feedback to them. Gets boring after a while. Going from something like an S2000 to an RS3 will feel like a really fast bus.

paradigm · 2 Jan 2021 at 07:59

Nasher said:
It's a regular hatch with a tuned up engine in it. Not something bespoke or special.

They accelerate quick but they don't corner quick, or have much feel/feedback to them. Gets boring after a while. Going from something like an S2000 to an RS3 will feel like a really fast bus.

They are derived from a platform that also builds a standard hatch, but the RS3 is definitely more than a standard hatch I’m afraid. Also, anyone buying one for the drive will pick the saloon as its stiffer and wider tracked.

Secondly they DO corner quickly, bloody quickly as they have immense mechanical grip, what they do lack is driver engagement, feedback and playfulness. They are dull to drive at even remotely close to road legal speeds, they are dull to drive fast because you feel disconnected, but they do make a great noise and are incredibly capable. Capable doesn’t equal “fun” though.

Fun cars are typically ones that feel more raw, have the feeling of being on the edge of its capabilities more of the time (i.e. when driving SLOWER), and have something special about them (be that noise, roof-off motoring, driving involvement, or a combination of the above).

Literally anything can br made “fast” with enough money thrown at it, but that’s not necessary going to make a good, enjoyable, fun experience.

theone8181 · 2 Jan 2021 at 08:34

paradigm said:
They are derived from a platform that also builds a standard hatch, but the RS3 is definitely more than a standard hatch I’m afraid. Also, anyone buying one for the drive will pick the saloon as its stiffer and wider tracked.

Secondly they DO corner quickly, bloody quickly as they have immense mechanical grip, what they do lack is driver engagement, feedback and playfulness. They are dull to drive at even remotely close to road legal speeds, they are dull to drive fast because you feel disconnected, but they do make a great noise and are incredibly capable. Capable doesn’t equal “fun” though.

Fun cars are typically ones that feel more raw, have the feeling of being on the edge of its capabilities more of the time (i.e. when driving SLOWER), and have something special about them (be that noise, roof-off motoring, driving involvement, or a combination of the above).

Literally anything can br made “fast” with enough money thrown at it, but that’s not necessary going to make a good, enjoyable, fun experience.

I suspect it's due to hp being an easy one to put a number on, but 'handling' is not like a video game where it can get a number, and every generation tends to being a chasing numbers game, so you can see why hp goes up.

naefeart · 2 Jan 2021 at 10:21

An RS3 etc isn’t designed to be a sports car. It’s family transport. I guess it handles as well as the Audi Sport engineers designed it to, in relation to still being predominately a practical, albeit fast family car. They can only do so much with that base. I’m pretty sure the R8 handles really well.

Adding More horsepower is just lazy. Old British sports cars were not about big hp. Colin Chapman wasn’t about big hp. If you want fun, you need balance and nose heavy, practical family cars isn’t really the perfect place to start

Nasher · 2 Jan 2021 at 11:17

The engine is way to far forward in the Audis to get proper balance. I think the R8 is basically a Lambo

Akagi · 2 Jan 2021 at 11:18

Nasher said:
The engine is way to far forward in the Audis to get proper balance. I think the R8 is basically a Lambo

The Lambo is basically an Audi*

And I'm sure the RS dept. at Audi know what they're doing.

theone8181 · 2 Jan 2021 at 12:25

Acme said:
The Lambo is basically an Audi*

And I'm sure the RS dept. at Audi know what they're doing.

Not sure they would move the engine rearwards in an rs3 Vs an A3 though

. I would hazard a gues that between the A3, the golf and the TT there isn't a lot of difference in terms of feel as I believe they're all based on the same platform (disclaimer as I've not driven any of them). I'd certainly expect the rs3 and the TTRS to drive similar.

Akagi · 2 Jan 2021 at 12:46

They might mount it further back, I dont know. Some performance models of ordinary cars have the engine shunted back slightly. Nissan did it with the Primera GT so others probably have done so and continue to do so.

Worth noting that there is no RS3 equivelant in Golf form. The Golf R = an S3 I believe.

Gibbo · 2 Jan 2021 at 13:53

Acme said:
They might mount it further back, I dont know. Some performance models of ordinary cars have the engine shunted back slightly. Nissan did it with the Primera GT so others probably have done so and continue to do so.

Worth noting that there is no RS3 equivelant in Golf form. The Golf R = an S3 I believe.

Golf R has the most playful chassis of them all, the S3 and particular RS3 due to heavier 5 pot have more understeer and the weight up front makes itself felt. The handling balance can be tweaked with anti roll bars, coilovers etc but you never move away from the fact the balance is poor and even though they are mega quick when tuned they are still boring to drive to someone like me who enjoys driving.

Everybody likes different things and some people just want a hugely confident inspiring car that’s easy to drive fast and AWD will always top that game just some AWD are more exciting than others which mainly comes from engine placement within the chassis and overall weight of the car.

Nasher · 2 Jan 2021 at 13:56

Acme said:
The Lambo is basically an Audi*

And I'm sure the RS dept. at Audi know what they're doing.

Well their suspension guys don't that's for sure

I think they rely more on the badge to sell cars than anything else.

Akagi · 2 Jan 2021 at 13:57

Nasher said:
Well their suspension guys don't that's for sure

They probably just make it go fast around the nurburgring with no thought for how it rides on the road /jamesmay

naefeart · 2 Jan 2021 at 14:56

Nasher said:
Well their suspension guys don't that's for sure .

Their suspension works fine in Europe, where the cars are made

It’s just in broken Britain where the roads are poor that the suspension comes off as hard and brittle.

3t3P · 3 Jan 2021 at 00:10

6s 0-60mph or less I define as fast.

For UK roads you can exploit 400hp well and it seems really fast. More than that must be harder I imagine, not driven anything on the road with more than 400hp.

Nasher · 3 Jan 2021 at 00:18

naefeart said:
Their suspension works fine in Europe, where the cars are made

It’s just in broken Britain where the roads are poor that the suspension comes off as hard and brittle.

The dumb thing is in the UK they keep using that really rough tarmac when they resurface now (I guess it's cheap). Which is high friction so gets destroyed very quickly. It's also very noisy.

Cyber-Mav · 3 Jan 2021 at 09:36

Acme said:
Does 0 - 60 in 1.7 seconds mate, got 17 hayabusa turbo engines stacked on the roof.

Got any pics?