WEIGHT ONE MOMENT!

The ’05 New Car Season is well under way and it is truly amazing what is available in terms of performance to the average guy and gal.  I would consider $30,000 a bargain for a high performance car, and for that amount, + or – a few extra grand, you can get some pretty racy stuff from Mitsubishi, Subaru, VW, Honda, and several others.  For two to three times that you can be in possession of near super car performance from BMW, Porsche, Corvette, Viper, etc.  The performance numbers are really staggering if you compare them to the performance available in the mid ‘90’s.

But these cars come at quite a price, tangible and intangible.  The tangible price of $30,000 is still a fair chunk of change, and anything over $40,000 or $50,000 has to be considered to be a serious investment.  But, with a few exceptions, I’m bothered by a few aspects of modern car design that we have grown to accept.

First and foremost to me is weight.  Most of these mid- and high-performance cars are just too hefty for my tastes.  The Nissan 350 Z and Infinity G35 weigh in well over 3000 pounds and the BMW M3 and M5, while great performers, still weigh in at between 3500 and 4000 real pounds (with fuel and driver), and the new Pontiac GTO and Cadillac high performance cars are near 4000 pounds.  Mercedes, Jaguar, Aston Martin, and the Chrysler 300C are also quite hefty at around two tons.  The only cars that come in around 31-3200 lbs. that put down great numbers are Porsche, Corvette, and the Mitsubishi Evo and Subaru STi.  The 500 hp Viper is closer to 3500 pounds.

How do they get away with such hefty mass?  The moments of inertia and mass are much greater than what you would find on high performance cars twenty years ago.  Well, high performance these days comes at a price paid to technology.  Engines are able to crank out phenomenal horsepower and torque due to electronics and variable mechanical components, so they can haul around two (or more) tons of steel as well or better than the engines could in lighter cars twenty years ago.  Look at the $308,000 Maybach at over 5000 lbs., doing 0-60 mph in only 4.9 seconds*!

Bigger tires and race-bred brakes and active suspension keep the handling on par with these great power to weight ratio numbers.  The Viper, no real lightweight, pulls over one G* on the skid pad.  The absurd levels of electronic conveniences and the added safety devices add greatly to the mass of these cars over their counterparts twenty years ago.  But, they cost money, and even economies of scale, building lots and lots of units, cannot overcome the costs of sophisticated technologies needed to haul around this added weight.

What would life be like if these same engines, brakes, and tires were put onto cars that weighed only 2000 to 2500 pounds?  These numbers were the norm in the 1980’s.  Everyone makes such a big deal over the weight of the Lotus Elise at around a ton, but my 1968 Datsun 510 weighed less than 2000 lbs. and had pretty decent suspension.  Now, imagine dropping in a conservative 190 hp four cylinder engine, fitting bigger wheels and brakes and beefing up the springs and shocks to modern standards.  Add, say 300 to 400 pounds of modern safety pieces, and for well under 2500 pounds, you would have a pretty decent performer.  Modern design and CAD technology should be able to produce a unibody chassis that should make this work, even with a little ground effects thrown in for good measure.  If you limit the amount of comfort and convenience load to, say, what was available in the ‘80’s, and put in lighter and safer seats (LOTS of weight to be saved over the modern electronic seat), these lower weights are attainable.

What I wonder about in our racing environment is how our tracks and safety barriers will handle the new cars that race in T1 and T2?  Look at what is eligible to run.  What if someone were to run a Pontiac GTO as will be possible next year (when GM sells customer race-prepped GTO’s), or even a BMW M3 or M6?  These cars are at least as hefty as a Nextel Cup car!  What happens when one goes flying off the track?  Are our tire walls and run-off room sufficient to stop these massive race cars?  Remember, up to now, my GTA Pontiac GP with tube frame and fiberglass body was one of the heavier high performance cars at around 2900 pounds.  The AS Camaro and Mustang are around 3300 pounds, which is slightly above what a Mitsubishi Evo could run in T2.   All of our other SCCA racing groups have cars at or below a ton, except for I.T. which still has most of its cars well under 3000 pounds 

 Weight, weight, weight!  A real performance killer unless massive amounts of technology and money are piled on to overcome such a devastating handicap.

Finally, my second concern about the existence of these modern super cars is an intangible but very real worry.  With (lots of)power-to-(lots of) weight ratios well below 10 available to Joe Average Driver With Need For Speed, how well do you suppose this man or woman with minimum driver’s ed training will be able to handle these massive rockets?  God bless ‘em when they take their machines to track days or autocrosses.  At least they will learn something about the phenomenal dynamics of their cars in a relatively safe environment.  But I don’t imagine that the percentage of these owners who go on to advanced driver training is very significant, and that does scare me a bit.  And even if one can take his 3900 lb. M6 on track, it’s racecar-like speed and handling would kill your spec Miata, said Miata requiring a full cage and 6-point (for’06) harness system, vs. stock airbags and a three point harness in the M6, or ‘Vette, or GT3 Porsche, etc.  You get the idea.  The numbers, acceleration/speed vs. weight and safety, in my mind, don’t make sense for the average, untrained driver.

Finally, I was saddened to hear of the passing of Frank Eubel.  He was a great guy, a man of the highest integrity, and really quite brilliant and well-informed, with an incisive sense of humor.  I remember sitting in on RDC Board meetings listening to him tie together the day’s complex issues in SCCA politics with wit and insight.  So bright and quick was he, though, that I am embarrassed to say I could not always follow his maze-like train of logic or understand his many obscure allusions to things I should have known but didn’t.  He lost me on several occasions talking about this issue or espousing that point of view, but I always managed to maintain a knowing smile and nod approvingly “Yeh, ain’t it so”, so that I wouldn’t look too much like I just arrived.  Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I asked my good friend Russ McHugh, “Russ, did you follow what Frank was saying back there at the meeting?”  “No, I thought you did!”  “No, I didn’t, but I didn’t what too appear too thick about it”.  Ah, well, we didn’t follow what he said, but we knew for a fact that Frank was right on target.

*Road & Track numbers