Quote:
Originally Posted by malter2.0
OH PLEASE!!!!!! If RT mentions 90F and high humidity I'll shut up, but 90F in southern california is rare. It is micro-climate with 70F weather for most of the year. I would bet my life that humidity was higher in Germany than in dry ass california. Humid air is significantly less dense than dry air, and will kill performance.
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Well sure enough, I checked, and the humidity in Germany was 59%. I don't know what the humidity was in the Vette test, but it typically runs in the 40% range in their typical test venue - which by the way is at an altitude of 350 feet rather than the 650 foot test altitude in germany. At a guess, the humidity in the Vette test was probably even lower than the norm, because of the heat. (Note: figures not given for this becasue it was an "update" test, without full data panel.) In any event, figure a couple of tenths and another 1 1/2 mph coming the Vette's way, correcting for weather.
Meanwhile, I hadn't realized that there was a Vette in a later comparision test, where, near as I can tell, the temperature was at only 81 degrees, with 41% humidity. (These are about the norm for their test venue.) Sure enough, the car was quicker than in the earlier, hotter test, just as they predicted.
Still, it was a tenth off the benchmark M3 time (12.6 vs 12.5), although mph was up a skoche, at 115.7 vs 114.8 for the bimmer. Weather correction would show the Vette picking up a fat tenth and another mph, meaning that except for trap speed, they're right on top of one another.
My net of all this anal analysis is that from a dig, the M3 is a better performer than the Vette, and the Vette's better power to weight has to overcome the deficit before catching up and passing by - in this case, somewhere
past the quarter mile.
All in all, I think the new M3 is a bit of an overacheiver in the acceleration department. It can make full use of the power right from rest, and the close gear spacing up top means, as with most Euro cars, it'll run hard when the speedo gets well over on the right hand side of the dial.
I'm still pondering lucid's problem, though. Pretty much all concerned (road testers, users) have said that the car runs really hard when you boot it, but tends to fall a little short of expectations just driving around - thus the interminable M3 vs 335 posts, wherein Swamp and I have traded pleasantries in at least one of those strings.
There ought to be a quick fix, but I need to check something.
Bruce