Quote:
Originally Posted by lucid
Yes, this is amazing. That kind of thinking would literally take civilization centuries back, to the pre-renaissance era. As if BMW engineers randomly put together parts to build a car, start driving it around, and then see how it "feels" in terms of acceleration to decide if it is a keeper. They pretty much know exactly how it will accelerate before putting a complete car together. To ignore the facts around an issue where facts explain almost everything, and present baseless opinion to arrive at a conclusion. Pure nonsense...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by swamp2
Get real. Physics, engineering, simulation sofware and even spreadsheets are what design the cars we drive; they describe the real world. This has nothing to do with who has driven what. I tire so easily from this absurd argument that seat time is "the only thing that matters" or that it is "the only real way to judge a car". This is dark ages thinking quite frankly. Lucids arguments are sound as is his conclusion. You can put an accelerometer in the two cars and verify it. You could also compare some rolling start performance differences.
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OK, this is getting close to outright arrogance, and you guys don't even know what you don't know.
You don't know what the part-throttle characteristics of each engine are, and possibly even more important, you don't know what the rotational inertia effects are. Your quaint belief that a spreadsheet showing full-throttle torque at the drive wheels is hardly meaningful in this context, and your dismissal of the experiences of two (and possibly three) drivers in favor of a non-applicable spreadsheet really
is arrogance.
I haven't driven a new M3, but my experiences with a couple of 335s shows that they are typical of today's street turbo engines in that they deliver a non-linear boost map when driven at part throttle. That is to say, half throttle, for instance, delivers more than half the allowable boost, so the car feels very responsive because it''s putting out a larger percentage of its max torque under those conditions.
There's also minor evidence that suggests the M3 is a little lazy at part throttle. I've read in a couple of comparison tests (in Car, and at least one other mag, the name of which escapes me), that the M3 is a little bit soft at low revs on the street compared to the RS4, yet in full-throttle roll-ons from low revs, the M3 is the quicker car, according to the acceleration results.
As far as rotational inertia is concerned, the first point is that it goes up as the square of the gearing, and the second is that in a given gear, 100% of the rotational inertia is right there with you, whether you're at part thottle or at full throttle. Therefore, at part throttle, the effects of rotational inertia are more apparant than when you're seriously legging it.
I'm willing to bet that because of gearing, the M3 has significantly more rotational inertia in first gear than the 335 does, and it's obviously more apparent at part throttle than at full throttle. It's also a bit heavier than the 335, which is another factor that's with you at 100%, all the time.
I'm with hwelvaar, footie and termigni on this one. Lucid and Swamp, you need to reconsider your position.
Bruce