Street driving and the gas pedal

By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 1994-12-08

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This article originally appeared in Volume 4, Number 4 of Driver /Education, in December 1994.

Today's auto advertisers know that speed and power sell. And they also know that they're selling to a largely unsophisticated market in which most of the "targets" of the advertising are not particularly knowledgeable about what power and speed mean, or how to use them.

Car advertising consistently depicts speed and maneuverability as selling points, and when it comes to speed the most commonly cited statistic is acceleration from 0-60 mph (0-100 km/h). And that, according to auto technology journalist Gerry Malloy, is a particularly useless statistic to offer in relation to a car's acceleration needs for common traffic situations.

Since drivers rarely, if ever, need to accelerate from 0-60 mph (0-100 km/h) in one burst, what should interest them more are the kinds of acceleration needed for traffic situations such as merging into a traffic flow, changing into faster lanes of traffic, or getting onto freeways. In other words, acceleration from 30-50 mph (50-80km/h) or from 50-70 mph (80-120 km/h) is much more significant for the driver, suggests Malloy.

But even these statistics may not be as important as how the car actually responds to the accelerator pedal. Acceleration figures are measured at full throttle. What is more relevant to the street driver, Malloy says, is how the engine responds to pressure on the pedal.

If the response is too slow, the driver may regard the engine as underpowered, even though it may, in fact, be more powerful than the engines of comparable cars. And if the response is too quick it may be difficult, or even impossible, to get smooth starts or smooth transitions to higher speeds. Also, the car may be difficult to control, particularly in slippery conditions, because it's all-too-easy to overdo things with the gas pedal at the wrong moment.

There may be a number of reasons for poor throttle response, Malloy points out. The car may be underpowered, but it could also be due to poor throttle linkage geometry, "or its low-speed, part-throttle performance may be compromised to generate a high peak power output that will look good in advertising comparisons with the competition."

Some manufacturers are beginning to see the light and are beginning to favour better feel over big horsepower numbers, according to Malloy. One 1995 car, he says, is getting a reduction in power to increase its performance in the more critical street-driving responses.

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