W9 Engine (3L,500+hp) - Them crazy Swedes at it again.

Ever hear of British-leyland?
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Of the 1970s...yes? Your point being? It's now 2007!

How many years did the Land Rover design remain the same?
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That's because it's a good design! You're honestly comparing the reasons a Land Rover is still in production to the reasons a why a Ford Crown Victoria is? One is the pinnacle of off road utilitarian transport and the other is an inefficient, damperless barge!

How 'bout Jags? MG's?
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Well the MGs were actually really good cars. If you could forgive them for their rather tasteless 90s design, the last generation of Rover based cars were really good. In the end they went bust because they were owned by Rover...which made shit cars, and hence no one bought them!

Or the 40 some odd year old Mini?
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Again....a design classic. I still wish the made it today.

Germany used the Beetle design for how many years? Porsche evolved the 911 how many times?
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Evolved exactly! Hence it was made better. I see no evolution in the design of a Lincoln Town Car or a Ford CV.

Granted they don't do that these days because now they are the companies either with the money, or out of business. American companies obviously don't have that luxury.
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The luxury of what? Being out of business? :lol:
 
You realize the "lazy" Crown Victoria will run only 1 second slower through the 1/4 mile than a 2005 Mercedes Benz E500, right?

Horsepower isn't the be-all end-all measurment of performance.

Ford builds a 4.6L V8 for about $12. The 2007 Crown Victoria starts at $25,000. The BASE E-CLASS V6 STARTS AT MORE THAN TWICE THAT!!!!!!!


This a stupid conversation. ArosaMike, you're a tool.
 
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Vitamin J. You're an unnecessarily abusive poster!

And what planet are you from? Or are US seconds longer? Last time I looked a Crown Victoria did 0-60 in 9.2s (Slower than my 1.4 Litre supermini that has 100bhp incidentally) and an E500 in 5.2s!

Price was irrelevant. This wasn't a thread about actually buying a car. It was about technology! The whole point I was making was a comparison of engine technology.

I'm sorry...I have a huge dislike for engineering design that gets stuck in a rut. It's boring, lazy, and the people who design them would struggle to design a washing machine properly. OK, I'm being a little bit unfair, but American car companies have a notoriously bad reputation for not engineering cars properly. Ford Explorer or Edson anyone? The Explorer is dangerously bad at going round corners (I've seen test videos!) and the Edson spontaneously combust. If Ford want to make some money, they need to pull their head of the sand, stop selling the crap they sell in the States and design something that's good.

Part of my dislike of big US engines like this is it sums up the USs policy on emissions and the environment. They basically don't have one, which is criminal. The attitude is, we'll do what we want so fuck everyone else. We're America.
 
Vitamin J said:
Horsepower isn't the be-all end-all measurment of performance.
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And a quarter mile is?

And yeah, the problem with US cars is not that the engineers are lazy. The problem is the customers, who want cheap cars. So the car companies are forced to make cheap cars and that leads to them not having money. And that lack of money leads to not being able to research new techs, so they have to use stuff from the 50s and 60s. Good thing is that the customers over there don't care about that and buy the cars anyway. It's a vicious cycle.
 
ArosaMike said:
Vitamin J. You're an unnecessarily abusive poster!

And what planet are you from? Or are US seconds longer? Last time I looked a Crown Victoria did 0-60 in 9.2s (Slower than my 1.4 Litre supermini that has 100bhp incidentally) and an E500 in 5.2s!
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0-60 and the 1/4 mile are quite different, as I'm sure you're quite well aware.

Price was irrelevant. This wasn't a thread about actually buying a car. It was about technology! The whole point I was making was a comparison of engine technology.
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Sorry, price is always relevant.

I'm sorry...I have a huge dislike for engineering design that gets stuck in a rut. It's boring, lazy, and the people who design them would struggle to design a washing machine properly. OK, I'm being a little bit unfair, but American car companies have a notoriously bad reputation for not engineering cars properly.
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Your point? The 911's been built with the engine in the wrong place since the beginning of time, yet I don't hear you complaining about that. Porsche refined their design, GM refined theirs with ths LS-series motors.

Ford Explorer or Edson anyone? The Explorer is dangerously bad at going round corners (I've seen test videos!) and the Edson spontaneously combust.
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The Explorer is an offroad-capable SUV, if you're driving it like a Miata, of course things are going to go wrong. The real issue is people not knowing how the drive the vehicles they've bought.

Also, what the hell is a Ford Edson? I've never heard of it, and apparently neither has Google.

If Ford want to make some money, they need to pull their head of the sand, stop selling the crap they sell in the States and design something that's good.
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Welcome to brand engineering. Ford makes mainly budget-oriented automobiles, which is a high-volume sales category. If a Crown Vic cost as much as an E-class, nobody would buy them.

Part of my dislike of big US engines like this is it sums up the USs policy on emissions and the environment. They basically don't have one, which is criminal. The attitude is, we'll do what we want so fuck everyone else. We're America.
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You've managed to twist this discussion from the relevancy of HP/L, to European vs. American cars, to commentary on U.S. foreign policy. Congratulations. You've taken this into a region that you obviously know absolutely jack all about. I mean, seriously - California has ridiculously strict emissions laws, so strict that they've more or less banned diesel engines due to high emissions. Vehicle emissions have been cut by 95% over the past 36 years, and California law cuts that by an additional 75% as of 2005. US ULEV Tier II regulations are exceedingly tight, and Europe's Stage IV are very similar. I'm not sure where you pulled the "Americans make high-emissions vehicles and tell everyone else to go fuck themselves" idea from, but it's pure bullshit.
 
ArosaMike said:
Edson spontaneously combust. If Ford want to make some money, they need to pull their head of the sand, stop selling the crap they sell in the States and design something that's good.
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You must mean the Edsel. And it was NOT known the "spontaneously combust" it was known for being extremely ugly, and probably other problems that I don't care about because I never got passed the FORD badge.

The only ford known to explode was the Pinto, which didn't do it spontaneously but would do so if hit hard enough in the rear end. The Chevy Vega had a similar issue.

The last bit I won't argue with. Ford does need to pull their head out of something, but it's definitely not the sand :lol: and make a decent car.

I'm sorry...I have a huge dislike for engineering design that gets stuck in a rut.
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So why did you speak so highly of the Land rover? It practically stopped being changed once it was designed up until what? When American's decided they made great tax breaks? No matter how excellent of an off-roader it may be, or how far ahead they were, there is no reason they should have just stopped developing it. It had plenty of problems, like the fact that they may be able to tame the jungles of Africa, but they can't make it down to the corner store without getting an exhaust leak or breaking down in general. I've never met a Range Rover owner who had to drive the car on a semi-daily basis that would buy another one. Especially considering they depreciated faster than a 1988 Hyundai Excel on blocks.

And I still can't understand why Audi and Porsche are spoken so highly of by others ( and you obviously approve of Porsche) when they both are fighting to make a bad design work. What I mean is the engines that hang over the far ends of the axles. Didn't Porsche put lead in the bumpers of their cars for a while in a desperate attempt to balance the chassis?

And GM is insulted for coming up with a different way to use a spring...
 
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ArosaMike said:
When I say lazy engineering, I mean design teams who are stuck in a rut and just keep knocking out the same things year in year out without bothering to try and break new boundaries.

I notice the Caddy also only has 6 seats as opposed to 7, so not really that much more practical. With the seats down to get luggage in you can only fit 4 people in! That's rubbish. The bimmers seats are also on a slide so in the picture you've posted they're in their most forward position. The packaging is also pretty poor on the Caddy. Look at the tiny distance between the floor and the seat bottom. Anyone but kids will have their knees round their ears.

I'm not saying all American cars are rubbish, but there a whole load more rubbish ones than you get in Europe and Japan.
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It's not that they're stuck in a rut, it's that they're not going to fix something that isn't broken. Most people say the only thing good about American cars is our engines, so why would design teams waste time and money trying to focus on the motor? Shouldn't they be looking at the interior? Or the handling?

The Cadillac has 4 bucket seats and a bench. The BMW has 2 bucket seats and 2 bench's. The BMW only seats 6 as well. And the Cadillac has 49 cubic feet of cargo capacity with all three rows in place, and 90 cubic feet with the third row folded down. "The X5 offers less cargo capacity than nearly any other SUV of its size and weight, less even than a BMW 5 Series wagon, and its high floor makes loading cargo more challenging." With the third row of the X5 with only ?adequate space for occupants up to approximately 5?6? in height.?

The worst cars sold in America come from Korea. And with Toyota being the most recalled car in the world for 2006, I don't think our domestic brands are doing too bad.
 
TomCat said:
And with Toyota being the most recalled car in the world for 2006, I don't think our domestic brands are doing too bad.
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No shit? I'd like to read that article.*



*I'm not trying to attack you, just want to see the article.
 
thedguy said:
And I still can't understand why Audi and Porsche are spoken so highly of by others ( and you obviously approve of Porsche) when they both are fighting to make a bad design work. What I mean is the engines that hang over the far ends of the axles. Didn't Porsche put lead in the bumpers of their cars for a while in a desperate attempt to balance the chassis?
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Audi has their engines so far up front to make more room for passangers. Sure it's not good for performance, but for comfort it is.
Porcshe on has the 911s engine in the back because it has always been there. 911 is THE Porsche and it's its trademark so they can't stop making it and they can't change the engines place because it wouldn't be a 911 anymore.
So what is the reason for live rear axles or leaf springs? My guess is money, they do not increase performance, they do not increase comfort. They just make developing and/or making car cheaper and that's why they use them.
 
TomCat said:
And with Toyota being the most recalled car in the world for 2006, I don't think our domestic brands are doing too bad.
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Isn't Toyota the most sold car in the world too? Atleast it's at the top..
 
geeman said:
So what is the reason for live rear axles or leaf springs? My guess is money, they do not increase performance, they do not increase comfort. They just make developing and/or making car cheaper and that's why they use them.
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The Corvette's leafs are more expensive then coilovers. They're also much much lighter and lower the center of gravity. They cost more money and increase performance.
 
TomCat said:
The Corvette's leafs are more expensive then coilovers. They're also much much lighter and lower the center of gravity. They cost more money and increase performance.
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More expensive to buy, but maybe less expensive to develop. Leaf Springs are an old design, so GM probably saved a lot of money by just taking the same design from the old Corvette and put it in to the new one and maybe tweaking it a little.
The Corvette could have been even better if they had scratched the leaf springs and designed the car with coilover springs in mind. That would have been more expensive, but it may have had better end result.
 
geeman said:
More expensive to buy, but maybe less expensive to develop. Leaf Springs are an old design, so GM probably saved a lot of money by just taking the same design from the old Corvette and put it in to the new one and maybe tweaking it a little.
The Corvette could have been even better if they had scratched the leaf springs and designed the car with coilover springs in mind. That would have been more expensive, but it may have had better end result.
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The springs in the Corvette are composite, which makes them much harder to develop then the traditional metal stacked springs everyone thinks of. In fact, the Corvette's leafs are a design that go back to Formula 1 cars of the 1990's. Moving up to traditional coilovers, like everyone else, will probably happen on the new Corvette SS. But not because it's more comfy or offers better performance. The biggest down-side of leafs is that they're not fully adjustable, in the way coilovers are. Coilovers are heavier, raise the center of gravity, and will not have the life-span of the composite leafs used in the Vette.
 
The only reason GM's 'vette racers uses coil-over suspension is because the steel coil springs are far more common and less expensive to produce than the Carbon Fiber units in the production version. And providing enough sets of springs for each different track and it's conditions is just not an affordable option.

The production leaf springs are also mounted at the bottom of the chassis and also double as an adjustable sway bar by moving where the shackles sit. Also the vette since the C4 has only used 2 springs, 1 in the front 1 in the back. On the C4 they used Fiber glass springs, C5 introduced carbon fiber, both of which GM is the only company capable of making in the world. I've said several times before, if the design was used by Europeans it would have been an innovative way to use "an old technology."

The live-axles were used for both cost reduction and, as Ford claims, it's customers wanted it. The mustang is a popular drag platform, live-axles are far easier to setup for straight line grip, and can be made stronger for less money. Also there are no IRS setups that are capable of being NHRA or IHRA legal at trap times faster than 7.5sec for the 1/4mile.
 
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thedguy said:
The live-axles were used for both cost reduction and, as Ford claims, it's customers wanted it. The mustang is a popular drag platform, live-axles are far easier to setup for straight line grip, and can be made stronger for less money. Also there are no IRS setups that are capable of being NHRA or IHRA legal at trap times faster than 7.5sec for the 1/4mile.
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If you are going that fast in the quarter mile then the car is far from stock.

That rule is for safety reasons since if a IRS CV joint breaks then projectiles could injure or kill someone. A solid axle breaking won't do anything because the axle is incased inside the tube.

Also I don't think you have that rule correct. Unless it has been modified since the last time I read the rule book there was an exeption for car that weigh less then 2,500 lbs. Plenty of imports, mostly 1,200 hp supras but a few RX-7s, were going faster then safety specs required for a very long time.
 
I just HEARD the leaf springs discussion coming...
 
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