How Fast Is Fast

Maybe a bit mundane and pointless, but here goes. It was inspired by Cisco’s post about the Mustang GT “not being that fast”. These are very general; there are exceptions to every one (like the legendary 12-second four-cylinder Caravan).

The standard drag racing event is 1/4 of a mile long from a standing start, and a “trap speed” reading is taken over the final 66 feet.

A Yugo is about a 20-second car, and that’s as slow as you’re likely to encounter nowadays. It goes through the traps at around 62-65 MPH. Old Mercedes diesels used to be around here or slower. You have to simply accept that you won’t be able to keep up with traffic here; leave a lot of room and be prepared to move to the right.

A Geo Metro, with the three-banger, will run around 19, at around 65-67 MPH. Four-banger minivans are down here, along with some older trucks. You think twice about short on-ramps in these cars.

A Chevy Cavalier, with the 110-hp motor and the automatic, will turn in 18-second times at around 71 MPH. This is about where most slow four-cylinder/automatic sedans will run, perhaps a little faster. These are cars where you complain a bit about highway merges and definitely run out of breath when you open 'er up at 65.

A somewhat obsolete Civic, or an MGB, will run around a 17-second quarter mile at 75-80 MPH. Most larger old sedans and trucks will be about here. These are cars that have a bit of pep to them around town and aren’t too slow on the highway, but aren’t gonna win any awards for speed on the open road.

A six-banger Taurus, Accord, or Camry from a few years back will run around 16 with an automatic transmission at 80-85 MPH, as will a stick-shift Civic or CRX. A 16-second car isn’t slow, but isn’t particularly fast either. If you keep the hammer down you’ll get moving pretty well eventually, especially in an aerodynamically slick modern car.

Twin Dual Cam Pontiac Grand Prixes, as well as most current six-cylinder sedans, will get down around 15 seconds, with trap speeds around 90-95. Most sporty cars - Mazda 3s and 6s, Ford Mustang V6es, BMW 328is, Mini Cooper S, Civics Si, Toyota Celicas, Honda Preludes, will be around here. These cars will feel pretty quick and peppy, with plenty of power out on the open road.

Half a second and around five miles faster, and you’ve got the plain WRX, the BMW 330i, the supercharged Grand Prix, the Mazda RX-8, the Nissan Maxima and Altima, the newest 268-hp Camry, and 5.0 Mustangs from the late 1980s, as well as some serious machinery from way back in the 1960s. These cars are faster than 99% of the automotive population, and have enough power to occasionally scare experienced drivers. Top speeds for a 14.5 second car are usually in the 140s or 150s - or governor-limited.

At 14 seconds, you reach a fairly significant benchmark, with a 100-mile-per-hour trap speed. It takes a fairly capable car to accelerate this quickly, usually involving six or eight cylinders or a turbocharger. Recent V8 Mustangs, early-1990s LT1 Corvettes and Camaros, Neon SRT-4s, Nissan 350Zs, third-generation RX-7s, Impreza WRX STis, Mitsubishi Evos, Toyota Supras, and Buick Grand Nationals in stock form are in the mid-to-high-13-second bracket. A 13.5-14 second car is fun to drive just in a straight line - disappearing from people’s mirrors, blasting away from traffic lights and leaving people absolutely standing, carefully modulating the power in the first 20% of accelerator travel to avoid going sideways in the snow…

13-second cars are about the limit of the average motorist’s comprehension. Your average twentysomething hotshot in his Scion Tc revving up at the traffic lights just barely understands that he’s about to get burned like Duane Starks lining up across from Randy Moss… A plain C5 Corvette is about that fast, capable of reaching 105-108 from a standing start in 1320 feet. The acceleration necessary to blast through a quarter in 13 is roughly double what it takes to do it in 19, and it’s a rare and special stock street car that can do it. At least it used to be…

12.something-second cars have been relatively available to the public (though seriously expensive) for the past few years. A Viper, a Lotus Elise, a C5 z06 Corvette, a 993 Turbo, a Lotus Esprit V8 will rip off these times, leaving virtually everything in the dust. Anything this fast is going to be absolutely devastating on the road, with serious traction problems below 60 MPH.

Faster cars exist, all the way down to four and a half seconds (for a Top Fuel Dragster), but they are rare and often confined strictly to the drag strip.

The gaps between each group are roughly equal, and of course it’s a continuum; but they give a sense of scale of how much is needed to get something from a 16-second car to a 12-second car - most claims of a “12 second Civic” deserve to be taken with more than a grain of salt, and those that are believable are as impressive as they should be.

Welcome to the boards! Nice and interesting post. We had a relevant discussion about this topic a little while ago. Someone wanted to know if there were any non-exotics today that could beat that bad-ass muscle cars of the 60’s and 70’s. We concluded that why yes there are. Plenty of them in fact including some family sedans and the fastest like the Corvette Z06 would blow them all back to their own decade.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=376325&highlight=muscle+cars

Oh yeah, the difference between Goodyear Wide Ovals and Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3s has got to be at least a second - a stock 14-second car in 1969 is a stock-but-for-tires 13-second car in 2006. The muscle cars of the 1960s on appropriate modern tires were not and are not slow by any standard, and even if the power was overrated there was still a lot of it.

Can we bring motorcycles to this party?

I bow to your superior knowledge in this department, microbubble. For the sake of your curiosity, I had the WRX STi in mind when I wrote that other post, but after snooping around a little bit I think the blowhards at work have been exaggerating how much their GTs cost.

The Mustang looks like a piece of carved lead, by the way. There have got to be cars that don’t have quite as much oomph but are actually faster due to having a lower curb weight, no? I’m thinking along the lines of SRT, STi, Evo, S2000.

The Neon SRT-4 is about as fast for about the money, but it’s been discontinued. The Caliber SRT-4,with the still-fairly-shocking output of 300 HP going to its front wheels, will be faster.

The STi, Evo, and S2000 are roughly the Mustang’s equals on straight-line speed. They also all cost ten thousand dollars more.

Dorjan, sure, we can bring motorcycles into this party. Keep in mind that on a twisty back road, a 16-second CRX will keep up with a 10-second YZF-R1…

And from the larger side of the garage… I was curious, and looked up my vehicle - a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup with 5.7 liter Hemi and 3.92 diff - this beast does a quarter mile in about 16 seconds/84 mph trap.

Not bad, considering a Taurus can’t tow our 6,000 pound trailer.

Tiger fast!