Chases between a car and motorcycle often occur in tv and movies.
Does either vehicle have a clear advantage?
Specifically between stock vehicles on a highway.
For example, John is driving a 2022 Mustang GT. The Ford website says it has a 2.3L high performance engine, 330hp and 350 lb-ft torque.
A 2022 Kawasaki Vulcan 900 tries to overtake the car.
The 903cc V-twin powered Kawasaki Vulcan® 900 lineup of classic cruisers has all the style and attitude of a one-of-a-kind build. * FUEL-INJECTED 903cc V-TWIN ENGINE
Will the Mustang leave the motorcycle far, far behind?
Will the motorcycle pass the Mustang?
Usually in movies the motorcycle seems faster and chases down the car.
The Mustang has no chance against a fast bike. A fast street motorcycle can do 0-60 in under 3 seconds and the 1/4 mile in under 10 seconds. The Mustang needs 4.2s for 0-60 and the 1/4 mile takes 12.2 seconds. Those are outstanding numbers for a factory car, butbthey won’t come close to even a mid-performance motorcycle.
However, the motorcycle you chose is not a sport bike. The Vulcan 900 is a big, heavy cruiser that is designed for comfort and not speed. IT is slower than a mustang, running the quarter in close to 14 seconds. But you are comparing a touring bike to a sports car. Pick a sport bike, and the car loses, badly.
A Tesla Model S Plaid in ludicrous mode could keep up with fastest production sport bikes in the quarter mile, as could various exotics like the Bugatti Veyron, Porsche 918, etc.
The chief factor in comparing motorcycles and cars is the horsepower to weight ratio. For most bikes, they have the advantage. Cruisers like the Vulcan are built to be heavy and torquey, but not particularly quick. Even a modest sport bike (600-750cc) would out-do the Mustang. The high-end liter-bikes tend to be up there with exotics like Ferrari and Porsche.
Well, there is another side to it - motorcycles have two narrow wheels, and cars have four wide ones. This can make cars more manoeverable, allow them to brake harder, etc. So on a tight course the right car could win.
One thing you learn when riding bikes is that a motorcycle cannot usually stop as fast as a car can. This has led to many motorcyclists rear-ending cars that panic brake, and you have to learn to give them more clearance. This also means that the motorcycle may not be able to keep up in an environment with lots of curves where braking is required.
The biggest motorcycle vs. car trope is similar to the pedestrian vs car trope: the intended victim’s steadfast refusal to go anywhere the pursuing vehicle can’t go. So you get John Connor on a dirt bike refusing to do anything a semi truck can’t do, like hop a curb, ride between trees, cross yards or parks, etc.
I don’t know enough to be able to answer my own questions but it seems to me that many of the answers above make assumptions about real-life vehicle chase situations that may or may not be realistic. In a real life scenario, not just acceleration but top speed and cornering ability may be more important.
For example, the OP postulates a highway. A long straight highway means that top speed is more important than acceleration. The Mustang proposed by the OP is speed limited to 155mph. How does that compare to a sports bike?
The white knuckle factor probably starts to tilt things towards four wheels reasonably quickly on real roads. Bikes are a lot less forgiving, and once turns are thrown into the mix rather than straight lines, four wheels, with better adhesion and less chance of a wipe-out may start to win over the bike.
Hard to get easy figures to compare, but I had a quick look at lap times on a race circuit that hosts bikes and cars on the same circuit - in this case the Circuit of the Americas.
A MotoGP bike - arguably the fastest circuit bike there is - has a lap record of 2:03.
That is just beaten by a LM GTE car (Aston Martin Vantage) and it goes all the way up to an F1 car at 1:36, which is just silly quick. The LM GTE is at least based on a road going supercar - albeit seriously modified. A GT3 car is only 2 seconds slower than the bike. And they are very much based on road cars (Acura NSX here). But quite a bit quicker, with major aero upgrades, but live within a limited Balance Of Performance envelope that, amongst other things, effectively limits power to weight.
So not really a like for like, road bikes versus road cars, but it exemplifies the limitations a bike lives with.
I agree the motorcycle is more unforgiving. A little gravel will make a car spin out but can make a motorcycle crash.
Still, while the motorcycle has less adhesion because only two tires it also weighs a lot less so needs less adhesion to change direction.
Add that the motorcycle can almost certainly slow down faster (less weight) and out-accelerate all but the most powerful of cars I’d think a motorcycle going through a series of tight turns (say in a sub-division) would quickly out-pace most cars chasing them.
Then add the motorcycle can maneuver off-road more easily and slip between trees and down narrow stairs and so on. Assuming an adept rider I think the motorcycle will manage to lose most cars chasing them without too much trouble (understanding some exceptions may apply but they are uncommon).
As an aside, I was watching some dumb movie recently where a guy in a Porsche was being chased by bad guys in an SUV. It was at night on an uncrowded freeway and the SUV (looked like a GMC) managed to repeatedly ram him and run him off the road. I turned it off at that point because even I could not suspend disbelief that much (and I am ok with Star Trek transporters).
In about 2001, I was covering the Autobahn Police with a writer down in Augsburg, Germany, for Car & Driver. We got into a chase with two speeding motorcyles. We got to about 130-140 mph and we were completely smoked by them. The cops basically told us there just was no chance for us to catch up with them, especially as if we came up to any sort of traffic, they could just weave in between whereas the cop car can’t. I think they were doing it partly to give us something to write about, but they seemed pretty pessimistic about any chance of catching up to them and pulling them over. Can’t remember what kind of bikes they were – it was a long time ago. That cop car was an Audi A6, stock.
I remember a segment from (IIRC) Fifth Gear where Sabine Schmitz in a 911 raced a guy on a sport bike for fastest time on a tight test track. She couldn’t quite catch him, and she was quite a driver.
So, there are times where the car could catch the motorcycle, but they’re going to be rare. Even a 600 CC 4 cyl sport bike really does have most of the advantages in a situation where they need to get away from a car. Even if the car does have a slight edge in cornering and breaking, you really need to know what you’re doing to take advantage of them. The motorcycle’s prime advantage, horsepower to weight, is a bit easier to apply.
But, switch the advantages around, and the car can get away from the bike. I pissed off a guy on a Harley once while I was in a Turbo Mini S. I knew that he was out of go at around 110, at best. That car was drag limited somewhere above 140. So, getting away from him on a freeway was easy as long as I had open freeway ahead. If it came to stopping and turning, the Mini still had the advantage.
Cars above the total econo cheap tire level can easily out brake bikes. Regardless of weight, bikes have a very limited front contact patch size and for any kind of sporty bike, a serious limitation in the the back wheel will lift at about 1G of braking.
Swedish motorcycle videos like Getaway in Stockholm 8 and “Ghost Rider” appear to show sports-type bikes easily evading cop cars, including in heavy traffic.
Anything approaching 200 km/h is very sick on a bike, almost 200 MPH is suicidal IMO, but to each his own. Just noting that at those speeds the air resistance is so big that the back wheel will slip constantly, creeping on the asphalt and causing and enormous amount of wear and heat. The back wheel will literally leave a long, hopefully straight, skid mark.