You know the pointy end is the rear end, right? 
Althoug I don’t know how reliable that 30mpg figure was. I don’t think EPA did fuel economy tests back then, so it may have been a more idealized situation (e.g. cruising at a constant 35mph).
Are you thinking of the Volvo YCC concept car? Or maybe the Dodge LaFemme?
I think that as gasoline gets more expensive, people will come to regard their cars as more or less expensive appliances. Which explains why cars are evolving into common designs. There is no getting around aerodynamics, small engines, and smaller sizing. Eventually there will come a point when cars don’t excite anyone anymore…and that day is coming fast. look at how cars looked in 1900-they were all basically the same. And once people start to drive electric cars, there won’t be aby differences.
Actually, it’s more a matter of good tires, the knowlege of the limits of my car, and the fact that it has a bizarre torque curve and horsepower. See, the sweet spot is between 6100 and 8100 RPM, and thanks to the VVT-i behavior, the 0-60 performance has nothing to do with how it acts between 50 and 130. At highway speeds, it is entirely possible to stay within the powerband, at which point it behaves like something supercharged. (Actually, the Exige has 5 horsepower more than my specific XRS. The same engine is in the Corolla S, deturned to… either 140 or 150 HP)
From a stoplight, I will almost never win. From highway speeds, I will almost never lose.
The Sands Museum link about the engine was outdated, my apologies.
http://www.sandsmuseum.com/cars/elise/thecar/engine/toyota.html
Take a careful look at the Timing and Lift Characterists section. Again, below 6100 RPM, it behaves, and gets the fuel economy, of a momwagon.
Above it… you really need to know how to drive the car to get the most out of it. Even the 0-60 times on it vary from 8.9 to 7.2, depending on where you look.
There wasn’t an EPA back then. Bucky did do extensive documentation of the car’s performance (he loved collecting speeding tickets), and did wind tunnel tests on the car. It held the record for the world’s lowest drag coefficient for decades, IIRC. He also designed (and unfortuantely there’s no pics of it on the web that I can find) an updated version of the car for Kaiser (it was never built) that was a smaller 5 passenger car that greatly resembled a horseshoe crab.
So do you know under what conditions the 30mpg figure was measured?
Nope. If I had time, I’d try poking around on the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s site as they were gradually working on getting everything they could on line and the info might be there.
Within its power band, it still peaks at 130 ft-lbs of torque. The guys in the M3s and “everything short of a vette” you are “eating” are chuckling at you. But we’re way off topic. Your car’s ugly too.
Well, you can say that, Galt, but experience proves otherwise.
(One of the M3s qualifies as ‘controlled circumstances’. He’s a decent driver and has yet to beat me conclusively over a known road.)
As far as ugly, is it?
Man, you must really hate Mercedes. Okay. But what about the first and third in the list? Both of them ugly?
My taste is very different from that of most of you. I *love * the weird looking cars, including my bright yellow Scion xB. I get a chuckle out of it every time I see it, and I like that just fine. I love the Smart Cars, and that Citroen Picasso linked to earlier. And the Bucky Fuller car. I even liked the way the Pacer looked (but not anything else about it).
Bring 'em on - the more unusual, smaller, and more practical the better! Nerds of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but trips to the gas station.
So what exactly was your point?
It’s a simple matter of physics that a car’s fuel consumption at high speeds is proportional to air resistance, which for a given shape is proportional to frontal area. You can optimize the shape to get decent fuel efficinecy from a fairly large car, like they did with the Dymaxion Car and the Prius. But the same shape applied to a smaller car would get even better gas mileage. That’s all I was trying to say.
The flash game on bB site is the most insane thing I’ve ever seen. Yikes!
Not sure what Mercedes has to do with the ugliness of the XRS. But “ugly” is overstating it a bit. More like “painfully bland.” It may as well be a Ford Focus hatchback for all the character it’s got. Same goes for the Mazda 3 (your third link): that, a BMW 3-series, an Audi A4: all interchangable and all slightly better looking than a Camry. Yawn city.
I never really considered whether or not a Woody was ugly. It’s almost like it’s such an icon it’s above judgement, but looking at it seriously, I do think it’s ugly. It’s just cool-ugly, since it’s got character.
anamnesis: And those skewed, uneven window lines on the Pathfinder Armada? Are those also ergonomic? Come on. Certain designs are just BAD.
There are certain people who like modern design and modern architecture and modern everything and others who prefer it how it used to be. The two will never see eye to eye. And, trying to combine the two (“retro”) is usually a recipe for design disaster. We’re talking PT Cruiser here. Please don’t tell me you like that.
I will take delusional for $100 Alex.
Either that for the reason he is beating the BMW drivers is due to the fact they can’t drive while they are laughing that hard.
Looking around the net the M3 has 262 Ft. lbs of torque just over twice what the XRS has. The Horsepower is 333 for the BMW Vs. God only knows for the XRS. I can find cites on the net for 180, This cite says no that is wrong the SAE net is 164 and so on.
Anyway you cut it the BMW has between 85% to 100% more the horsepower. So let’s look at the weight, surely the BMW is a heavy battlecruiser that has a lard ass. The BMW weighs 3415 lbs just 22% more than the Toytoa.
So twice the torque, twice the HP, and a 22% weight pentaly, and you are beating them? Got to the the BMW driver’s laughing too hard to drive fast.
Stop by my training center in the SF bay area, and I will show you a wagon that really hauls (ass that is)
You know it! Those old horse-drawn Merc’s were the shiznit. I think they were a personal favourite of William I.
I’d totally put a minstrel trio in the back with a 6’ tenor and a 5’ 5" baritone. That’d be kickin’.
Heh. Oops.
Truthfully, it’s more a matter of the M3 drivers not having the courage to actually drive into corners at more than 8/10ths the limit… and the odd location of the maximum torque and shape of the torque curve. Well, that, and them not knowing how to shift. The tall gearing is an advantage at the higher end, for various reasons, as long as I can keep it in the sweet spot. Twice the horsepower is an advantage, but it’s more about the fact that the torque and horsepower peaks are (Weird. Edmunds has three different data points for the same engine. I know which one’s right) much closer together… 6800 RPM / 7600 RPM for the XRS and 4900/7900 for the M3 which, basically, means what I said above. In the sweet spot of the power band, it hauls ass faster than anything with the raw stats it has, should. It corners much better, and brakes better, too. If I can keep the car balanced, the M3 is either going to have more torque, or more power than I do, but not both at once. The six speed is balanced well enough that I can go from 2nd to 5th without dipping below 6100 RPM, as long as I shift just right.
But the point I was going to make before I started wagging my car around was that there are interesting wagons. And they’re all pretty darn different looking. If you can’t find something you like in the field of the XRS, Mazdaspeed 3, Volvo, Subaru WRX, and Dodge Magnum, it may say more about your personal aesthetics.
Apparently, you can’t stand 70s retro (300c, Mustang), 40s Retro (PT Cruiser, XRS, HHR), Modern Euro (Mazdaspeed 3, BMW, most Toyotas, Mercedes), Modern America (Cadillac Cien-descendants, Ford Edge Design), 60s EuroRetro (Solstice), French (Nissan), or Modern Japanese (Honda, some Toyotas, Mitsu Eclipse) or Square (Subaru, Volvo, Mitsu Lancer)
Am I wrong here?
(I have reasons for the non-literal categorizing… Nissan’s design bureau, in my opinion, has been totally taken over by Renault, for example.)
You can tell me that none of these following cars appeal to you at all?
Is that the coconut carrying jester model? I love that one!
Maybe I’m alone, but I prefer most modern designs to those in the sixties, or especially the seventies. The 71 to 73 mustang was the low point in Mustang design to me, except for the years they didn’t make them from 74 to 78 (nobody can prove to me they made mustangs then). The nose of the car was overly long and it was bloated and too big to be a pony car. It’s chassis was based on the torino for gods sake. I much prefer the 05 model.
In the seventies, performance usually meant a car slathered in decals. Who doesn’t remember all those Firebirds with the puking chicken on the hood, and the ridiculous hood scoops and fender flares that looked like something you’d get out of a J.C. Whitney catalog.
Unfortunately, automakers can’t leave a good design alone. Remember the Datsun 240Z. It morphed into the godawful 300ZX that really wasn’t a sports car anymore. It reminded me more of a Japanese Cutlass with its velour interior and T-tops.
Most GM designs of the seventies got more and more bloated and ugly as the decade went on. The Cutlass became an embarrassing caricature of the earlier car.
Regarding the Armada and PT Cruiser, I can argue on the merits and shortcomings of both designs. There are skewed, uneven lines on a lot of SUVs. The Armada is a mish-mash of ideas, yes, but it’s well-proportioned and has a powerful stance. I have driven them and was less than impressed from a mechanical/performance standpoint, but that’s another discussion. Aside from the overly busy, blocky front end which doesn’t manage to achieve any sort of meaningful identity, I don’t find the Armada to be all that bad from an overall design perspective. It is what it is, a big, bloated, seven passenger gas-guzzling soccer mom truck. If you want to see an example what I consider poor design on an SUV, take a look at one of my favorite candidates, the current Hyundai Santa Fe, which suffers a bit from Pontiac syndrome. Concave warps, bevels, ribbing, strange bulges, vents, etc. To this day, when I see one, I cannot tell for sure whether the part of the sheetmetal on the rear doors that swoops over the rear wheel well has in fact been subjected to a side-impact collision because it looks like it’s been kicked in straight from the factory.
The PT Cruiser is an unfortunate tale because it was previewed in concept form nearly a decade ago as the Chrysler Pronto Concept in 1998. Here I thought Chrysler would be unveiling another production model in the likeness of the retro-chic Plymouth Prowler roadster, except that it turned out to be an over-exaggerated design exercise whose production reality ended up resembling more of a cross between it and another Chrysler concept from the year prior, the similarly-named Plymouth Pronto Concept in 1997. The end result became what we have today, a sort of late-term abortion of the awesome fat-fendered roadster they previewed with the Pronto. Rather unfortunate. I’m no fan of how it ended up, but again, it is what it is and this is why we’re lucky it’s not the only choice available as consumers … so what’s the big deal? I don’t own one and you don’t have to either.
I already stated that I admire design from all eras, and that’s not limited to just automobiles. To suggest that there are those who like things modern, and those who like it “how it used to be”, and that the two will never see eye to eye, is only how you see things because you’re obviously closed-minded, and that’s unfortunate because it’s self-limiting. I’d be interested to see some of your ideas, perhaps to show us all how the industry would benefit from your insight. Mine are here, in case there’s any doubt as to whether I know what I’m talking about when I engage in a discussion of automotive design. I really ought to update my online portfolio one of these days … it’s woefully out of date and Webshots is not what it used to be. My two best pieces from that collection are the Chrysler New Yorker and Bentley GT Roadster.
