[kraft.wagen]

Originally Posted by VLOCT

Buick and Lincoln toppled Lexus and Infiniti with the 2011 Buick Lacrosse, and 2010 and 2007 Lincoln MKZ vehicles.

Originally Posted by kraft.wagen

I'm surprised to see Lacrosse, I had drove a Lacrosse rental and felt the car was too heavy to handle and struggled when I pumped the gas. I would pick the G37 any day or even the IS over the Lacrosse.

Ok my bad. I was jus ignored the P button in the Lacrosse, its some eco kinda button I think when I turned it off it unleashed some good power Any one know what exactly this stands for? I couldn't find it in the owners manual.

Sorry for the poor quality pic
But still I stand by my point that infiniti is more powerful and comfortable

[aah78]

The P button on the right of the shifter?

That's the button for the parking sensors / assist.

[ps. The P on the left of the shifter will reduce your speed to 0 with a jerk! ]

[VLOCT]

Originally Posted by kraft.wagen

It is the Z06. Chevy claims this is the most track capable of the corvettes.

'Vettes have always been fantastic cars for the track. To me the car epitomizes Caroll Shelby's famous quote "Horse Power sells cars, Torque wins races". What with the full range of torque available from 1500 rpm to almost 5500 rpm, it's essentially a flat lined graph. Astonishing really, what that gem of a GM V8 can do. There are only a handful of cars in the world that can do that. Truly fantastic.

If you have the money, obviously the one to get would be ZR-1 (~$130K, I would expect). But Z06 would in itself be way above the capability of most mortals.

The number of drivers who get their hands on these cars, clearly with almost no driving skills other than driving family sedans, and think they can stomp on a Z06 let alone a ZR-1, are amazing. Just check You Tube on Corvette crashes, it's really sad.

Anyone interested in these cars would be well advised to do a couple of courses at a racing or Corvette school. Besides being an unforgettable experience, it would also do a world of good for their safety.

[Fraz33r]

Originally Posted by aah78

....button on the right of the shifter?

That's the button for the parking sensors / assist.

What do you mean assist? Isn't that an electronic parking brake equivalent to a hand brake ?

By friend's tiguan has one as well (in addition to a P on lever)

[kraft.wagen]

Originally Posted by aah78

The P button on the right of the shifter?

That's the button for the parking sensors / assist.

[ps. The P on the left of the shifter will reduce your speed to 0 with a jerk! ]

haha I meant the P on the right

Not sure if it was parking assist cuz keeping it on did not make a difference to park, I felt turning this button off like some sports mode or may be its just me

[VLOCT]

Originally Posted by Fraz33r

What do you mean assist? Isn't that an electronic parking brake equivalent to a hand brake ?

By friend's tiguan has one as well (in addition to a P on lever)

If this is true, I wonder if Kraft was driving essentially with the Parking Brake on. It would explain why the car took off when it was turned off.

Hey Kraft, may be you need to do a compare with the Infiniti again, this time with the parking brake off on the Buick.

[aah78]

Originally Posted by Fraz33r

What do you mean assist? Isn't that an electronic parking brake equivalent to a hand brake ?

By friend's tiguan has one as well (in addition to a P on lever)

Attachment 1175414

Yes, the one you've posted is the parking brake. The picture kraft has posted is for the parking sensors.

Originally Posted by kraft.wagen

haha I meant the P on the right

Not sure if it was parking assist cuz keeping it on did not make a difference to park, I felt turning this button off like some sports mode or may be its just me

Probably just turns the sensor beeps on/off.

Originally Posted by VLOCT

If this is true, I wonder if Kraft was driving essentially with the Parking Brake on. It would explain why the car took off when it was turned off.

But then he'd have a big red BRAKE warning light on in the dash and a multitude of beeps. Some of these have an auto release that releases when the car moves in D.

[NinadJoshi]

Maybe the P is for a placebo effect of power.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend. I was up in the Pocono mountains at a nice place called the Skytop Lodge. Worth a visit, just make sure you book your rooms in the Inn, not in the main lodge.

[VLOCT]

Thanks aah. Just noticed the P symbol in Kraft's pic is different from Frazr's pic, which is the standard Parking Brake symbol. Thanks for pointing it out.

[kraft.wagen]

Originally Posted by VLOCT

If this is true, I wonder if Kraft was driving essentially with the Parking Brake on. It would explain why the car took off when it was turned off.

Hey Kraft, may be you need to do a compare with the Infiniti again, this time with the parking brake off on the Buick.

haha no no it was not the parking brake for sure.

The parking brake is just above the P of the gear shift

[Jomz]

Originally Posted by VLOCT

'Vettes have always been fantastic cars for the track. To me the car epitomizes Caroll Shelby's famous quote "Horse Power sells cars, Torque wins races".

I always disagreed with this.

High torque helps only for accelerating a heavy car. Newbies at track need huge torque because they slow way down for turns and then rely on the torque to speed back up. High torques make a car feel powerful and some guys like that grunty feeling, maybe.

Experienced track day guys keep the engine in the power band.The downshifts at turns are to keep the car in the power band. Occasiona;ly they might have to drop off speed to compensate for cornering traction.

Carrol Shelby might have told that to sell his cars, Maybe. If torque wins races every racer should be using a 6.7l ISX Cummins with ~650 ft lbs torque (which is linear) compared to the Corvette' 450 ft lbs 6.2 l engine. Is 10 year old Diesel tech better than the LT1, I dont know.

Another example of this would be The F1 engines, Their torque values are should be between 300- 500 ft lbs, which is comparable to a normal road car.
Even if a Normal road car is stripped down to the weight of an F1 car ( like the Ariel Atom) the F1 car would easily win because of its High HP.

In normal road cars, I've given the example of S2000 V/s Solstice GXP earlier in some post to show that it is a properly matched gear box and HP which helps to post the faster 0-60 times.

Torque 0-60 times
S2000 163 (ft lbs) 5.4
Solistice GXP 260 (ft lbs) 5.5

Data from http://www.zeroto60times.com/ comparing 2006 model years.

More reading...

http://craig.backfire.ca/pages/autos/horsepower

Anyway in short higher torque helps, but what really matters is how can the driver keep the car powerband in a race. For a linear powerband, he car would need a dropping torque curve, not a flat one.

[VLOCT]

@Jomz,

I would say Shelby knows more about racing than most people on this planet. Shelby beat Ferrari 3 years in a row with the Ford GT 40 at Lemans. He also developed the AC Cobra, an 8 cylinder engine in a miniature body. How many cars can touch it even today? Yah, I would rather listen to him.

So if high torque can move a heavy car faster, doesn't it stand to reason that it will move a lighter car even faster? No one is saying you don't need the horsepower.

Why're you comparing F1 cars to road going cars? F1 engines develop high HP from a small engine by revving up to nearly 20000 rpm and is designed to deliver the peak torque as close to the peak HP as possible. It's this revvy nature combined with the low weight that helps in their fierce acceleration. In fact, there are quite a few super cars that have higher top speeds than F1 cars, just not their fierce acceleration or road holding. Guess what these super cars all have in common, massive engines with huge HP and insane torque on tap right from the get go.

Everything else being equal, weight and gear ratios are the deciding factor, period. If a larger engine (higher torque) can be made lighter and stuffed in a F1 car with matching gear ratios, it will beat the smaller engine every time.

How exactly is a dropping torque curve more advantageous than a sustained torque curve except, requiring a lot of downshifting to stay in the power band? How is that an advantage?

The 0.1 sec difference between GXP and S2000 could be purely a factor of gear ratios and in real world situations is meaningless. Solstice GXP dominated the SCCA in its class from 2006 - 2009, placing 1st, 2nd and 3rd most of these years. You can easily check the records.

Diesel engines? They require steel engine blocks making them heavy by nature and are not high revving by nature. Why're they even in this discussion?

[Jomz]

Originally Posted by VLOCT

@Jomz,

I would say Shelby knows more about racing than most people on this planet. Shelby beat Ferrari 3 years in a row with the Ford GT 40 at Lemans. He also developed the AC Cobra, an 8 cylinder engine in a miniature body. How many cars can touch it even today? Yah, I would rather listen to him.

First of all, that is not even a Carrol Shelby quote. It is something floating around internet and American car fans attributed that to shelby, while all European car fans attributed that to Enzo Ferrari.

Originally Posted by VLOCT

So if high torque can move a heavy car faster, doesn't it stand to reason that it will move a lighter car even faster? No one is saying you don't need the horsepower.

Why're you comparing F1 cars to road going cars? F1 engines develop high HP from a small engine by revving up to nearly 20000 rpm and is designed to deliver the peak torque as close to the peak HP as possible. It's this revvy nature combined with the low weight that helps in their fierce acceleration. In fact, there are quite a few super cars that have higher top speeds than F1 cars, just not their fierce acceleration or road holding. Guess what these super cars all have in common, massive engines with huge HP and insane torque on tap right from the get go.

Faster here means acceleration. There are 2 things in racing, how fast can you get to the top speed , and how long can you maintain high speeds. Torque at wheels can help in accelerating -keep in mind that this is not the torque at engine. Torque at wheels is torque at engine * gear ratio. So you could have 0.1 ft lbs of torque, but using a crazy gear ratio, you can get amazing torque at wheels. The top speed is dictated only by HP at the wheels. There is no way by which you can manipulate HP from the engine. What you have from the engine is what you have at wheels. So that it why I insist HP and gear ratios are the most important thing in a car.

Originally Posted by VLOCT

How exactly is a dropping torque curve more advantageous than a sustained torque curve except, requiring a lot of downshifting to stay in the power band? How is that an advantage?

Good question. I never told a dropping torque curve is advantageous, For a constant power output, you need to drop torque as the speed increases. For some reason I thought you were recommending a linear power band.

Originally Posted by VLOCT

The 0.1 sec difference between GXP and S2000 could be purely a factor of gear ratios and in real world situations is meaningless. Solstice GXP dominated the SCCA in its class from 2006 - 2009, placing 1st, 2nd and 3rd most of these years. You can easily check the records.

I checked the B Stock SCCA Auto X results for 2012, It was a clean sweep by S2000. There was not even a single GXP in the final round.

http://scca.cdn.racersites.com/prod/...%20Results.pdf

Would like to see the results what you told.

Originally Posted by VLOCT

Diesel engines? They require steel engine blocks making them heavy by nature and are not high revving by nature. Why're they even in this discussion?

Have not heard about the Audi R10 haven't we?? Here is the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_R10_TDI

"V10 block with Aluminum" and that is 10 years old technology.

The point here is diesels have crazy high amount of torque. The question is -If torque wins races why are not they used in super cars.


Anyway to each to his own. I've had this discussion with lot of other American car guys, Nobody could come up with explanations of this except quotes or the likewise.

[VLOCT]

Here you go. Please check results for 2006-2009 in the appropriate section for GXP.

http://www.scca.com/clubracing/content.cfm?cid=45949

Not much after 2009, probably due to lack of factory support with the vehicle going out of production.

[ToroRosso]

Have a quick question. My front two tires are almost shot, and am planning to replace the whole set , the rear ones have around 50% tread left (but they are Bridgestone Turanzas) and the front tires are the OEM Michelin Energy MXV4.

I had a look around locally, and got a deal of Installation+ Mounting + Wheel alignment for Michelin Primacy MXV4 - 699$

Is this a good deal or should i be going via tire track?
OEM Size - 205/16/65


EDIT : Most importantly did I chose the right tire? Safety and comfort is of paramount importance. I am based out of Louisville, and there are occassional snow/Freeze during the winter.