Like why does it take mine like 15 seconds to get up to 60mph and other cars they do it in 5 or 8 seconds? They’re faster away from the traffic lights too.
Their engines work fundamentally the same like the same combustion process so what makes slow cars and what makes faster ones?
In: Engineering
A car is a collection of thousands of choices to come to what you think the consumer wants most, a few of those are going to impact direct performance.
At it’s base, you want a car that can get to the acceptable safe speed to go on all roads, so it needs to be able to hit highway speeds without stressing the engine too much. You can do this with a big complicated gearbox that has a huge amount of gears (like a truck), or a smaller lighter one that might only have as low as 4 gears + R, but you’ll need a better engine to compensate.
Then you want that engine (plus the earlier gears), to be able to safely accelerate enough to not hold you and others up too much. This can be achieved by a shorter ratio and more shifting early, or a more powerful engine.
Then you also have to consider weight of the componenets, which is going to impact the previous two as well. You can make a full cast iron setup with high tolerances (more margin for error), which will make everything cheaper (for you), but could mean things are worse in other factors. Alternatively you can make things out of titanium and magnesium, which are extremely light, but very difficult to work with and can be dangerous if not considered properly. The middleground being Aluminum, which is light, cheap, and easy to work with, but not the strongest, so you have to work with tolerances you wouldn’t have to with iron or steel.
In addition to just what goes to the wheels, you also have to consider part of the engine’s power is either lost to be more fuel efficient, or going towards internal features and modcons like AC and more electrical gizmos. These also add weight, and are one of the biggest things that have meant modern cars need more horse power than older cars. Everything is (relatively) sound proof, AC’d, heated, fully electric (windows, seats etc.), a full entertainment system, power steering, fancier gearboxes, fancier suspension, more storage space, the list goes on.
Now to the real meat of it, as all of this increases, you need exponentially more power to achieve the same speed. This also has to fit within the safety and emission standards of the modern world. Taking this into account, some car makers choose to aim at the lower end of the price demographic, and make compromises they think are worth it, without skimping in others that they think will make consumers choose theirs over their competitors. These days it’s most common to provide the cabin modernities as standard or almost standard (leather seats and/or trim upgrade). Instead choosing to release multiple skews of the mechanicals instead, so you can get the same car with a 1L, 1.6L, 2L, 1.8L Turbo, 5 speed, 6 speed, auto, etc. as those can be mixed and matched between cars more easily.
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