Why is the benchmark the 0-60mph time? Could'nt it be the 0-100mph or 0-56.5mph? It has always bothered me.

 

Who knows, I would imagine some car mag started using it many years ago simply because it was close to highway speed limits and it just stuck. It's not a bad measure for how a car performs, but the people that think it's the end all be all of a car's acceleration really bug me.

 

60 mph is 1 mile/minute.

Yeah 0-100 is more relavant now a days.

 

In europe it was always 0-100 kph as the benchmark this equals 62 mph.

 

Totally agree - there is life after 60mph - I've seen it.

 

yes, i believe it's the pretention that all cars, even sports cars designed to go far far faster, will only be used legally on roads, so that would be the speed limit on most freeways and thus the testing time everyone's concerned with.

 

As Baller may or may not have been suggesting, it is because in Europe 0-100 kph is 0-62 mph. It started in Europe, and over here was converted to 0-60.

 

I am very fond of measuring 0-25 because that is what is relevant on my bicycle.

 

It started in North America - Road & Track was the first magazine to do independent instrumented testing, around 1947. Back then there were plenty of cars that struggled to go much over 70 mph - a VW Beetle's top end was around 70! Past 60, acceleration tapered off significantly for most cars, so it was arbitrarily decided to use 0-60 as a measure of acceleration.

Regards,
Gordon

 

Fasinating...Is there is there anything that you don't know Gordon? lol

 

Very intresting gord. I need to send a letter to road & track asking if they can update the measure to 0-100, that would be cool

 

Anyone know the origin of the 1/4 mile - it seems to me that even today highways are sometimes marked in quarter miles so air spotters can calculate a car's speed. In Days goneby police in cars could use such marking to estimate car speed - Radar was much later.

John

PS I'm old enough that I can remember timing the marked mile to check the speedometer on my Dad's old Chevy.

 

How do you know that? So it's just a coincidence that in Europe 62 is 100?

Regards,
Noah

 

In Europe, where MANY cars cannot struggle to 100mph, the criterion for a true sports car was always '0-100-0', bringing good brakes into the equation.....

I remember 'anything under 30 seconds' was considered high performance.
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doc

 

Not a coincidence - 0-100 km/h was the closest round number to the American's 0-60, so it became the test standard for metric countries.

Regards,
Gordon

 

0-100 kph was started by Mercedes-benz of Germany in 1929 !!!

 

Dude Mercedes was around in 1229?? That's amazing. I thought cars weren't invented until the early 20th century.

 

edit....edit.....Scotch is kicking in....

 

....I was gonna fight a ticket for following too close of all things! I think he just wan't to see my car since he and the car ahead of me were speeding away from me at ~70 mph; cop got off freeway - got back on and then pulled me over for following too close.
....short of story: he never showed up to court - default win......but......I obcessed over it the night before and used video tape and my digital camera to film how close people drive here on the central coast.

Your mention of using the quartter mile to mease speed versis distance was part of my case. I called CalTrans and asked what the mearsurement was from beginning of one hwy line to the beginning of the next: 14.4 meters.

Using this to calculate distance divided by time, I calculated that in the video I shot, the cars were traveling ~73.2 mph.

The DMV handbook says that you should use the "three second rule"; when a car ahead of you passes a marker, counting "one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three", you should pass the same mark at whatever speed you are going.

At 73 mph. the distance should end up to be about 6.8 line markings per distance between cars to be safe. Look in this attached photoshop pic (par of the video, but shot at the same time with a digital camera for better resolution) of how close the cars are traveling. In LA it is even worse....following too close; I was no where near as close as these drivers are. Dooo'h!!!

 

pic 2