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Original Message
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| Magazine Road Tests |
| By Travis Miller - 10/11/2001 9:59:59 PM; IP 152.163.195.203 |
Since I have a pretty extensive collection of old car magazines, I can tell you that Ford did not know how to play the road test game. GM and Chrysler would send cars that had gearing for acceleration. Ford evidently was more interested in gas mileage. Either that or Ford did not realize that readers of performance magazines cared about how quick a car was in the 1/4 mile.
Another thing that made a difference in acceleration times between magazines was the way the cars were tested. Not all drag tests were done on a dragstrip with a set of clocks. Some magazines used a 5th wheel attached to the test vehicle to record ETs and MPH. Allow me to explain how this works.
On a dragstrip a car is staged in the lights at the starting line with the leading edge of the front tire. The clocks actually begin timing after the car has started moving as the rear edge of the tire clears the starting line light beam. This in essence has given the car a running start on the clocks. But that is the standard that dragstrips have always used for recording ETs. With the 5th wheel set up, the onboard timers start recording the ET as soon as the car moves from a dead stop. The timer stops when the 5th wheel has rotated exactly 1/4 mile. That makes the ET read slower with the 5th wheel system than the clocks at a dragstrip. As far as the MPH goes, both the dragstrip clock and the 5th wheel system should read the same.
This coupled with better test drivers from some magazines may explain the different ETs in road tests. |
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