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Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

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Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#211
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could get close just with turbocharging which will lower the torque curve such that max torque is somewhere around 1500 to 2000RPM.

Case in point: a homologated (i.e. stock road car) Ford RS200 Evo set a record of 0-60 in 3.07 seconds back in 1986. When tuned for racing (non-road-legal) they would hit 60 in 2.1 sec. That's with a 2.0 litre straight-four engine, in the 1980s. Optimizing for ludicrous acceleration has always been possible. But it is at odds with race track performance, which is what Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini are focused on. At…

Ferrari, McLaren, and Lamborghini are focused on race track performance. Bugatti is optimized for top speed and prestige, which makes them hogs on the corners due to the heavyass train engine that powers it.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ride bikes and from a practical standpoint, along with small size and manoeuvrability, the acceleration (a result of torque) is one of the most useful attributes. Much moreso than top speed, or even speeds significantly in excess of the posted limits. Bikes don't tend to have high torque in general, but their light weight and gearing are designed to maximise what torque they do produce. This means there are quite a…

I assume you're talking about electric bikes or motorcycles? This confused me a lot for a while because I don't usually see those referred to as "bikes". > This means there are quite a few that will do sub 3 seconds to 60, and sub 5 seconds is practically the norm. This was the give-away - pretty sure very few humans can do 60 mph on a bicycle, unless they're drafting.

> I don't usually see those referred to as "bikes".

‘Bike’ is short for bicycle. Motorcycles are also bicycles so they’re also bikes.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ride bikes and from a practical standpoint, along with small size and manoeuvrability, the acceleration (a result of torque) is one of the most useful attributes. Much moreso than top speed, or even speeds significantly in excess of the posted limits. Bikes don't tend to have high torque in general, but their light weight and gearing are designed to maximise what torque they do produce. This means there are quite a…

Hmm, I'm not a biker but I always assumed your legs determine statistics like acceleration on a bike. Learn something new everyday...

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Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point: a homologated (i.e. stock road car) Ford RS200 Evo set a record of 0-60 in 3.07 seconds back in 1986. When tuned for racing (non-road-legal) they would hit 60 in 2.1 sec. That's with a 2.0 litre straight-four engine, in the 1980s. Optimizing for ludicrous acceleration has always been possible. But it is at odds with race track performance, which is what Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini are focused on. At…

> But it is at odds with race track performance, which is what Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini are focused on. I've been wondering about that for some time. What type(s) of competitions do cars like that enter? I'm not exactly knowledgeable in the racing world, so my view is very limited; the few times a see something about racing (excluding F1 and rally which are obviously different beasts), I mainly see BMWs, Porches…

a standard Porsche 911 is not really a racecar. it can be really fun to drive on a track and it will get good lap times, but no one would race this car in a serious competition. this type of car will mainly be driven on the street and in amateur races.

now there are certain racing series like FIA GT3 where manufacturers are required to make a certain number of street-legal vehicles to qualify that car for the competition. a Porsche 911 GT3 RS is an example of this type of car. make a couple small modifications and your street-legal car is a GT3 racecar. homologated cars like this tend to push the limits of what's tolerable to drive on the street; they're not really setup to be comfortable.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#215
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they are really small: yes. But most cars come with gear boxes and horse powers dimensioned so that you are almost always driving at low rpms at normal autobahn speeds (like 120/130). At least my new car with the 140HP engine rolls along at about 2500rpm at Autobahn speed.

I don't know where you live, but 140bhp is a lot for a small-ish car here in UK - it would almost certainly be prohibitively expensive to insure for a young driver for instance. My sister's first car is a VW Polo with a 1.0L 65bhp engine, and that "monster" runs at nearly 4000rpm when doing the legal 70mph(~120km/h) on the motorway. At least it's not a turbo engine so I suppose it's not that bad. It was still a small…

Interesting; things are a bit different in the US. I bought my first car at 18. It was small, a Honda Civic Si, but had 198bhp. That wasn’t a slow car by any means, but wasn’t considered especially fast either.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#216
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot compare just engine torque numbers, without adjusting for gear ratios, wheel size and sprockets. As another commenter said, you rev a Ninja (just like a sports car) and launch it using the clutch.

I believe I did point out that on Ninja's (I have one) you need to build the revs; you can't just dump the clutch and go like you can on a BMW Boxer or a Harley (which I also have). Hence the Ninja is generally slowest away when the lights change (but is by far the quickest bike overall). In fact bicycles are fastest off the line, since they produce max. torque at 0rpm (just keep weight on a pedal, release the brakes…

What they're saying is, you can rev up before dropping the clutch. That way you can get peak torque off the line.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#217
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quad core is entry level now, when did you last buy a laptop :-) Having a laptop with say a 16/32 Ryzen 3 (which believe is due fairly soon) would be pointless

> "Quad core is entry level now, when did you last buy a laptop :-)" It may be entry level, but it's also overkill for what the vast majority of people need their laptop for. But it does help drive demand for advanced in computing power, which helps drive prices down for the computing power engineers need.

Not sure Engineers are concerned with laptop power that's just a client.

There is no such thing as too much IPC, Primary memory, and Backing store - this has been true since WW2 when Colossus was state of the art.

There Is such a thing as to little budget :-(

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#218

It's futile to actually have road-legal cars that go this fast because you can't do very much useful with the speed. This is much too fast for the human operator (driver) to safely react to things outside the cockpit, which is why for example Britain owns trains capable of 140mph in service but deliberately limits them to 125mph. Tests suggested drivers couldn't be relied on to reliably observe and react to a linesid…

I mean they obviously aren't doing this with the intention of having people actually take advantage of this speed on the road. The whole point is to build a vehicle which can go these kinds of speeds with the added constraint that you must be able to drive it on the road. Not everything people do or create has to be for purely practical purposes, that would be boring.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all modern cars will go faster than is useful and/or safe. Only a small set of public roads allow cars to go their top speed. I have a 1991 Corvette that will go 153 mph, and I've only done it twice. It scares the crap out of me. Top speed is a cool thing to boast about, but most people won't ever see it, and a few stupid people will hurt themselves with it. That's okay on the balance, because millionaire…

a few stupid people will hurt themselves with it. That's okay on the balance, because millionaires are spending their money and supporting the economy. I fail to see how that is ok.

As a society we generally seem to be OK with allowing a few people to be hurt or killed in exchange for a type of entertainment. For example if you are a race car driver, you are certainly increasing your risk of dying, and increasing the risk of killing spectators or other people on the racetrack, but we accept that because it is entertaining. Now I think it is a problem if people are driving a Bugatti recklessly on the roads and endangering others who are just driving around, but I think you are just as dangerous in one of the many cars which can go almost 200 mph as you are in a car that can go 300mph, since it is pretty difficult to approach 200mph on a public road.

Re: Bugatti has broken the 300mph barrier

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it is at odds with race track performance, which is what Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini are focused on. I've been wondering about that for some time. What type(s) of competitions do cars like that enter? I'm not exactly knowledgeable in the racing world, so my view is very limited; the few times a see something about racing (excluding F1 and rally which are obviously different beasts), I mainly see BMWs, Porches…

a standard Porsche 911 is not really a racecar. it can be really fun to drive on a track and it will get good lap times, but no one would race this car in a serious competition. this type of car will mainly be driven on the street and in amateur races. now there are certain racing series like FIA GT3 where manufacturers are required to make a certain number of street-legal vehicles to qualify that car for the competi…

I get that the Porches in races are not exactly like the Porches on the street.

But how does that work for Bugati, Ferrari, Lamborghini (and McLaren, Pagani, Koenigsegg)? Are the street cars (more or less) the same as the ones in races? Do they even race?

And in conclusion, how accurate is the statement that (production models of) Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini are focused on race track performance?

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