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Automotive News & Views What is "wrong" with these new subcompacts?
8699 messages, Last post on Dec 08, 2009 at 6:26 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: logic1 (Jan 18, 2006 6:18 am)
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Jan 18, 2006 8:12 am) I wish that were the case here! I remember in the 1980 census the population of my small town was around 2,000 people. Washington DC, whose border is around 10-12 miles away, was around 650-700K people. I think nowadays DC's population is around 500K. As for my small town? Try 12,000 people. Now sure, 12,000 is still a drop in the bucket, but when you take the same amount of land and increase the population of it 6 times, you definitely feel the crowding. |
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Replying to: nippononly (Jan 18, 2006 7:21 am) Sorry. For some reason I thought you had complained about the Solstice trunk vis-a-vis the new Miata. Frankly, I think limited storage space in a car is liberating. I should add that economical was one thing the Colorado was NOT, pulling around 18 mpg over two tankfuls of gas. But then it was loaded half the time. I averaged around 20 mpgs in the one I rented. But all I had in the back was some light but bulky furniture. Given the weight and the truck geometry, I don't think you can expect all that much more without a hybrid or diesel. Now that has no bearing on how competitive the truck's optional engine is, and in this case, I have no personal seat experience in one with the I-5. All the competition are V-6s, most are more powerful aren't they? I guess the presumption is that if you are paying for the optional engine, then you really need the power for towing or heavy loads, whatever. Most likely the I-5 is enough to meet the need for most buyers I imagine the power is fine. My issue with the I5 is, as with all 5 cylinders - rough handling. |
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Replying to: andre1969 (Jan 18, 2006 8:21 am) On the one hand, you have cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Boston that are growing more dense. On the other hand, you have urban areas like Washington, St. Louis, Detroit where the core city is being replaced by rings of development. LA is unique. Both the central city and the surrounding area are growing. Many do not know this, but the greater LA area is actually more densely populated than greater New York. No, that does not mean you can find Manhattan density anywhere in LA. Rather the suburbs of LA are much more densely populated than New York suburbs. Meaning of course LA could probably support more mass transit and more little cars than it does at present.
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of 5 small/midsize pickups in 2005. Here are the acceleration highlights... Tacoma, 4.0 V-6, 245 hp/282 ft-lb of torque: 0-60 in 7.8 seconds Frontier, 4.0 V-6, 265 hp/284 ft-lb: 0-60 in 8.4 seconds Ranger: 4.0 V-6, 207 hp/238 ft-lb: 0-60 in 9.2 seconds Dakota: 4.7 V-8, 230 hp/290 ft-lb: 0-60 in 9.6 seconds Colorado: 3.5 I-5, 220 hp/225 ft-lb: 0-60 in 9.9 seconds. Here's all the stats, if anyone's interested. While the Colorado was the slowest in the test, all things considered it didn't do too bad. For instance, it wasn't too much worse than the Ranger and Dakota. In real world driving you probably wouldn't even notice, unless you decided to drag race with one! Also, the Colorado seemed to do a bit better in the quarter mile run. Time, wise, it barely beat out the Dakota, but as for MPH, it was nipping at the heels of the second-place Frontier, which would seem to indicate that what it lacked in lower-end grunt, it was starting to catch up in the higher revs. Not bad at all, when you figure the deck is stacked against it. It still has the least torque of all these trucks, and is stuck with a 4-speed tranny, versus 5-speeds in the others (I'm impressed that Ford put a 5-speed in the Ranger) And on the plus side, the Colorado is fairly light...only the Ranger was lighter. Oh, and Edmund's did observe some pretty poor fuel economy...it guzzled the worst in their testing.
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Replying to: andre1969 (Jan 18, 2006 9:07 am) These are meant to be more economical trucks. Why not test the base 4s with the manual? Testing trucks for acceleration strikes me as a mite odd as well. Sports cars accelerate. Trucks carry loads. |
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back in the early 90s, I was working delivery - videos, not pizzas - and was using a roommate's Tercel to do it. That little car was pulling high 30s mpg doing that work, and I think it was rated around 35/42, or something like that? Then the roommate moved, and I bought a recent vintage used Toyota pick-up (it wasn't called the Tacoma yet), and it got me around 24 mpg, rated the same as today's truck - 20/27 with the stick. The talk of acceleration and fuel economy in trucks got me thinking back to those days. I don't know why you would ever want to race a RWD pick-up - the traction is awful with an empty bed and the handling is dicey too - so unless you were going to tow regularly or carry heavy gear for work or something, I don't know why you would ever get the optional engine. And as far as fuel economy, we can fast-forward almost 15 years here, and find that the FE for both the Yaris and the Tacoma (4-cyl, stick) is basically unchanged. Now there's progress for you! :-/
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Replying to: nippononly (Jan 18, 2006 10:33 am) Exactly. Seems to me people in the market for a smaller pick up will never need the extra h.p. And as far as fuel economy, we can fast-forward almost 15 years here, and find that the FE for both the Yaris and the Tacoma (4-cyl, stick) is basically unchanged. Now there's progress for you! Two things probably are behind this> 1) the mad race for more h.p., even in the economy segment; and, 2) the ever increasing drain on the engine to power one thing or another in the car. I heard a GM engineer give an interview on the radio the other day. He said in the coming years, technology advancements will probably wring another 20% or efficiency out of ICE. He sees the possibility for better seals, fewer and more smoothly moving parts, computers allowing the engines to shut down and othewise working optimally at all time. He also says things such as moving over to small electric engines for steering (not all that popular currently) and a/c, etc., as opposed to power take off will help as well. After that, he says further savings are going to have to come from weight reductions, better aerodynamics, and, ideally, moving to fuel cells, or straight hydrogen fuel or some such jump. |
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to progress though. Back in 1992 I had a '91 Civic rental car. It was a 4-door, 4-speed automatic, and I think it had 100 hp from its 1.6/1.7 I-4. I averaged 29 mpg on that trip, mostly highway driving, never once used the a/c. You had to really fake out its transmission to get much over 75-80 mph (like manually downshifting when a slight downhill slope came up, and flooring it till you got to around 85, and then you were fine unless a steep enough upgrade came up) Well, nowadays my Intrepid would probably get around 26-27 mpg in similar driving, even with the a/c on, yet would have no trouble with those higher speeds. And something like an Impala with the 3.4 (or the newer 3.5) would probably get even better economy in that type of driving. But then again, a 1991 Civic with the automatic and larger engine really isn't designed for maximum economy, either, so maybe comparing a stripper '91 Civic to a newer car, it would've looked better? But when I see modern full-sized cars getting the same kind of economy as that little Civic I had, I think of just how far we've come.
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| I guess if it was your only vehicle, and had to do double duty as both a workhorse and your daily transportation, there would be some need for decent acceleration. If you're just using it to haul junk around and tow, then towing/cargo capacity is more of a concern. | |
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