When will cars reach their speed limits?

CyberGhost

A decade or two ago, you had Ferrari, Lambo, Bugatti, Porsche if you wanted a fast car, those were the ones you wanted.

Nowadays though, BMW, Audi, almost all the major manufacturers produce some incredibly quick cars.

M and RS cars already have 400 horse powers atleast, and do 0-100 in around 4.5 seconds, all of them can easily do 300+ km/h.

Ferrari and other sports cars do around 3.5-4, and only one Bugatti goes below 3 seconds.

The sedans, and "middle class" sports cars have pretty much caught up with the "real" sports cars in terms of performance.

Nowadays you buy a Ferrari because of it's name, yes the sedan/coupe handling and other characteristics might not be quite on the par but still, if you wanted a real fast car a decade ago, you'd be thinking Ferrari, nowadays you can get almost the same thrill out of an M3.

So where and when are cars going to reach their performance limits? can the next generation M or RS cars break the 4 second barrier? can you imagine a 3.5-3.8 second M3? where will the sports cars going to go then?

Blisterman

Surprisingly, electric engines, tend to have better acceleration for their horsepower than petrol. They already have electric cars that can do 1-60mph in 3 seconds.

So I think, in the future, it'll be electric cars that'll own the acceleration records.

Sqaull20

Its not like they are anywhere near finished.I dont know any 10 sec car that I could buy here tomorrow for example ( fast and the furious make it sound common lol )

4 sec's of course, sure didnt mitsu get an evo with a 2l to do that.

Seth Brundle

There will always be room for improvement in terms of power, handling, efficiency, safety, etc.

Biro

There's still a massive difference between the likes of a Ferrari 430 and an M3. Even if an M3 was as powerful, the difference is massive. Even the likes of a Ferrari 348 is a completely different ball game to an E46 M3, even though the E46 could match it's performance easily.
Make no mistake. A supercar is a supercar. They ARE a league ahead of sports saloons or sports coupes. On paper you may wonder why, but drive one and the difference is obvious.

Victor_M

Biro wrote: »

There's still a massive difference between the likes of a Ferrari 430 and an M3. Even if an M3 was as powerful, the difference is massive. Even the likes of a Ferrari 348 is a completely different ball game to an E46 M3, even though the E46 could match it's performance easily.
Make no mistake. A supercar is a supercar. They ARE a league ahead of sports saloons or sports coupes. On paper you may wonder why, but drive one and the difference is obvious.

I think power to weight is the key factor in that difference.

Supercars tend not to have TV's, 20 speakers and 14 way powered vibrating/Shiatsu/massaging seats that weight 10 stone each.

The only way to get a car faster is cut back on the weight or boost the power, once you boost the power you then need to develop crazy power sapping electronic trickery to prevent you're average clueless driver from killing himself.

I think the global recession will slow down the horsepower war that has been going on in Germany. The latest M3 has 420 Bhp vs the E46's 343, yet it only achieves a .2ish sec improvment to 60 Mph, the law of diminishing returns is in play at this stage.

There will be small increases in power and performance (Minor I think) just so the manufacturers keep each other on their toes, but safety and fuel economy will be the main focus for the next 10 years