Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Weight of Modern Sports Cars

[rolindsay (rolindsay]

I've stayed out of this thread until now because I have strong feelings about 
this topic, and here they are;

+ We are safety crazy and that stems from the refusal to take responsibility 
for our own actions.  We want the security of public transportation without 
actually having to use public transportation. 

+ Any car that you either have to know ANYTHING about or that you can't drive 
while talking on the phone, sipping latte and sending txt messages, is called 
"dangerous".

+ Besides, if we were responsible for our own actions OR could actually pay 
enough attention to the job at hand, we wouldn't get to sue everyone we didn't 
like!

This all goes back to a quote I heard more than a decade ago, "In a modern car 
you can safely fly into a turn at 90mph, sipping a latte while talking on the 
phone and digging around in the glove box for a pen. Sit down in a 308GTB and 
it says to you, 'I'm going to kill you!  Now try to stop me.'"
 Keeping it from doing so is called "driving".  Anything less is just "riding." 

Two cents please. PayPal accepted. 

Rick 
A couple of Ferraris
A couple of Mercedes
A BMW and a Land Rover

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From: "Fellippe Galletta" <fellippe.galletta [at] gmail.com>

Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:06:56 
To: rolindsay<rolindsay [at] yahoo.com>
Cc: The FerrariList<ferrari [at] ferrarilist.com>
Subject: Re: [Ferrari] Weight of Modern Sports Cars


On 11/30/08, Charles Perry <charles [at] carolina-sound.com> wrote:
> I was just reading Car and Driver's article on the new Nissan 370Z. They
> made the car considerably shorter and added all sorts of lightweight
> materials, and the result was a car nearly identical in weight to the
> outgoing 350Z.
>
> "Nissan's proud of holding the line, claiming that revised crash standards
> alone piled on about 100 pounds."
>
> That's amazing when you think about the fact that it's 100 pounds over all
> the crash standards that were already there - side impact beams, 5 mph
> bumpers, airbags in every direction, required tire pressure sensors,
> European pedestrian impact standards, etc.
>
> It would be an interesting design exercise to get someone like Gordon Murray
> to figure out what the lightest a car of certain dimensions could possibly
> be if you did nothing but get a driveable chassis with all the required
> safety equipment (no leather, radio, a/c, nav, power seats, power windows,
> etc). It would be an interesting figure to show Congress when they're
> playing with CAFÉ and other goofy legislation to show them just how much
> weight they and other regulatory agencies have added to the car and what
> impact that has on fuel consumption and emissions.
>
> -- charles

Totally agree, Charles.

It really is all the structural safety member and safety equipment
that has made low weights extremely challenging.

Just think, the Porsche Carrera GT and the Ferrari Enzo, two cars with
unlimited design and materials budgets and both are still a bit north
of 3000 lbs.

Granted these cars are dimensionally larger than they probably could
be, but I highly doubt even a Gordon Murray could produce a McLaren F1
today sub 3k weight.

FG
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