Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Weight of Modern Sports Cars

[Michael James (cavallino_rapante]

I'm sorry, I don't understand the 'problem' here - our Nation's highways are 
getting more-and-more crowded, but highway fatalities are decreasing since the 
average car is now the safest in automotive history.  
 
If we want to go back to the time when cars were smaller/lighter/faster, we 
need to remove roughly HALF of the traffic on our highways first, including 
cutting back on the number of tractor trailers, Elderly/Youth drivers, 
irresponsible drivers, and completely re-design SOCIETY to facilitate cheap, 
convenient mass-transit, safer and more-affordable inner-city housing, 
re-zoning much of society for the co-habitation of commercial AND residential 
areas (so people could actually walk to the grocery store/mall/restaurants/post 
office, etc. without having to drive a car to these locations), stamping out 
urban sprawl, forcing development UPward instead of OUTward, etc.  None of this 
is going to happen - it would be Un-American.  Very European, but 
Un-American....
 
M

--- On Sun, 11/30/08, Mike Fleischer <themightytoe [at] gmail.com> wrote:

From: Mike Fleischer <themightytoe [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Ferrari] Weight of Modern Sports Cars
To: "Michael" <Cavallino_Rapante [at] yahoo.com>
Cc: "The FerrariList" <ferrari [at] ferrarilist.com>
Date: Sunday, November 30, 2008, 3:11 PM

What cars are we talking about here?  Personally if I am in a car that 
might kill me, I hope it has 5 point harnesses and a roll cage at a 
minimum...  It makes absolutely no sense to me to want to court extra 
danger by leaving out modern safety in a car. 

To Rick's points:

1.  We are not safety crazy, quite the opposite, when given sensible 
safety gear to use like a seat belt most folks opt to not wear it... 
(this is not just in the USA) hence seat belt laws, and air bags (which 
were a direct result of folks not wearing seat belts!).  The cost of 
cleanup and caretaking of family members outweighs the cost of letting a 
fool kill him/herself.

2.  I would say that any car is inherently dangerous, in as much as any 
gun is inherently dangerous...  Its all in how its used.  You can get 
killed in a golf cart just as easily as a car. 

3.  LOL  If we were responsible, but as an aggregate we are not...  Even 
at the highest levels education or affluence in our society we are 
demonstrably irresponsible at times.  And having a goverment run by 
lawyers is very much the fox guarding the henhouse.  The only safe bet 
is to be a fox, or a very skinny hen.

My take:

American cars have always been fat pigs with very few exceptions, 
European cars have been historically lighter since they could not afford 
all the steel :)  Japanese/Korean cars, who cares...  No soul in any of 
them.

That said I think in modern cars some of the fat comes from all the 
safety gear...  Take My 08 VW GTI for example:  Curb weight is about 
3200 lbs, an old 1976 GTI has a curb weight right around 2000 lbs.

It has:  Crush zones all over the chassis, That probably adds 250 lbs  
to the frame since the entire thing needs to be thicker to maintain the 
same rigidity
10 air bags, probably 15 lbs each including wiring and electronic 
modules to trigger them (150 lbs)
Safety glass (~50lbs)
Modern brakes with ABS and Traction control (~40 lbs heavier than an 
older drum setup)
3 point seat belts (5 of them) ~20 lbs
Modern Bumpers (I think these weigh in about the same, but are 20X more 
effective)
So that accounts for 510 lbs of the extra 1200...

Now what really adds to the fat are the amenities:
4 power windows
Power wiper in the rear
MP3 player in the dash
Bigger motor and trans
More interior trim ( A lot more)
The car is physically much bigger
The car has about 3X the number of parts as its earlier counterpart
The car outperforms the older model in every way

But now if I compare My 2005 Corvette (curb weight of 3250 lbs) to a 
1973 Corvette (Curb weight of 3416)  I have to ask what the heck went 
missing in my newer car?  It too outperforms the 76 model in every respect.
 

rolindsay [at] yahoo.com wrote:
> 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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