The Road & Track skid pad competition actually just happened. Usually get
a lot of SCCA Solo Autocross cars that pull around 1.5 or 1.6 g.
As far as press cars go, you got it. Some of my family is in the
automotive press and we get press cars all the time. It's not a practice
we choose to partake in, but the press typically beats the hell out of
cars. It's not too uncommon for a magazine to wrap a brand new car around
the tree and the car manufacturer having to apologize to the tester
because their car didn't meet their handling expectations & other
associated crap. I drove a Ferrari 456 GTA press car this summer. It had
about 6K mi. on it, and the ash trays didn't close, half of the seat
adjusters didn't work, the power window switches on the driver armrest
kept falling out, it had lots of rattles, etc. I understand the 456 isn't
the best built car, but most of that is attributable to the press abuse.
While we were waiting for the technicians to fix the locks and
driver-side power window mechanism which the previous press people had
destroyed, I spoke to someone about one of the other 456 press cars
sitting there. It's rear tires looked like cottage cheese. Someone must
have been doing donuts for an hour. The electrics were also mangled. So,
yes. Press cars usually are horribly abused. Word of advice: NEVER buy a
press car, no matter how cheap they offer it for :)
Age
On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, Jay Laifman wrote:
>
>
>
>
> All that being said about skid pads, I saw a really neat R&T article a
> number of months back about skid pad competition. If I recall correctly,
> the winners were these purpose-built cars that had large vacuums attached
> to the car and sucking down on the ground. I forget what kind of figures
> these cars were getting. Somehow I seem to remember that 1 g was, or used
> to be, a pretty magical figure. That new Corvette must really be
> something.
>
> That being said about R&T, I've also noted in another e-mail group a
> discussion about how car magazines really beat the hell out of their test
> cars. Apparently in the acceleration tests, they rev the rpm way up to
> practically redline and then just dump the clutch. EEouch! The car
> companies know that their clutches will be fried when they get the car
> back. But, have no alternative if they want the publicity. I was recently
> reading a R&T article in which the author did in fact mention that he
> brought the rpm to something like 4000 and let the clutch go. Have I been
> taking off from a stop wrong all this time? :^)
>
>
>
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