Roughly 28 seconds.

An old addage...

You buy horsepower, you drive torque!

Give me a diesel anyday! The 0-60 is over in seconds, whereas I spend hours behind the wheel!

Don't forget a lot of the more modern petrols like say the 2.0 in the Octy Mk2 vRS, have plenty of usable torque these days

Don't forget a lot of the more modern petrols like say the 2.0 in the Octy Mk2 vRS, have plenty of usable torque these days

Only cos it's turbocharged and FSI direct injection.

Even then I'd bet it has less torque than the TDI. I'd be interested to see the stats.

Lose the turbo and it's once again gutless.

Lose the turbo and it's once again gutless.

But surely the same could be said of the TDI?

Chris

No offense meant but have you ever tried a non-turboed diesel

I have a derv myself and I love it too, but I've driven non-turbo diesels and they're slow as hell too.

Most petrols without a turbo pull reasonably from 2.5, perhaps 3k rpm and higher, which on the motorway you'd be doing mostly.

Don't get me wrong, I love my turbodiesel, but petrols have come a long way, and so have diesels, since it was so extremely black&white.

Some diesels rev like older petrols used to, up to 6k rpm. I wouldn't want to do that, mind

Yes, owned one and hated it. Owned loads of N/A petrols too and they were all slow in everyday driving.

Yes some of them revved well but they all lack so much torque. You need a turbo'd one to make them go properly without having to hit 80,000,000,000 rpm in order to have some kind of thrust.

My last car had more horsepower than the vRS and on the m'way was at 3500rpm at about 70mph. Even then it had very little go.....you had to be doing at least 90 in order to be in the right rev band for any decent kind of push and even then it wasn't that fantastic.....yeah you would move forwards but you'd be deaf too.

On the m'way the TD is king. Torque is what gets you moving from one speed to a higher one. BHP is too dependant on RPM to have any validity these days.

Sorry, just to iterate, any manufacturer worth their salt are now turbocharging their petrols on their sporty models as it would appear the days of the N/A petrol are dead. Even BMW are doing it with the 335i and they were dead against forced induction.

Having mega high rpm and no torque is wearing thin in the minds of most performance orientated drivers these days.

The Focus ST, the LCR, The Astra VXR, Scoobies, Evo's, Mini CooperS's, Peugeot 207 GT/GTi, Golf GTi (and all other cars using the same engine).....the list goes on.

Manufacturers have realised that in order to get decent power you need forced induction. Either that or huge capacity which cannot be done in a supermini.

Which N/A diesel revs to 6k? I've never seen one. I'm not saying they don't exist either.....just never heard of one.

Diesels cannot rev high due to the inertia of all the heavy internals. Compression based ignition takes its toll on all the moving parts therefore they must be beefed up and are therefore heavier. An N/A diesel cannot rev high like a petrol and also does not have the benefit of forced induction and will thus have little power.

You have 4 options the way I see it:

1. Buy an N/A diesel....have no power and no revs but supaduper mpg.

2. Buy a turbocharged diesel and have bags of torque, for real world usable power with a slight reduction in mpg over the N/A.

3. Buy an N/A petrol....have little bottom end power with all the thrust coming in at the higher end of the rev range. MPG is respectable if driven sensibly but in order to obtain the power it must be revved and thus MPG suffers badly.

4. Buy a turbo/ supercharged petrol and have a broad spread of decent torque across the rev range but with reduced mpg compared to the N/A if the power is fully explored.

Petrols are a long way behind diesels now in terms of technology. They're only just starting to use direct injection technology whereas diesels have had this for years. Also, the fuel pressures are still relatively low compared, reducing fuel atomisation which in turn reduces power and mpg.

Mind you...it's all a waste of time anyway as we'll all be running on hydrogen/ fuel cell cars in 50 years as all the dino juice will run out. Great.

The 535d revs to just under 6k (red line is on 6k).

TD's have come a very long way recently but this is more due to the fact they they were underdeveloped incomparison to Petrols and during the redevelopment of Diesels the technology stagnated.

Whats becoming more & more obvious these days is that the 0-60 is getting to a point where all supercars do it in more or less identical times. This problems happend a number of years ago with Bikes so the BHP/tonne began to be the real world differentiator.

Good thing about Diesel is a good compromise between pace & frugality

Bad thing is the nitrogen dioxide emmissions higher noise at idle and the bizarre scenario that Hybrids are being developed for petrols.... seems odd to me surely if you make a petrol a hybrid only to achieve similar to Diesel economy its pretty pointless (ignoring the fact that Petrol is some 5% cheaper to buy) why dont they make a hybrid diesel your starting with an economical car so the final result will be much more impressive.

They rant about Hybrid petrols have lower emissions don't they, but that's only cos the petrol engine in them is tiny at like 1.5 litres.

People who have reviewed hybrids have said that if you drive them the same as a normal car, especially on an open road where the petrol part is needed to provide power, then the mpg is the same as if not worse than the normal petrol and diesel counterparts.

Top Gear tested it I think.

It was a Diahatsu Charade 1.0 vs a Toyota Prius vs a Lupo 1.4TDi.

The TDI was the fastest, most fun and the best on fuel.

The Charade was fairly sluggish on the open road although not bad round town and the 2nd best on fuel.

The Prius was the worst on fuel and not the most pleasant to drive, although not bad.

Makes you wonder why they bother with Hybrids.....seems kind of pointless. Get a TDi!

My father in law has a Prius and my fuel economy was significantly better when pootling about in an area that was not 100% flat.

The Prius is not too bad a car I would agree, and it is remarkably 'fast'.

Not sure if a derv hybrid would work so well under conditions where the car is used for short journeys, I would imagine the soot filter thing would not last too well, considering the problems with the Superb that were posted here.

That said it might be a combination that could work well for say myself, i.e. mostly motorway driving, could use electric drive for going to the shops etc and derv for the longer journeys

FWIW, a quote from my Octavia's Technical Data booklet:

The performance figures were measured without the vehicle being fitted with any equipment such as air conditioning, mud flaps, which affect the performance.

I wonder how far they take that, Denis! Surely the performance should be measured with a standard out-of-the-factory car otherwise the figures are meaningless?!

Chris

They rant about Hybrid petrols have lower emissions don't they, but that's only cos the petrol engine in them is tiny at like 1.5 litres.

People who have reviewed hybrids have said that if you drive them the same as a normal car, especially on an open road where the petrol part is needed to provide power, then the mpg is the same as if not worse than the normal petrol and diesel counterparts.

Top Gear tested it I think.

It was a Diahatsu Charade 1.0 vs a Toyota Prius vs a Lupo 1.4TDi.

The TDI was the fastest, most fun and the best on fuel.

The Charade was fairly sluggish on the open road although not bad round town and the 2nd best on fuel.

The Prius was the worst on fuel and not the most pleasant to drive, although not bad.

Makes you wonder why they bother with Hybrids.....seems kind of pointless. Get a TDi!

5 days a week I spend up to 2 hours a day crawling along in 1st/2nd and 3rd only when its clear do 4th upwards get used. In a Prius it would be in any traffic jam be using no fuel and given you drive it correctly in those situations the engine will stay switched off.

This morning it took me 45mins to travel barely 3 miles the engine was running constantly probably cost me

So the electric engine can run without using any fuel? How does it charge itself?

Do you have to plug them in or does the petrol engine need to come on to charge it up?

The Top Gear test was over a variety of driving situations and there is no 'one size fits all' solution. Yes, in town the prius is better due to being electric, but on the open road a diesel is better and vice versa.

All in all they preffered the TDI due to it being nicer to drive and better on fuel overall, not just in town.

By the way, I'm not getting at you, I'm just curious.

If I spent all my time in town below 40mph then a hybrid would be ideal.

But I commute 60 miles a day and thus a diesel is required.

I did the sums on CO2 savings last night. A Prius is supposed to emit 1 tonne less CO2 per year than a similarly-sized diesel. I worked out that by using 20% carbon-neutral biodiesel I would save... a tonne of CO2 a year. So do we really need hybrids which use non-sustainable fuels?

Will the furby actually run on biodiesel? I remember reading so many comments about it not being filtered enough and killing the delicate injectors.

The trouble with it I think is that there's not enough growing room on the planet for biodiesel. It's a good supplement though.....mix it with dino to make ye olde dino last a bit longer.

I thought this thread was about the Fabias 0 - 60 time ? :confused:

Now were on the subject of Japanese Bio fuel cars ?

Anyway, back on track ...... The Moon is a long , long way from the Earth, sorry what was the question ?

The trouble with it I think is that there's not enough growing room on the planet for biodiesel. It's a good supplement though.....mix it with dino to make ye olde dino last a bit longer.

I think the future is actually in efficient petrol cars which can be ran on alcohol based fuels derived from sources such as sugarbeet (like they do in Brazil). This is because it's one of the few carbon neutral solutions to the problem.

The other solution is linked the the chip fat as a fuel idea, which could also be more or less carbon neutral. Either way, the aim shouldn't be to preserve our fossil fuels (which incidentally are far more valuable in their use for the plastics industry etc. where the number of naturally sourced alternatives are minimal), but to try and reduce our global emmissions from car vehicles.

I'll probably get slated for making eco-friendly comments on a car forum now.

Will the furby actually run on biodiesel?

If it won't, don't tell mine - it's been running perfectly on a biodiesel blend for over 50,000 miles.

[VAG say ASZ and ATD engines built up to June 2006 will run on biodiesel that meets EN14214 - hence filtered and dried - in any proportion of blend with petrodiesel].

I think the future is actually in efficient petrol cars which can be ran on alcohol based fuels derived from sources such as sugarbeet (like they do in Brazil). This is because it's one of the few carbon neutral solutions to the problem.

I'm being a bit pedantic (apologies) but calling any biofuel "carbon neutral" is often avoiding the full picture. As I understand it a great deal of South American rainforest was clearcut to make room to grow the crops used to produce the fuel alcohol, and a similar thing has happened for biodiesel.

That loss of rainforest and replacement with fuel crops makes the overall shift far from carbon neutral, though the actual production and use of the crops isn't far off.

Can't they make biodiesel from algae too? That would be good as the earth has more oceanic coverage than land!

Relating this back to the 0-60 topic, does running on biodiesel affect performance at all?

a littlecomparison based on track testing here be a scan

http://www.technomagewebs.com/images/vrsreview.jpg

right click and nick if ya want

Q

Hmmm - not sure which vRS they drove, but climate control, stability control and electric rear windows all as standard?! Ok, well climate .... just!

Also quite shocked at the Fiesta ST's forecast resale value! :eek:

Chris