What is your dream car?

[Michael-5]

Alby_da_Wolf said:

Michael-5 said:

Is driving position more important then build quality? Where does power go in?

Without power a car with a good engine position and RWD platform, or an engine munted close to the axel mean nothing. I hate driving old low end BMW's for this reason. They are fun car to own if you are low on cash, but I'd rather have a more powerful FWD Japanese car for the price.

Build quality of the mechnics I agree is the most important. This is something american engineers don't understand. I want a car I know I can push and has an engine and chasis that can take what I trow at it. Corvettes use leaf spring suspensions, the same as trucks, and most North American muscle/sports cars are based off truck platforms. They drive like shit at low speed, and the fall apart fast (not just rust, but suspensions loose stiffness, engines leak and loose pressure).

This is why I like German and Japanese cars.

Final Note: I also think about electric cars a lot, and I find it a shame that GM makes the only pure electric, gas range extension car. I agree they should use a more efficient deisel engine, it makes no sense how a plug in prius is still able to get 70mpg after it's 20km electric range, but a Volt can only get 35mpg after 60km on pure electric.

I read a lot about electric cars, but do you know any non volt electric w/ gas extension cars? Gotta reccomend one to the old man, and right now it looks like he is waiting for a plug in version of the Lexus CSH (The Lexus branded Prius, trust me you need the improved interior). The Volt is GM, and garbage, the range is only optimal at trips under 100km, and overall the car is not viable (not with GM reliability). I know BMW and Audi are working on pure electric small cars, and BMW has a few concepts (that Vision Concept which is 3.8L/100km, and hyrdrogen cars).

About Power, I put it in the first places, not as pure power, but Power/Weight Ratio, I like the weight to be as low as possible, that's why amongst American muscle cars I prefer the Corvette.

About some American muscle cars derived from light trucks, I guess the high torque and muscle, rough origin are part of their charm for us Europeans.

About pure electric traction with gas range extension, I know BMW has prototypes with diesel-run generator that boast medium sports car performances with city car fuel consumption, but nothing in production or even officially announced yet.

Peugeot already has, and the mechanics should be used on other Peugeot models in the future and ported to Citroën too, a diesel-electric hybrid, AWD, with FWD driven by diesel engine and RWD driven by electric motor, it's the Peugeot 3008 HYbrid4, but still it's not pure electric with diesel extension.

Mercedes instead has pure electric, no gas range extension, 4 motor prototypes.

And finally there is the Fisker Karma, a production pure electric with gasoline, not diesel, range extension car, designed in California and made in Finland.

The Peugeot burns more fuel than the Toyota Prius, but it's an AWD car and anyway diesel fuel is cheaper than gasoline. The Fisker, instead, claims even lower fuel consumption than the Prius, while offering sports car performances, speed is limited to 200km/h, 125mph (otherwise it could easily exceed 250km/h) to limit its maximum fuel consumption too, not only its average, for environment friendly image sake (while the pure electric, no extension Tesla Roadster limits speed to give decent authonomy also with sportive driving), but acceleration is 0-100km/h, 0-62mph in 5.9s.

Pure electric cars with no range extension will be short range, almost city-only viable, still for a long time, alas, but pure electric with range extension, and no mechanical link between the internal combustion engine and the wheels, are particularly promising, as the thermal engine run generator will be able to be easily replaced with fuel cells as soon as they'll become affordable and durable enough.

Edit: I'll have to replace my Fiesta Turbodiesel next year, the engine is still as new, but body and suspensions are falling apart, my next car will still be a diesel, hybrids are still too expensive for me and pure electric not viable, but I hope my next car will be my last pure internal combustion one, for pure fun sake combustion engines are almost unbeatable, the noise, shifting gears, etc (although electric motor could give better performances, the Tesla already beats a lot of sports cars, but the feeling is important too, not just performances), but for practical use they are becoming unsustainable dinosaurs.

Power - Yes of course. I refer to power as the ability of the car to accelerate and make the wheels spin. I like it light too, that's why I'm not a muscle car guy. They feel like trucks.

No Peugot in Canada or USA It's mostly USA's fault, Canadas car culture is suppose to mimic Europes, at least for cities. So the recently introduced Fiat 500 is selling well here. Small cars don't sell well in the states. They got the Smart car only a couple years ago, a full 7 years after Canada, and sales of subcompacts are a joke there. It's all Pickup and Economy car sales (Ford F-150 and the Honda Civic are the two best selling cars in USA).

No Fisker sold in Canada, and the car is a bit pricy. I've seen it at the auto show before, they look sweet.

Diesel and gas are same price in Canada and USA.

Out of curiousity, how old is your fiesta turbo diesel and how many km did you get on it before it kicked the boot? I want to know because I'm curious how the reliability of Ford has improved. If you can afford it get a BMW 1 series diesel (we don't get them here either )

Side note: Tesla Roadster is fast in a straight line, but due to the weight of the batteries it cannot corner anywhere nearly as well as the Lotus Elise it's based on. If you look on Forza 4 the Tesla and Exige have the same performance index, and if you look up Top Gear Power Laps, the Lotus Exige is a full 2 seconds faster, despite being less powerful, and having much less torque.