I know the saying you can never be too rich or too thin.

Well is it also true that you can never have too much power?

I'm at the stage in my life where the S2000 is fun to drive fast. I have fun grabbing red line in 1st 2nd and sometimes 3rd gear. I guess I'd like it to be a little faster, but I don't know if I'd have any more fun.

I always read car magazines and love to fantasize about the exotics. 0-60 in the 3's or low 4's. 0-100 in the 8-9 second range.

But outside of a race track or a drag strip, how often do people use all of their cars potential? The more potential the car has the less we are able to use on the street.

This guy I know with a 911 turbo. The way he drives he is only using 60-70% of the car's performance. He can do 180mph, but like most people he never drives over 100mph.

So we're really stuck with 0-100 or so in the real world. And you are likely to get a ticket for display of speed if you're not careful.

 

well it depends what you mean by too fast. The GT2 is definitely too fast to use its potential on the street. That however doesn't mean it feels like an S2000 on the street. Would a Z06 likely be just as fast on the street? YES. Once you get up to the power that that whole class of cars make, the limiting factor is driver and street conditions, not really the car, so they're all about as fast. HOWEVER, is the GT2 more fun to drive than a Z06? HELL YEAH! There's something about rocketing around as fast as a bat out of hell and knowing that your car is just begging to go twice as fast that is immeasurably exhillerating.

All that being said, this is the one area where i feel the S2000 really shines because you can drive it very near its max potential aside from top speed on the street in normal driving. I can shift just before the redline in 1st 2nd and 3rd gears everytime i get on an on-ramp. Do that in the GT2 and i'm at 110 in probably about 7 seconds, which is unthinkable and crazily unsafe.

-Steve

 

offroadr35, I was reading your post on the GT2 and that got me thinking about this.

I was very close to buying a Z06. But the only reason was because it's super fast. I like speed, but the cops in my town would be killing me.

Also for me the S2000 is the fastest car I've owned so far.

I mean the S2000 is no slow poke. I once owned a Z3 1.9L and was always wishing it had some get up and go. I mean it was slower than a lot of FWD family sedans (maxima, V6 accord etc...).

 

Umm... no. I suppose I could imagine a vehicle that couldn't be driven without spinning the tires at every stop. That would be too much. But I haven't heard of such uncontrollable power.

Too fast for my license? I drive too fast no matter what heap-o-junk I'm in.

 

I like acceleration from 0-60, or sometimes from 75-120 (freeways). Pure, pin you back in your seat power is really fun.

I think one magazine once said (about driving in the US with an ultra fast Porsche, I think it was the GT2) :

It's like using a throughbred to farm your fields.

 

Anybody who has every ridden a sportbike and liked it, or especially purchased one, will definitely answer NO.

See sig.

 

 

Check out this thread. This guy says he has too much horsepower...hehe...He's totally legit BTW..

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/zerothread?id=568189

 

Another thing, it's common knowledge that for the most part it's more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.

I, for one, have the chance to exploit my C5's formidable abilities frequently on the track, roadcourse and dragstrip, and occasionally on the interstates in this great state of Texas.

 

Funny, I was just thinking the opposite: In the world of bikes, there can *definitely* be such a thing as too much power. They just become dangerous and nearly unridable in many situations.

It's not so much the *total amount* of power they make, but more the peakiness and lack of control over smooth power delivery.

Most cars are still a long way off from reaching that threshold, though...