But the S2000 had the slowest entering speed

I'm not so convinced that it's a fair test ...

 

I think Cayman was the slowest with 108.7. If you look at all the speed (s2k 108.8, 135i 109.4, Cayman 108.7 and 370Z 110.3 km/h), they are very close. I don't know if 1 km/h more makes a big difference. But you have a good point.

 

1km/h is ~.6 mph. So the difference between the S and the Z is less than 1 mph. How much more accurate do you want?

 

Not huge in percentage terms. But this brings up a question of how "scientific" the test really was. I don't know how the braking distance was measured.

Was the distance was measured by the car (i.e. triggering the system that's attached to the car to determine the distance when the brake is applied?) ... or was there a sensor placed next to the starting cone? The latter would make the test highly inaccurate, because the second method would be highly affected by the driver's reaction time. i.e. was the driver still on the gas pedal on one of the cars when he drove the car over sensor? We wouldn't be able to fully tell based on these videos, at least not based on that quality in slow motion ... however, the former would make measuring the actual distance very difficult, since a system attached to the car would most likely ignore extra distances traveled by the car during a skid (although that should be relative small)

Given that the BMW hit the cone before entering the braking course on the video ... it seems like the test was not done over and over again. Each car probably had one shot at it, or at most three. Chances are, the test results would have been much closer had they did a few more to be fair.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the test involves the driver actually steering the car. Ordinary braking-tests don't have that. It's hard to believe that the test driver would be able to get the best time driving these cars only once or so. Of course ... these guys probably have driven the S2000 and potentially the Z numerous times ... and probably don't know the other euros well enough.

Also, I don't understand why they would conduct the test using different entering speeds instead of using cruise control of some sort (only the S2000 doesn't have it, if that's the case). The test just throws so many variables into the results.

My point is ... the test looks like it's something one would do in a parking lot, and does not look very scientific.

I don't disagree that our brakes are great, but I would rather not draw a conclusion based on this one particular video ... same goes for those drag race videos with driver launching the car the first time or look a bit puzzled ... can't they try and film the thing again?

 

^ I see what you mean now. It would make more sense if they did do it like MT or other publications where its a 60-0 (or whatever you want) and they cruise to a set of cones and just get on the brakes. Crazy Japanese shows is what I'll say the reasoning was. Also, you have to take into consideration the tires and tire pressure. That's one thing I haven't (yet) seen emphasized in brake tests and it should. ie, my MINI had so-so braking with the OEM runflats but stopped much better with other tires; it had to have shortened the stopping distance by a foot or more.

 

I'd say it proves one thing: the 135i is inferior to the other three. The S, Z, and CS are too close to call based on their experiment.

But go S2k!

 

Most mags complain of excessive brake fade on S2000. Run that test 4 times in a row and your results will be quite different.

 

Run that test on any one of those cars and I'm sure the results would be similar.

 

Go type-s!

 

I started to think about this, then I decided I'd rather just go on believing the S2000 > the rest.