One for the fast car owners on here
 

For all you guys on here with fast cars capable of well over 150mph, how do you keep to legal speeds on dual carriageways or motorways? 70mph seems so slow. My car will do that in 2nd gear! 3rd will take you to 100mph and 4th beyond 130mph (4th gear will actually happily take you from 30 - 130mph!).

Every time I want to put my foot down I seem to end up speeding, if only for a few seconds. I fear for my licence! ;)

The only thing that really keeps me "in-check" is when transporting my lilly-livered son in the back who's always telling me to slow down!

An Impreza is more of an A or B road point-to-point weapon, rather than an out-right high-speed machine, so fun speeds tend to be lower.

My Legacy is set-up to pull up to 167 quite easily with enough road... and it is pretty tempting, found myself putting my foot down for a short blast and seeing the speedo dial go way further than i intended (and thats only with 290bhp) god knows how hard it is to keep a high power 400+ car in check as a road running car on the motorway or whatever.

Lots of temptation, lots of will power to keep it in check... cant wait to get in a more focused A-B kind of car again, V5 sti Type R coming soon :)

Don't they say it's for safer over taking??

I found myself having a good look ahead and then hammering through the gears until I reached speed and then just cruised back down to a reasonable speed.

I loved the noise throught the gears with the Capristo exhaust, was always happier at lower speeds and then flooring it, instead of crusing at high speed.

355 Capristo

***Timidly joins the thread as only has a "pretty fast" car***

A lot of torque means big speeds are easy (160ish delimited apparently) - it appears to pull as hard over 100 as it does from as standstill - very very smooth and composed at 130. Not dared get past that yet - will save that for Europe.

I cant wait to go to Europe again. The run to the ring a few months ago was amazing, a load of local guys barrelling down the delimited autobahns at 150+mph = EPIC :)

This country just has too many cameras and sneaky copes to risk a run like that.

Mine has a speed warning which I've set to 100. At least I won't get into ban territory.

MattW - there is one section of road here with a very very clear view (down a long hill, nowhere for cops to stop) that's a good "speed" run.

Got to 150 in the R32 Golf in France - that was fun but noisy. Bimmer has more oomph so should be better at that kind of speed. But yes, 100 is tops for 99.9% of roads.

I've got one of them too.......it usually sits in the passenger seat and is more commonly refered to as the Mrs :lol1::D:thumb:

:lol1::lol1::lol1:

lol

lol well i say carry you son with you all time lol im same with me fella seem like you doing 30 on moor way wen you doing 70 so i have seat next 2 him just warn him that his linces is needed for is job

It's very very difficult not to go too fast on any road.

I had a nice run down to London (from Nottingham) on Sunday morning (4 am to be exact) for a Porsche meet and then the 20 or so of us had a run out to Henley for breakfast.

How I didn't go faster than 110 mph on the way down I'll never know... :thumb:

Seriously though, it's quite difficult (apart from not pressing the loud pedal too far) as I just get carried away with both turbos whooshing their way upto the redline in 3rd at 100, then banging into 4th and just getting another massive wave of torque etc, etc.. :cool:

I found the biggest let down of owning my Focus ST was not being able to really 'drive' it and constantly having to back off! :( I was in constant fear of meeting plod.

I have a Fiesta Zetec S now and I'm loving ragging it around and still being at reasonably sensible speeds :D

The ST is the only 'quick' car I've owned and I have to say it's changed my perspective on how I'd spend my lottery winnings...If you can't push an ST (hell even the Fiesta is enough to get in to trouble!) without potentially getting arse raped in prison, is it possible to enjoy super cars? :wonder:

The RS is so easy to get to a hundred+ just a little play gets you to silly speeds it is a constant worry with the plod about, if i had something like a new GTR im sure i wouldent have my licence for long :D
I wonder if you could have as much fun in somthing like a swift sport at lower speeds ?

Funnily enough it was an encounter with one of those (07 reg) yesterday that got me to post this thread. He saw me join a dual carriageway at a roundabout a couple of cars ahead of him and decided it to try it on. I just couldn't help myself putting him in his place and he was soon reduced to a small dot in the rear-view mirror!

I have an alarm in the passenger seat. It screams if I go too fast or if it wants some new shoes.

;)

And yes, Golf R32s have quite long legs, not the quickest, but its constant rate of aceleration only starts to taper off when it reaches about 140ish. Which is an arse because it creeps up to that speed so easily if one doesn't keep an eye on the speedo. (makes note to fit the cruise control sometime soon).

Turbo - yep an R32 isn't much of a match for your Millenium Falcon!

Ali - I thought cruise was standard on them? Had it on mine (mk4).

I can have, and have had as much fun with much lesser powered cars for just this reason. Its only my once yearly jaunt to Le-man when you get to appreciate the difference between a fast/nippy car and a really fast car. But for UK roads and driving you just can't use high powered cars to there potential.

In my experience for the few occassions when you want a really spirited drive its more fun having a blast in a say 1.6/2.0 normally aspirated revy engine with circa 160-200bhp. Bouncing off the red line, and using all the gears = great fun..

Having a really fast car for UK raods is more about because I can, and dare I say it willy waving, rather than realistically putting it into practice.

My car tops out at about 182mph.

I find it does not really get into its stride till about 90mph, at which point it really starts to fly.

As such, its actually quite easy to keep it just below 90mph, which keeps me out of trouble.

Cruise control is the best option, just set it at 75-80 depending on conditons and you know you are safe from the cops.

You will also find you will get to your destination a bit quicker, as a lot of people cant keep their speed constaint.

My car also has 3 "limit" chimes. I have them set at 90,100 and 105. Keeps me from putting the boot in a bit tooooo far ;) But of course it all depends which country I am driving in. :thumb:

Turbo, it's not easy, is the answer.
I actually get more frustrated on a motorway or dual carriageways with mega fast vehicles, than I do in much slower ones.
I think the answer is the right vehicle for the right situation. If you want to cruise on a motorway at 70mph, have a medium powered diesel.
If you're popping to the shops, get a hot hatch. If you want to blast across to the south of France, get an RS6.
And a Sunday morning blast, an Ariel Atom or motorbike.

I wish had a 10 car garage. A different type of car for every mood.

MKV seems to have options list. Where mine has nothing except the leather racing seats and the 6 disc changer in the head unit.

Its an easy DIY retrofit (new indicator stalk and use VAG-COM to tell the control module under the steering coloum its fitted. But I also want to retrofit the steering wheel remote controls as well. Which involves the same very control module to be replaced and a different slip ring connector.

This would seem easy if I knew which controller and slip ring to get....at the last count there are eight different versions of the same control unit, which vary in features. Only some of which are compatible with my car's central body ECU. And those who know won't tell me (they want me to pay them to fit it), and the last attempt at a dealers they quoted me over £1K because they thought I needed a high-line instrument panel (false), so I couldn't rely on their part codes being correct.

VAGs eh? You'd think common platform sharing would make this a doddle, one controller "should" fit all, so why do they make eight? :cuckoo: Our Seat Altea has a high-line dash fitted, so I'm going to borrow the controller out of that once it back in the UK. :)

Is it not the case torque determines acceleration times, whereas HP determines top speed.

rb5 - not exactly. Depends on gearing, engine type, drivetrain, etc.

Mine doesn't have vast amounts of bhp (300ish) but does have a lot of torque and it really does pull hard at high speeds.

Drag is pretty important for top speed too.

Not sure about how to use a performance car these days... maybe get something dog slow, but with entertaining handling like an mx5?

Cue, the R sport. I find the 160bhp naturally aspirated 2.0ltr more than enough for 90% of the time. More power would be good but it is a very fun car to take up to the limit especially at 7,500 rpm, quick change, climb again from 6000 rpm.:)

The Influence of Gearing
 

My former standard JDM 22B would be doing a busy 4000 rpm in top (5th) gear at 80mph. As a result you didn't often want to drive it any quicker than that, even on the motorway, so that was a great way of keeping my licence safe.

However, the same rpm in the Lotus in the same 5th gear equates to 118mph. If that's getting a bit busy/thirsty for me, then I can change up to overdrive 6th and the revs will drop to about 2700 rpm at that speed! :eek:

I think I'll go and live near a deristricted Autobahn in Germany. :)

Get a push bike, you can feel like an F22 Raptor at 30 mph !

Or, get an original Fiat 500, flat out at sixty having taken up to a day to get there, the brakes are rubbish, the steering is worse and the handling is pretty attrocious as well, you have to drive it though, none of your put your foot down and let the car do the work, its a physical experience*

I would imagine a decent one with some fettling would be epic fun, another 10 bhp would make it fast enough to not get in anyones way, as it is you have to conserve momentum which is sometimes more fun and more rewarding than simply being able to unleash 300 bhp with a flex of your right foot, it spits and bangs on the overrun, you have to time gearchanges and I would say it is more sporting than a lot of sports cars, dont get me wrong, its a hateful little sh1tbox but even for someone as negative about them as me I can see the enjoyment.


*when it works

Otherwise, I did 70 mph across Angelssey all the way, it wasnt reading over 150, honest, the speedo is well out and I didnt spend 2 weeks papping myself every time the post came.

85 in the Jimny is mildly terrifying. In the BM it feels almost slothful.

Agree about bikes - my max on the road bike is 40 and on the MTB it's 34mph - both felt like near insanity with death mere milliseconds away.

My Scoob can do 150+, my Midget struggles to do 50+!!! LOL