I dare any car mag. to do this type of comparison.
 

Hello.
In the past I've read car Mags. till there is essentially nothing left to read.
The Big three...at the time.
Car and Driver MotorTrend and Road and Track.

Considering acceleration times through breaking times were always different, in each magazine, I always wished they'd do a Comparison test of one model from any manufacturer on different production dates and test at least 3 of them to see how close their numbers, that is tolerances would be.

Has anything like this been done before? If so can you give some info?

This was written about back in the day...C&D usually turned in the fastest specs. This because they were hardest on the test cars...dumping clutches, speed shifting, etc.

Not a fan of the big 3 "buff books."

That said, the reason times/brake specs are different have to do with factors that are variable. Temp, altitude, same tire pressures, HP/TQ variations between engines and even pavement composition.

if this were detroit in the 80s i'd like to see comparisons of monday(hungover) cars and friday(already drunk) cars with tuesday, wednesday and thursday cars.

Auto week (I think) mentioned hat on two different runnings of the very same 997 turbo s that they got a faster time after it had made the rounds with other mags.


Usually there are just a few press cars, and they get passed around like the prom queen. Every magazine writer beats th hell out of it. I'm sure cars get worn in, stuff gets broken and fixed... That has to account for some variability.

this>>>

How much of this issue remains here and elsewhere today?

I don't know about now, but Car and Driver, at least, used to work very hard to take weather variations out of the performance test variations. The guys had a kit that went everywhere with them that tested temperature, humidity and more. Performance numbers were adjusted, based on what the weather kit told them. It worked pretty well. I know that they got the same figures from a Ferrari (I seem to remember it was) tested in Europe and tested again here in California. They also had a radar gun that they kept calibrated. Probably still do, and more.

I also know that Rodent Track used to be very careful about generating test numbers and went to great pains to make sure they were accurate. I have no idea why they might have differed from those of other magazines, except to note the difference between drivers and driver skills.

Same cars? Probably, at least with Road & Track and Motor Trend, because they were only a few miles apart and drew from the same press pools. But Car and Driver is in Ann Arbor (and for the last few months now so is R&T), and draws from a different press pool. So there would have been variations between vehicles tht could have helped account for performance differences.

Further to this, I suspect that none of us could match the times the magazine guys get in their performance testing. Doing this requires a very special set of skills and a lot of practise, and those guys are good at it. I used to occasionally help out with C/D tests; I've tried to match their times while we were out testing and couldn't do it, especially on the skid pad. Maybe you could, but not me. Frustrating as hell, but there it is.

Didn't Chrysler catch a bunch of employees getting stoned last year - twice?

There have also been stories of manufacturers giving the car mags modified cars for testing to make themselves look better on the performance charts in the back of the mags.

Oh, my yes! If memory serves, a PR guy named [Redacted] was an enthusiastic practitioner of that sort of thing - Pontiacs were his speciality, I seem to recall. I think that sort of thing has mostly tapered off, but I recall reading an instance of this happening just recently - seems like it was one of the Asian manufacturers involved, but I can't be certain about that.

A lot harder to do these days, I should think, what with OBD II and all.