James May (TG-UK) on Obsession Over Performance Figures
09-18-2011, 10:00 PM
#1
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Thread Starter
James May (TG-UK) on Obsession Over Performance Figures
Found an article from UK "The Telegraph", I don't think his article has been posted here before....I must say I definitely agree with him.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/...e-figures.html
Why are we so obsessed with meaningless performance figures?
I sometimes wonder what would happen if all of the eight airbags fitted to a Mercedes S-class were triggered simultaneously. If all the windows were closed fully, where would all that displaced air go? I have a horrible vision of the driver’s otherwise unharmed head collapsing under the pressure.
Are so many airbags necessary? I suppose you might as well have them if you can, but I suspect many are the legacy of the airbag wars. Back in the early Nineties, an airbag was the thing to have and the thing that sold a car.
Once everyone had a driver’s airbag, a passenger airbag sold the car. Pretty soon there were seat bags, door bags, knee bags, bum bags, boot bags and generally enough bags to refloat a previously sunken battleship.
Thankfully, I believe that we have now arrived at – and I risk being guilty of perpetrating a tired stereotype fostered in a less enlightened age – a Mexican airbag stand-off.
There have been other examples of this. I remember, from my time in this business, sunroof wars, air-con wars, CD player wars and wood-trim wars. Most fatuously, at the run-up to this new century, we had to endure cup-holder wars. Saab was the eventual victor, with a dash-mounted contraption of such Euclidean complexity that it made the Walschaerts valve-gear of a steam locomotive look no more challenging than a tin opener.
Fortunately, it’s all harmless. Or at least it was. Now, though, the motor industry is becoming embroiled in a power struggle over precisely that commodity: power.
Power is a wonderful thing, but there is a point beyond which it becomes not only facile but is in danger, as W O Bentley might have said, of corrupting performance.
I still believe that the pleasure of driving comes not from the absolutes of performance, but from the nature of its delivery. I would argue that Mazda’s MX-5, although not especially fast in outright terms, is a high-performance car because it heightens the sensations relayed during driving.
The same is true of music. I can play Chopin’s C-sharp minor posthumous nocturne upon the piano, but Maurizio Pollini performing it on the beer-soaked, honky-tonk joanna in your local will sound better than me having a crack at it on a 9ft Bosendorfer.
Yet still we are becoming ever more obsessed with outright power figures – mere meaningless statistics – and losing sight of what makes a car actually feel fast. But it’s OK, because I think I have identified the source of the rot.
We must go back to 1972, and the pack of Top Trumps Sports Cars I was given for my ninth birthday.
They are laid out on the desk in front of me. The new VW Scirocco has made it to one of these votive tablets ahead of going on sale and Britain’s showing is spearheaded by the Lotus Elite, in brown.
The hours we spent with these hiding behind coats in the school cloakroom! There is evidence, on the Corvette Stingray card, of mildly obscene defacement in HB pencil. I expect that was Cookie.
These days one may buy Top Trumps TV Legends, but back then it was cars and fighter aircraft and scant information: in this case engine type, displacement, horsepower, maximum rpm, top speed and price.
If you’ve never played Top Trumps then I should explain, apart from that you are incomplete as a human being, the rules.
May quotes a statistic from the card uppermost in his hand. If it’s higher than the equivalent stat on Cook’s card, May wins it. If not, May hands his card over to his adversary. That’s it. It’s engaging and educational, but also dangerous, as we shall see. The exception to the “highest wins” rule is price, where lowest is best. This was formulated simply so that the holder of, say, the feeble Triumph Spitfire (£1,689) could win the then-new Ferrari 365 GT BB (later the 512 BB) at a bank-busting £17,487.
The fact remains, though, that if you held the Fezza on your go, you were a winner. You simply quoted its 360bhp. You were also pretty safe with the same manufacturer’s Daytona (352bhp) or the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (294bhp)*.
So at a young and formative period of our lives, I and my coevals learnt that horsepower alone equated to advancement. Never mind that the most satisfying to drive was probably the 230bhp Porsche 911RS or the Lancia Fulvia HF with a piffling 114bhp. Might seemed right.
And now look where we are: in our 40s, disillusioned and labouring under the belief that a Mercedes saloon with 600bhp will make us winners in the greatest and most grisly card game of all, which is life itself.
See? This is incontrovertible. Top Trumps ruined motoring.
*Although I would choose the Trans Am’s 7,443cc displacement, the highest in the pack. I played this a lot.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/...e-figures.html
Why are we so obsessed with meaningless performance figures?
I sometimes wonder what would happen if all of the eight airbags fitted to a Mercedes S-class were triggered simultaneously. If all the windows were closed fully, where would all that displaced air go? I have a horrible vision of the driver’s otherwise unharmed head collapsing under the pressure.
Are so many airbags necessary? I suppose you might as well have them if you can, but I suspect many are the legacy of the airbag wars. Back in the early Nineties, an airbag was the thing to have and the thing that sold a car.
Once everyone had a driver’s airbag, a passenger airbag sold the car. Pretty soon there were seat bags, door bags, knee bags, bum bags, boot bags and generally enough bags to refloat a previously sunken battleship.
Thankfully, I believe that we have now arrived at – and I risk being guilty of perpetrating a tired stereotype fostered in a less enlightened age – a Mexican airbag stand-off.
There have been other examples of this. I remember, from my time in this business, sunroof wars, air-con wars, CD player wars and wood-trim wars. Most fatuously, at the run-up to this new century, we had to endure cup-holder wars. Saab was the eventual victor, with a dash-mounted contraption of such Euclidean complexity that it made the Walschaerts valve-gear of a steam locomotive look no more challenging than a tin opener.
Fortunately, it’s all harmless. Or at least it was. Now, though, the motor industry is becoming embroiled in a power struggle over precisely that commodity: power.
Power is a wonderful thing, but there is a point beyond which it becomes not only facile but is in danger, as W O Bentley might have said, of corrupting performance.
I still believe that the pleasure of driving comes not from the absolutes of performance, but from the nature of its delivery. I would argue that Mazda’s MX-5, although not especially fast in outright terms, is a high-performance car because it heightens the sensations relayed during driving.
The same is true of music. I can play Chopin’s C-sharp minor posthumous nocturne upon the piano, but Maurizio Pollini performing it on the beer-soaked, honky-tonk joanna in your local will sound better than me having a crack at it on a 9ft Bosendorfer.
Yet still we are becoming ever more obsessed with outright power figures – mere meaningless statistics – and losing sight of what makes a car actually feel fast. But it’s OK, because I think I have identified the source of the rot.
We must go back to 1972, and the pack of Top Trumps Sports Cars I was given for my ninth birthday.
They are laid out on the desk in front of me. The new VW Scirocco has made it to one of these votive tablets ahead of going on sale and Britain’s showing is spearheaded by the Lotus Elite, in brown.
The hours we spent with these hiding behind coats in the school cloakroom! There is evidence, on the Corvette Stingray card, of mildly obscene defacement in HB pencil. I expect that was Cookie.
These days one may buy Top Trumps TV Legends, but back then it was cars and fighter aircraft and scant information: in this case engine type, displacement, horsepower, maximum rpm, top speed and price.
If you’ve never played Top Trumps then I should explain, apart from that you are incomplete as a human being, the rules.
May quotes a statistic from the card uppermost in his hand. If it’s higher than the equivalent stat on Cook’s card, May wins it. If not, May hands his card over to his adversary. That’s it. It’s engaging and educational, but also dangerous, as we shall see. The exception to the “highest wins” rule is price, where lowest is best. This was formulated simply so that the holder of, say, the feeble Triumph Spitfire (£1,689) could win the then-new Ferrari 365 GT BB (later the 512 BB) at a bank-busting £17,487.
The fact remains, though, that if you held the Fezza on your go, you were a winner. You simply quoted its 360bhp. You were also pretty safe with the same manufacturer’s Daytona (352bhp) or the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (294bhp)*.
So at a young and formative period of our lives, I and my coevals learnt that horsepower alone equated to advancement. Never mind that the most satisfying to drive was probably the 230bhp Porsche 911RS or the Lancia Fulvia HF with a piffling 114bhp. Might seemed right.
And now look where we are: in our 40s, disillusioned and labouring under the belief that a Mercedes saloon with 600bhp will make us winners in the greatest and most grisly card game of all, which is life itself.
See? This is incontrovertible. Top Trumps ruined motoring.
*Although I would choose the Trans Am’s 7,443cc displacement, the highest in the pack. I played this a lot.
09-19-2011, 12:29 AM
#2
Few, except for automotive writers and show hosts, have access to compare a large selection of cars of various engines and chassis layouts. The only way we have to compare these untouchable cars is by their specs. We are taught to believe the hard facts. How they feel in the real world is something that can't be put in numbers. And this is something that you have to live with in the real world. It takes a talented wordsmith to convey the feeling one gets when you open that door and settle in the seat behind the steering wheel. That is why we quote Clarkson from the locally famous 2003 TG show about the RX8. He gets it and we see the connection between his words and what we feel when driving the car. Others don't understand because they haven't spent any time driving the car and theres no hard numbers to back up the experience.
09-19-2011, 04:45 AM
#4
Super Moderator
Thread Starter
Yep, POWER and Speed can be a thrill, but a short lived one.
So many 'drivers cars' just fall over around a bend, heavy to steer, takes forever to stop, a transmission with a change feel of a stick in a bucket of water, the only redeeming feature is POWER.
The thrill and enjoyment for me is the experience, the feeling, the connection to the car road and driver....even my odd passengers sometimes get it.
A bit like Analog or Digital music...please don't get me started about Drink Coasters (Cd's) or REAL music, not that shrieking, harsh, soulless crap called digital music...Uggh!
So many 'drivers cars' just fall over around a bend, heavy to steer, takes forever to stop, a transmission with a change feel of a stick in a bucket of water, the only redeeming feature is POWER.
The thrill and enjoyment for me is the experience, the feeling, the connection to the car road and driver....even my odd passengers sometimes get it.
A bit like Analog or Digital music...please don't get me started about Drink Coasters (Cd's) or REAL music, not that shrieking, harsh, soulless crap called digital music...Uggh!
09-19-2011, 04:47 PM
#6
Super Moderator
Thread Starter
Arrrr!
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