Why do we need 160 mph cars?
There are no speed limits that high anywere in the world !! Or even 1/2 that!!
For law enforcement use to stop the cars that can go 150mph
To provide profit to the manufacturer, and dealer and to give the fools with low self esteem who would buy one the opportunity to brag about something.
…back playing you up this morning ?
First, there are indeed places where one can drive 160 MPH legally, but even there most don’t. These cars are generally expensive luxury/sport models and not intended to be utilitarian transport, so saying they are capable of higher speeds than is practical is not really an indictment, it’s a selling point. Some are used for club racing, some may in fact be built and sold to qualify a particular model for a specific racing class in professional racing.
Again, it’s not about building practical transport. Applying practical transport standards to such cars is like judging a thoroughbred racehorse by how well it pulls a plow.
Magazines like Road & Track and Motor Trend NEED cars like this to “test” and pump up the brand image…While very few are actually sold, the ones that ARE sold are very, very profitable…
its not top end really, its sort of a side-effect of getting low end umph. most of these cars have 6 speeds, and you can bet that helps a lot.
tuning for power is the same as tuning for economy. so if you can build crazy power with a big engine, you can do it on a 4 cyl, and have decent power, plus mileage.
and the reason for building them? a company wont survive unless you impress the customers. if chevy builds a faster car then ford, its like a resume, showing what your company can do. also, if chevy engineers can build fast car, they can use those same concepts on smaller cars, giving them an edge all over ford.
I take it you’ve never been to Germany. On many parts of the Autobahn there are no speed limits, there are “suggested” speeds, but they are just that, suggestions. Also up until ten years or so ago, in Montana there were roads with no real speed limit either, the guidelines were that your speed be “safe and prudent” for the conditions. Also some roads today in Texas for example still have 80 MPH speed limits. So your claim that "There are no speed limits that high anywere in the world !! Or even 1/2 that!! " is incorrect.
As for why do we need 160 MPH cars? We don’t “need” them, but we like to have them. Why do we eat a Big Mac when a can of green beans will fill you up just as well and with 95% less calories? Because for most people the Big Mac is more enjoyable to eat, likewise many people feel that a Corvette is a more enjoyable to drive than a riding lawnmower.
The same reason professional athletes get paid so much, and international finance firm partners, and entertainers, and corporate top executives. Because they can, and they do. As long as pro baseball players get $30 million a year you can be sure someone will try to sell them $300,000 cars and airplanes and houses in Malibu and on and on. At least they sometimes pay sales tax!
GM sells very few corvettes, and even fewer that will do 160 mph, but the Corvette draws a lot of customers to the showroom and a percentage of those buy a Chevrolet of some type.
BTW, the speed limit on most of the autobahns in Europe is 130 kph which is 80.6 mph, slightly over the half of 160 you stated.
because we are men and we can…that’s why.
why build a 4x4 that a person can literally walk underneath?
because it’s cool.
do we need them? probably not. but we also don’t “need” 65 inch flat screen TVs or surround sound, but it does make life a bit better when you do have them.
No we don’t need 160 mph cars. We do need cars with enough power in reserve to go up hills and accelerate on to busy highways, but this can be accomplished without a top speed anywhere close to 160 mph.
After a couple of gas shortages, high costs per gallon of gas, and the like; car companies still feel they must appeal to new car buyers based on performance in 0-60 times and rapid acceleration. Other performance criteria suffers as a result, in particular performance in fuel economy.
If you’d rather a high performance car not be such as fast one, rather a more fuel efficient one then you vote for such with your dollars. Look for and buy the most fuel efficient car that meets your needs. You won’t be going 160 mph, but you’ll get where you need to go in the same amount of time and use less gas to get there.
A vehicle that can do 160 is more stable at 80 than a vehicle that tops at 90.
Then there’s that Ford Expedition…
If it makes you feel justified, you can look at this website and see what happens when people with more money than sense buy these cars.
One of these cars is the current version of the BMW M3. Most of these cars are owned by “car people” and end up on some weekend race track some time in their lives. In our country we are free to pursue such sports, all you have to do is pay for it.
You can go to Bonneville or to the Maxton Mile and go as fast as you can, no need to stop at 160.
In Maine, we need them because you can’t usually drive them in snow. Now, if we could only do something about the cars that we can drive in snow.
SUV’s don’t have tires, they have landing gear. (suv joke.)
The car 130kph limit for German Autobahns is advisory and not a general speed limit. General speed limits exist for truck and buses plus specific temporary speed restrictions for construction works.
The Swiss and Austrian Autobahns do have general speed limits but these road systems are relatively very small.
I’ll answer that if you can answer these:
Why do we need houses bigger than 2000 ft2?
Why do we need ice cream?
Why do we need football?
The list is endless…
I think you miss the design intent. They do not build cars to achieve a certain top speed except in certain cases. The engines power and aerodynamics just happen to allow the cars to achieve a certain top speed. Thats it.