[Ferg]

You know, I've been doing a lot of reading about misc. cars these days. I thank my interest in the TSX for that. When I started researching the TSX, I started buying mags again, and generally noticing the quality of the steel rolling down the road these days.

And I have to say, overall, I'm impressed.

This past Sunday was beautiful day, and while driving around, I kept my eye on the other cars around. I saw several Subaru WRX's zooming around, many Mazda Miatas, a Porche Boxter, a new TL, an MR2 Spyder, three Honda S2000's, many BMW's including a new Z4, a bunch of hopped up Civics, and several American pony cars (Mustangs, Camaros, etc), besides all the usual passenger cars. BTW, the S2000's were my favorites of the bunch -- seemed like the perfect S2000 day.

Yesterday, I had a doctor's appointment, and while sitting in the waiting room I picked up a copy of Sports Compact Car, from 2002. One of the columnists was doing a little throw-back piece about a 20-year old edition of Car and Driver, comparing the quality of today's cars with the quality 20 years ago. A couple of things struck me....

1. The 0 - 60 time in the 20 year old C&D for the "new" (at the time) Nissan Pulsar -- 12.8 seconds -- and that was considered just OK. Heck, the Honda Civic hybrid does better than that!

2. The author noted that a Subaru WRX is quicker 0 - 60 than a 1982 Lamborghini Countach! Yikes!

We may nitpick about stuff here and there, but the quality of many of today's cars is superb. When you consider performance, safety, reliability, and efficiency, we've got it pretty good.

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The only problem with my Sunday drive?

....I didn't see any TSX's!!!

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BTW, for those interested, there was a picture in the latest Sports Compact Car of a TSX wagon featured at a European auto show. It was a small picture, and you couldn't see much, but interesting nonetheless.



Ferg

 

[larchmont]

Interesting stuff.

About those old 0-60 times.....Makes me wonder if my memory is playing tricks on me. My first car was a '69 Chevy Nova, which I think was a V-8 and (as I like to say) weighed about 12 pounds, so it had a lot of oomph. My impression and recollection is that it was the fastest car I ever had, faster than my next car which was a BMW 320i. Off the top of my head I would've thought it did 0-60 in about 7 seconds.

Then again maybe not.

 

[kiteboy]

The emissions legislation in the '70s brought the performance of cars down siginificantly because of catalytic converters. The industry has made a good comeback since then. Also impressive are the safety improvements. The Dateline IIHS offset test video showed a '94 Galant almost completely caved in from the 40-mps offset test. Compare that to the TSX which barely had any intrusion in the passenger compartment.

 

[larchmont]

The emissions legislation in the '70s brought the performance of cars down siginificantly because of catalytic converters. The industry has made a good comeback since then.....

I guess that's the answer to what I was talking about.

It's possible that my old '69 Nova really did perform how I remember it. Ferg's story is about how things were 20 years ago -- which I didn't realize could have been worse than 35 years ago. But I guess it could.

 

[Whatchamacallit]

You know, I've been doing a lot of reading about misc. cars these days. I thank my interest in the TSX for that. When I started researching the TSX, I started buying mags again, and generally noticing the quality of the steel rolling down the road these days.

I must admit, I didn't know nor cared much about cars before I started to look for a new car for myself.

Then again, I still don't know much about cars. :donno:

 

[ChinchillaX]

I don't really like the new cars these days. The styling and features are getting uglier and cheaper....seems that manufacturers like to cut costs and keep prices low ah la Nissan. ABS no longer standard on some GM models. Also, a lot of the cars look alike.