In gear times for Golf GTi and R32 needed.

TripleT said:
So 40-70 in 4th - when would I EVER do that in "real world" driving? Never! Well I may, but if it was against the clock then I wouldn't as it would be pointless.

If you REALLY REALLY want to compare these, and by the sounds of it you do for some reason, then I put my money on the r32 being quicker. But I doubt you'd find the info you want as it's so pointless :p

By comparing 0-60 AND 0-100 AND 1/4mile also looking at the terminal speed you can get a lot more useful information on the performance.
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er i do things like 30-60 in 4th gear, it means you dont have to drop down to 3rd. its not pointless at all. dont assume everyone needs to boot their car in every gear, some just like to do it at a steady pace. if you dont understand what the OP is wanting from his car then dont post in this thread !!
 
Vertigo1 said:
Is "pointless" your word of the week? :rolleyes:

In gear acceleration (i.e. torque) matters for those of us who don't want to spend their lives swapping cogs and pushing it to the red line every time they go anywhere. This may be the very thing you live for but assuming that everyone else is the same and claiming that cars which better suit their style of driving are pointless is arrogance in the extreme.
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Wrong person signed in...
 
Vertigo1 said:
Is "pointless" your word of the week? :rolleyes:

In gear acceleration (i.e. torque) matters for those of us who don't want to spend their lives swapping cogs and pushing it to the red line every time they go anywhere. This may be the very thing you live for but assuming that everyone else is the same and claiming that cars which better suit their style of driving are pointless is arrogance in the extreme.
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Exactly!!

I own a 197bhp ish Rover 800, drive a hire car 1.8 Mondeo and drove an Astra 1.7DTI for 138k.

The Rover and the Astra are much better for in gear driving and less tiresome than the Mondeo. I'm forever dropping a cog to get the lethargic Mondeo to move, torque is where it's at if you drive any sort of distance and don't want to constantly swap cogs.

I'm by no means a "slow" driver , but the Mondeo annoys/ed me more than the other two.

Not to mention the 24.9mpg over the last 1600 miles..

Wind it up and it'll do 131 indicated, the Mondy that is.
 
On a slightly different tangent, with the 306 6 speed what have they done with the ratios to give it 6 gears? Are they all just shortened and then 6th for econonmy? Does it just make 5th redundant as unless on a track when would you need to use it, if you wanted pull you'd be using a lower gear (unless the ratios are well down) and if you wanted cruising you would use 6th?

We were having a debate at work the other day and one guy still swears blind that for a hot hatch 6 gears are really not needed, and it does seem to be the trend now for them to have 6 cogs. Not having driven a "hot hatch" with 6 gears for a decent amount of time I've really got no point of reference (mondeos and laguna diesels dont' quite count!).
 
Ev0 said:
On a slightly different tangent, with the 306 6 speed what have they done with the ratios to give it 6 gears? Are they all just shortened and then 6th for econonmy? Does it just make 5th redundant as unless on a track when would you need to use it, if you wanted pull you'd be using a lower gear (unless the ratios are well down) and if you wanted cruising you would use 6th?

We were having a debate at work the other day and one guy still swears blind that for a hot hatch 6 gears are really not needed, and it does seem to be the trend now for them to have 6 cogs. Not having driven a "hot hatch" with 6 gears for a decent amount of time I've really got no point of reference (mondeos and laguna diesels dont' quite count!).
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I would guess that merlins teg needs 6 gears ;) Not sure about other "hot hatch's"
 
austinpowers said:
I would guess that merlins teg needs 6 gears ;) Not sure about other "hot hatch's"
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Yeah a car like that I can see why, and I guess that's a good reason for the Civic. But Cupras, new clio etc, is it needed?
 
I'd much prefer a car that'll do 40-70 quickly in 4th than one where you have to swap cogs to get it to move.

Effortless = win. It's great.

I feel it may be the only area where the 530i will dissapoint me.
 
I've only ever driven one car with a 6 speed box and it did seem totally pointless, hugely un-neccesary and if anything resulted in more un-neccesary cog swapping. The box didn't suit the engine at all and it felt like it had simply been put there so the salesman can say YES LOL 6 SPEED.
 
Fusion said:
If you've driven many diesels, you'll know that quite often you can't get 5th at 40mph :p
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I can in the Fabia RS. It's sat at 1500rpm with the turbo ready to go. 6th will cruise on the flat but there is no boost at 1250rpm therefore no useful acceleration. Old school diesels (like my old XUD 306DT) without variable vane turbochargers or a 6 speed 'box would have more of a problem as the torque comes in higher up the rev range.


For 40-70 I tend to use 4th gear, then block change to 6th. I'd disagree with the comments made earlier that it's not relevant. I did 40-70ish at least 4 times on the way back from a friends place tonight - joining the motorway from the slip road, accelerating out of a 40 limit for roadworks and two overtaking moves on a fast NSL A-road. There was maybe one place on the route that I might have needed to do 0-60 and that was a set of traffic lights on the NSL A-road.

The Fabia doesn't really need 6 gears in my experience. Early cars did 37mph/1000rpm in 6th which changed to 33mph/1000rpm with the facelift in late '04.

Back on the original topic - get the GTI unless you really want creamy V6 power or the exclusivity of the R32. The extra weight of the engine and 4wd gubbins will effectively cancel out the extra power/torque of the V6 until you get to really high speeds. There's something about the styling of the Mk5 R32 that doesn't sit right with me. The Mk4 R32 is just instrinsically right where the Mk5 is ... I dunno ... say .... a bit frumpy with too much bling stuck on it to try and distract you.
 
I find with the new car that although it has six speeds and the final ratio feels very similar to my Volvo the Audi seems to rattle through the gears with much less effort than the Volvo. Sure im changing more gears but the pull if your in the right gear is greater. I dont know if the ratioes are lower though because of the AWD on the Audi as that would make sense when putting 200bhp through the front wheels the Volvos DSC kicks in but on the Audi(AWD) it doesnt even flinch.
 
Back on the original topic - get the GTI unless you really want creamy V6 power or the exclusivity of the R32. The extra weight of the engine and 4wd gubbins will effectively cancel out the extra power/torque of the V6 until you get to really high speeds. There's something about the styling of the Mk5 R32 that doesn't sit right with me. The Mk4 R32 is just instrinsically right where the Mk5 is ... I dunno ... say .... a bit frumpy with too much bling stuck on it to try and distract you.
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Exactly.
 
Ev0 said:
On a slightly different tangent, with the 306 6 speed what have they done with the ratios to give it 6 gears? Are they all just shortened and then 6th for econonmy? Does it just make 5th redundant as unless on a track when would you need to use it, if you wanted pull you'd be using a lower gear (unless the ratios are well down) and if you wanted cruising you would use 6th?
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The usual system is the ratios are closer than a 5 speed box but 6th gear is slightly longer than 5th would be.

My diesel has six gears and if I'm honest I think it's too many. The higher top ratio does make for effortless cruising, especially when combined with the torque of the engine, but the lower ratios are too close together and in a diesel you find yourself grabbing gears in stupidly fast succession when trying to get away from a standstill quickly.
 
I agree with Triple-T, in gear acceleration has no interest to me.

It's not a totally 'pointless' figure though, some people like a lazy, sorry 'effortless' drive.

Personally I'll take a car that screams to the million-RPM redline and has an eleventy-thousand gears over a lazy, long-legged car any time. The latter is fine for a luxo-barge or daily driver, but stirring the stick and staying near the redline is all part of the involvement of driving a performance car IMO.
 
DreXeL said:
I agree with Triple-T, in gear acceleration has no interest to me.

It's not a totally 'pointless' figure though, some people like a lazy, sorry 'effortless' drive.

Personally I'll take a car that screams to the million-RPM redline and has an eleventy-thousand gears over a lazy, long-legged car any time. The latter is fine for a luxo-barge or daily driver, but stirring the stick and staying near the redline is all part of the involvement of driving a performance car IMO.
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for a quick car, you shouldnt need to "scream it upto the red line" to get any speed from it tho, obviously you do if your racing it, but for normal motorway \ town driving low end torque is more important
 
FishThrower said:
no its not? :confused:
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"The latter is fine for a luxo-barge or daily driver, but stirring the stick and staying near the redline is all part of the involvement of driving a performance car IMO."

Was what Drexel posted... Which seems to cover that just fine.

I guess it just depends whether you are a lazy driver or not. I'd much rather have a car that rewards effort than something that's best driven lazily, and ultimately high revs and low gearing is better than long gearing and torque on a performance car.

But these kind of arguments always come down to personal preference.
 
I've got 6 gears in my soot chucker but being a 180 bhp V6 the gearing only feels short in 1st.

This is the first diesel I have owned, and I would disagree with some on here and say regardless of whether it was a diesel or a petrol in gear accelleration would be a good indication of how powerful a car was, I would consider a car to have a pretty feeble powerplant if I couldn't put my foot down in fourth and get from 40 to 70 quickly without having to change gear, same for getting from 60 to 80 in 6th.
 
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