Autobahn Thoughts
10-22-07, 02:08 PM
#1
Autobahn Thoughts
http://blog.hometheatermag.com/geoff...90407IFACEDIA/
By Geoffrey Morrison
Autobahn, Part II
If you haven’t read my first post on the road of roads, read it below first.
First off, I know 126 mph isn’t that impressive. But when you consider that the 1.6L, 102 hp engine in the Mark V Golf I rented was designed for economy, it’s not at all bad. Also, you have to give it to any company that engineers even their budget engines to be able to run at 6200 RPMs for over an hour and not explode. Sure, many of you (and I) have gone much faster in other cars, but as I said, this wasn’t about raw speed.
But what about these speeds. Let’s take a look at the numbers. At 126 mph, or just over 200 kph, the little 4-cylinder is burning fuel at a prodigious rate. Thanks to the handy onboard trip computer, it was imbibing 16.6 liters every 100 kilometers. That’s all kind of backwards to us in the new world, so let me translate. Flip it all around and you get somewhere in the vicinity of 14.1 miles per gallon in a car/engine the EU rates at 38.5 mpg “highway.” Boo-yah.
It occurred to me that there were three reasons why most people on the Autobahn weren’t taking advantage of the lack of speed limits. The first, and most simple, is that many of the tiny European city cars simply can’t break into the triple digits. This isn’t a knock, just a fact. If you have 50 or so hp, you may get 50 miles per gallon, but the car just isn’t designed to travel great distances above and past the speed of sense.
Secondly, it seems that most Germans are probably smarter than me. Or at least, have had a few decades on the Autobahns for the novelty to have warn off. I can’t even fathom that, but that’s me.
Lastly, gas is roughly $7 per gallon. Pretty cheap by European standards. As the speed goes up, gas mileage goes down (as I mentioned above). This is noticeable even from 55 to 65. And you can feel it, even on short runs.
I drove at 200 kph for about an hour (roughly, there was often slowing, but lets ignore that for now). At 200 kph the car was burning 16.6 L/100k. So in an hour I would have burned 33.2 liters of gas. This equals about 8.3L every 15 minutes, or 0.553L every minute. Convert that to gallons, and we have roughly 0.15 gallons every minute. With the current rate of exchange, this means my high speed burn across the German countryside was costing me, roughly, $1.05 per minute, every minute, for just over an hour. In my opinion this is a pretty good example of totally worth it.
By Geoffrey Morrison
Autobahn, Part II
If you haven’t read my first post on the road of roads, read it below first.
First off, I know 126 mph isn’t that impressive. But when you consider that the 1.6L, 102 hp engine in the Mark V Golf I rented was designed for economy, it’s not at all bad. Also, you have to give it to any company that engineers even their budget engines to be able to run at 6200 RPMs for over an hour and not explode. Sure, many of you (and I) have gone much faster in other cars, but as I said, this wasn’t about raw speed.
But what about these speeds. Let’s take a look at the numbers. At 126 mph, or just over 200 kph, the little 4-cylinder is burning fuel at a prodigious rate. Thanks to the handy onboard trip computer, it was imbibing 16.6 liters every 100 kilometers. That’s all kind of backwards to us in the new world, so let me translate. Flip it all around and you get somewhere in the vicinity of 14.1 miles per gallon in a car/engine the EU rates at 38.5 mpg “highway.” Boo-yah.
It occurred to me that there were three reasons why most people on the Autobahn weren’t taking advantage of the lack of speed limits. The first, and most simple, is that many of the tiny European city cars simply can’t break into the triple digits. This isn’t a knock, just a fact. If you have 50 or so hp, you may get 50 miles per gallon, but the car just isn’t designed to travel great distances above and past the speed of sense.
Secondly, it seems that most Germans are probably smarter than me. Or at least, have had a few decades on the Autobahns for the novelty to have warn off. I can’t even fathom that, but that’s me.
Lastly, gas is roughly $7 per gallon. Pretty cheap by European standards. As the speed goes up, gas mileage goes down (as I mentioned above). This is noticeable even from 55 to 65. And you can feel it, even on short runs.
I drove at 200 kph for about an hour (roughly, there was often slowing, but lets ignore that for now). At 200 kph the car was burning 16.6 L/100k. So in an hour I would have burned 33.2 liters of gas. This equals about 8.3L every 15 minutes, or 0.553L every minute. Convert that to gallons, and we have roughly 0.15 gallons every minute. With the current rate of exchange, this means my high speed burn across the German countryside was costing me, roughly, $1.05 per minute, every minute, for just over an hour. In my opinion this is a pretty good example of totally worth it.
10-22-07, 03:37 PM
#3
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I had the exact same experience, only with a 1.4L Golf. Even in such a small car, it was a blast... until I hit rush hour traffic on the E30.
Last edited by cal_alum98; 10-22-07 at 03:41 PM.
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