Posted on 01/06/2011 9:22:43 AM PST by Notary Sojac
Major lame comeback. Keep trying though. Someday you’ll get it right.
Here’s a fun little story about some guys running the Honda Odyssey Minivan against a 1960’s era Jaguar and Porsche. Seems the stock Minivan ran the course faster than the Jag and equal to the Porsche. With an upgraded set of Michellin Sport Touring tires the Minivan beat the Porsche.
But - they obviously love their sports cars too!
Clean freak.
My Dodge Neon would have been competitive at the Indy 500 too. Probably around 1911.
Very true. I just thought it was wierd reading it, when as a kid I drooled over the neighbor’s jag and my brother’s friend with a porsche. And now I have a minivan that can “compete” with them. (Well, only if the seconds matter!)
A long excerpt from the article:
There’s no doubt that cars have gotten better over the years. As we proved with this demonstration, a modern minivan can best the cream of the crop of sports cars from the 1960s. But maybe instead of just examining our test data, we should examine our concept of the word “better.”
The Odyssey is a modern marvel. It’s as reliable as your wristwatch, versatile and has tons of storage space while maintaining enough people room for the average family to travel in comfort from Point A to Point B quickly and efficiently and with a minimum of fuss.
You could also watch a movie during the trip if you wanted.
But the Porsche 356 and Jag XKE are cars that people make movies about.
In a dystopian vision of a nightmare future where all of us wear gray jumpsuits and go off to our workfun cubes after taking our breakfast pills after 8.2 state-sanctioned hours of “sleep—sponsored by Pepsi,” we’ll all drive Odysseys. No one will ever be late, no one will ever arrive at their appointed function covered in oil and smelling of gas. No one will know how to make SU carburetors work, since they won’t be able to do that by downloading the proper fuel matrix into their handheld “joypod.”
And cars won’t be a damn bit of fun.
Sure, cars are better now, if “better” is a measure of function—of how well an item fulfills its primary duty. But in becoming better, today’s cars have primarily focused on eliminating what makes the Porsche and Jag so exciting—that being the journey itself. Everything on the Honda is designed either to be a distraction from the actual journey—like the DVD, climate control and so on—or to distance the occupants as far as possible from the experience of the trip.
The Porsche and the Jag, on the other hand, are all about the experience of the trip, which is great, because if measured by any other standard, they simply fall short.
So we come to the conclusion that we have indeed been comparing apples and oranges all along. The average modern passenger car, with the benefit of decades more R&D plus modern materials and manufacturing technology, is supremely competent, fast and safe. It can also be rather antiseptic.
And sports cars, we find, are about more than generating numbers—hell, any minivan can do that. They are about the fact that when certain parts are put together in certain ways by certain people, they become something greater than their own sum.
Sports cars—whether they be our 356 or XKE, or a TR3 or an MR2 or an MX-5—are about making the driver feel like he or she is the coolest person on the planet, even if only for a little while. Sports cars aren’t about getting somewhere to have an experience, they are an experience, every time the key is turned.
Go on a trip in the Odyssey, and you’ll remember the destination; go on a trip in a sports car, and you’ll remember the drive.
That you were succesful in hunting the rarest of grains. The Giant Wonder Bread!!
Though I fear it is a bit soggy.
ping
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