Without objective performance numbers, our road tests would read like a group session at a '60s-era psychologist's office: a bunch of ungrounded emoting of limited usefulness. Enthusiasts don't care how fast the car feels. Since 1949, we've told you how fast it is. Starting with our second issue, performance testing has been a integral and defining component of Motor Trend. "We weren't the first to road test cars, but we were the first to standardize our procedures and to use accurate, specialized equipment," boasted Assistant Technical Editor Bob McVay way back in Nov. '63.
Now as then, quantifying maximum performance serves many purposes. First, it sheds light on the industry. Until car magazines started publishing performance data, those numbers were closely guarded secrets. Imagine not knowing fuel mileage, 0-60-mph acceleration, handling acumen, or stopping distance. Also, objective numbers allow our writers to calibrate their seat-of-the-pants impressions: Some cars that feel fast aren't and some that don't are. Performance data are an excellent bias filter: The stopwatch, analog or digital, doesn't lie.
Another reason for recording our own performance data is that you, our valued readers, seek out hard numbers in order to make your own assessments, compare different cars, and successfully contest arguments in garage, barroom, and courtroom. Finally, we don't mind a bit when manufacturers quote our test numbers and mention Motor Trend in their advertisements.
Results of our first crude attempt at acceleration testing appeared in the Oct. '49 issue. Editor Walt Woron rode in the passenger seats of a pair of MG TCs (one wearing an aftermarket supercharger) and measured acceleration using a stopwatch against the car's speedometer. The blown MG went 0-60 mph in a then-quick 14.2 seconds. (In testing today, if a current car were that slow, it would mean I'd left the parking brake on.)
In short order, Woron discovered the hazards of timing acceleration against speedometers: Speedos lie. Even today, it's not unusual to find one that's 3 or 4 mph optimistic at 60 mph, and twice that error was common 40 years ago. To counteract this, in the late '50s Motor Trend began employing a fifth wheel: an externally mounted, calibrated, auxiliary speedometer. A passenger was required to ride along, operate a quartet of stopwatches (to clock 0-30-, 45-, 60-, and 75-mph times) and pencil down the results. With small variations of equipment and procedures, this became the standard for the next 30-plus years.
In the late '70s a stone-age computer replaced the organic data acquisition system (a.k.a. stopwatch-operating passenger). The fifth-wheel package was upgraded again in the late '80s with a bronze-age computer. In 1995, we switched to a radar-based Stalker Acceleration Testing System, which interfaced with a then-modern/now-antique laptop computer (ours has been upgraded several times since). Because the highly calibrated radar-based Stalker ATS is usually able to be operated from trackside as a car performs, as opposed to having to be mounted to each subject, it allows us to rapidly test a lot of vehicles in succession: Important, since we test some 300 cars and trucks each year. That's about 10 times the duty of our road test ancestors.
In 1954, we described our acceleration testing procedure: "With automatic-transmission-equipped cars, starts are made with one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator, holding it down as far as necessary to build up torque through the engine and drivetrain." That's pretty much how I run automatics today, though I do make at least one run with no such brake torquing. With manual tranny cars, I try several levels of wheelspin, starting with none and working up from there, in an effort to get the most the car can offer.
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