Quick Cars Under $30,000

it the other direction. Maybe we'll talk about some things that go slow and and maybe we'll do that at some point today because it's kind of a nice reversal to you know, kind of see like what the opposite end of the spectrum is. Like we're gonna talk about new cars and some of the quickest new cars that you can buy, and the price range that we're gonna

be talking about is less than thirty thousand dollars. Now, the Kelly Blue Book average price for a new car in nine is around thirty seven thousand, two eighty five dollars this year, So me nineteen, I think I believe that they go with a sedan price, you know, just kind of the middle of the road price there. The average new price for a car is thirty seven thousand, two eighty five dollars. That's here in the United States. That seemed to creep up every year by about three

or four percent something like that. Sometimes this is a little as two, but usually it's around three percent. So you can count on adding three percent to that for twenty and I'm sure that will continue to climb as we get later and later here. But I want to talk about cars that are less than thirty thousand dollars to begin with. And I think before we even start that one thing that I wanted to mention here, and this is just kind of like an off topic thing

that I that I thought was interesting. Um. I made a road trip last weekend. I went to Indiana and I went to northern Indiana for a family reunion. And there were a good number of people there. They're probably eighty people that showed up in this park there and this is in Wabash, Indiana. And got a lot of family there, obviously, and you know, some distant relatives that I hadn't seen for a long time, and one of

them was my cousin. And I have seen him recently, and I know he was a car stuff listener when I had the other show. But he's a younger cousin of mine first cousin, and I do know that he

rides motorcycles. So when I saw him there at the reunion, I decided I had talked to him a little bit about that, and he said that he had recently made what was, for him, I think, the longest trip that he ever made on his motorcycle, and it was up into the southern part of Michigan and he went to I think it was like an RC track and outdoor RC track for radio controlled vehicles. That was, you know, pretty intense. I think it was a pretty cool thing.

He said that, you know, some people are spending thousands of dollars, you know, four or five, six thousand dollars on these on these rigs for um off road RC vehicles and racing them in some kind of I don't know if as a championship or whatever. It's just a

you know, weekend hobby or and something like that. Anyway, he made the trip up there, and uh, I was asking him about helmet laws because I had when I as soon as I crossed into Indiana, I realized that they did not have the same helmet laws as we have here in Georgia or even you know, in Kentucky or Tennessee. It's it's a little different. In Indiana. Anybody that is under the age of eighteen is required to wear a helmet. Anybody over the age of eighteen, it's optional.

You don't have to. And I saw this many many times on the road as I was driving there, because it's it's northern Indiana really, so a lot of time spent in Indiana, and I was noticing that. You know. So there's some people on the highway going ninety miles an hour, you know, a husband, wife on a on a great big Harley Davidson motorcycle, both of them not wearing helmets. And it's just it's a little bit startling

when you see it. I mean, it's up to them, it's their own you know, right to you know, wear them, are not wear them. It doesn't matter to me. I mean, it's up to them. But it is startling to see it, you know, especially when they're going that type of speed on the highway. It's just it seems wrong. I don't know, I don't know how better to put that again, it's it's everybody's personal decision. I agree with that. That's fine.

But I asked him if he rides a you know, wears a helmet when he rides, and he says that he always does. And one thing that he mentioned almost immediately, and this is this is where this whole story is going. I guess, is that something that you don't normally think of, and this is one very good reason to wear a helmet. Um. He was talking about how it was raining on the way there, and you know, the rain kind of hurts

your skins. As you're right. I don't know if you've ever been on a roller coaster maybe or maybe you are a motorcycle rider, uh, going you know, sixty seventy miles an hour, rain really hurts when it hits you going sixty or seventy miles an hour. The same thing with a roller coaster. It's that same feeling. He said he encountered some rain on that trip, but he said that, you know, he has always wore a helmet when he rides. And one really good lesson that he got early on

was when he was fortunately wearing a helmet. And this is one of those things that is just one of those completely unexpected things that you would never ever consider happening. But he was out for an evening ride and he was somewhere in the Indiana countryside there going I don't know, a fifty plus miles an hour, whatever it was, whatever the speed was. A bat hit him in the head. A bat. So he's flying, he's driving around a corner. Um,

you know, bat comes out of nowhere. I mean, you don't even have time to really to react, you don't have time to duck or anything. Bat strikes him in the in the face shield and of course the bats destroyed. But there's just this gross stuff all over his his helmet and you know, on his shoulder. And he said it was really kind of sickening, you know, the result of it. But he was imagining what would happen if he wasn't wearing that helmet when when he struck this thing.

I mean, it would have could cast some damage, It could have cost some you know, damage to his eye, It could have you know, broken his jar or whatever. Um. I've been in another vehicle. I was in a Cadillac one time that hit a bat, you know, in the same place in Indiana when we were out for an evening drive. My grandfather was driving, and it struck the windshield when I was in the front seat, and it was it was pretty scary. It's very abrupt and and

it happens quickly. But um, I don't think i'd ever heard of a motorcycle rider ever talking about, you know, hitting a bat in the evening. I thought it was really interesting and uh, kind of unusual. It's one of those things again that you just don't think about it, and it's probably a good reason to wear that helmet with a face shield. I do want to say, gosh, man, it seems like we're never gonna get into this topic. But there's a there's a few things that I want

to say. We're not talking about the fastest cars. We're talking about the quickest cars that you know, the zero to sixties speeds and so so quick doesn't necessarily translate to fast, and that's not I just don't think they're the same thing. Uh. Fast is where you're typically talking about something that's you know, overall, you know, high speed at top speed, that's uh, that's greater than a typical

road car. We're not talking about cars like that. We're talking about cars that can quickly get from zero to sixty miles per hour, and there's about fifteen or sixteen on this list, and I'm gonna go through these relatively quickly, and uh, and then we're gonna take this conversation in a different direction because I have found um a lot of information about the zero to sixty tests that I think you would be or you would find interesting rather

and even another test that is possibly even more meaningless. And believe it or not that maybe we'll give just a little bit away here, but uh, let's begin here now. I want to say that these cars start at six point three seconds, which is not add for zero to

sixty speed. The six point three seconds is quick. And if you if you think back, if you're old enough to remember, back into the nineteen eighties, let's say, mid nineteen eighties, anything that was going in uh, you know, sixty miles per hour in about eight seconds was considered a quick car. That was a quick acceleration. And now we're getting into you know, six seconds below six seconds, and there of course there's a lot of cars that will go faster than that, and we'll we'll talk about

those as well. You know, the fastest cars, but again under thirty thousand dollars is the is the price point that we're talking about here. And this all begins with the Accura I l X, which will go zero to sixty and six point three seconds. Now, that is a two one horse power four cylinder engine. The price here is about twenty six thousand eight, So, um, we're talking about a relatively quick car for you know, about twenty

seven thousand dollars. Um it has an eight speed, dual clutch automatic transmission, and um, I guess just a bargain small sports it in if you want to look at it that way. Now, I'm not selling in any of these cars, so I understand that I'm not trying to talk anyone up over the other one. But the speeds are gonna go faster and faster as we talk here.

And a couple of these are tied, you know, from maybe the to the top spot here, you know, like the first three I think are in the six point three second range, which includes the Fiat one Spider, which also comes in at six point three seconds. That one is priced exactly the same twenty thousand six. Oh, it's two hundars less. It's six five dollars, so five and essentially this is like um, I mean, if you want to look at it simply, this is essentially like the

Masda m X five Miata. I mean, it's very very closely related to that car. UM. It has a six speed manual transmission that's the standard for the Fiat. And again six point three seconds, pretty quick. Um. Another one that's quick is the Honest Civic s I coupe, which is at six point three seconds. Again two and five horsepower, four cylinder engine. The base prices a little bit lower here,

it's twenty two and twenty dollars. Now, you know, one one quick thing here as we as we go through, you're gonna find that a lot of these cars have automatic transmissions. And a lot of people will say, well, you know, why why even talk about those cars? Why don't just talk about the manual transmissions are typically faster.

That's not necessarily the case anymore. We're finding that some of these automatic transmissions are performing so well, they shift so well that they are able to shift better than somebody could shift a manual transmission. And that wasn't always a case in the past. But you'll find that a lot of these cars on this list do have a an automatic transmission that that performs exceedingly well or even better than um a human could shift, and I I

ten years ago, I wouldn't have said anything like that. Usually, you know, we're talking or typically we were talking about the manual transmissions and how that was the option to get because you could shift just a little bit faster.

But that's not the case anymore. Moving on to number four or sixteen, we're talking about the Dodge Challenger, which is a V six powered car, and this it's zero sixteen about three point I'm sorry three seconds now six point two seconds, six point two seconds, and that's the base price of around twenty nine and three forty. This one does jump up about a hundred horse power from the previous entry, so it's about three hundred and five horse power versus the two and five we just talked

about with the Honda Civic. Again, this one is paired to an eight speed automatic transmission, so again that's another another automatic transmission as uh well, the next one is not as a matter of fact, it's the Toyota eighty six or the suber U b r Z, which also comes in at six point two seconds and This goes back down to two h five horse power. This has a flat four engine with two hundred five horse power and a standard six speed manual transmission. That's what we're

talking about. For the six point two seconds. The base price is a little bit lower than the previous entry at eighty or six eighty for the Subaru. And then we go on to another V six powered car. We're talking about the number six of sixteen, which is the heavy Impala, and that comes in at six point one seconds. Again another three five horsepower V six engine. Um, you know, let's let's just quickly buzz through these because I do want to get to some more interesting things I think

anyways in this podcast. Um, and that is kind of the reasoning behind some of the zero to sixty tests that we see. And uh, and what they mean really are they? Are they meaningful to us in in a in a real way. Um, there's the Mini Cooper S hard top at six point one seconds. There's the Honda KNA turbo at six seconds, so and even six seconds for the for a Honda. Another Hondai which comes in

at six seconds is the Veloctri turbo. Then the Volkswagen g t I at five point eight seconds, So we're getting into the five second range here, and it's only going to drop from this point. Uh, there's the Mazda m X five Miata, which is five point seven seconds zero to sixty. Get this is this is a strange one. Buick Regal sport Back comes in at five point six seconds. Now I wouldn't have expected a Buick to be on

this list, but it is. Um This one has a two fifty horsepower turbo charge two lead four cylinder with a nine speed automatic transmission. Now I just I never would have guessed abutle could be on the on the list, especially this high. At five point six seconds, that's a that's pretty quick, and it comes in at tho so less than twenty six thousand dollars. The next one I would expect to be on this list, and that is the Subaru w r X, and that comes in at

five point five seconds. But that's still not the fastest one because we are talking about, uh, the Chevy Camaro U the two leader turbo, which comes in at five point one seconds. And then there's the Ford Mustang Eco Boost which also comes in at five point one seconds. So you can still get a car that will go zero to sixty in five seconds for under thirty thousand dollars.

And I think that's a that's a pretty good option for a lot of people if they're not willing to go as high as you know, what's the average price? Not thirty seven two five is what I said. Um, so that is I don't know. I sets a positive note and you know something that uh, um, if you're out in new car shopping, you might want to check that out if zero to sixty is something that's important to you. And it turns out that zero to sixty, I don't know. Maybe it's something that's in your head.

Maybe it's something you know I thought. I always thought that zero to sixty was an important measurement as well. And uh and there's probably a good reason behind that or why I thought that it was important. And we will talk about that in just a moment after we

come back from a word from our sponsor. And we're back and you're listening to the Fast Track, and I'm your host, Scott Benjamin, and we were just talking about a kind of a long list, I guess, of the quickest cars that you can buy for less than thirty thousand dollars and and I had about sixteen cars fifteen or sixteen cars there on that list, and I know that was a little bit overwhelming, and I hopefully we can get past this and talk about something that maybe

is a little bit more meaningful to each one of us, or maybe even less meaningful to each one of us. I don't know. I mean, that's kind of the conversation that goes along with this, because I had always looked at zero to sixty is as one of those things where you know, personally, when I'm when I'm buying a car, I want something that's kind of quick. I want something that feels good when I accelerate off the line or you know, from a standing start, you know, maybe to

get onto the highway or something like that. And I think that maybe my thinking was a little bit flawed now in the in the way that um I was I was reading into how important a zero to sixty time is for a vehicle, and it seems like there's a lot of articles out there about how zero to sixty doesn't necessarily mean as much as you might think it does in daily driving or or you know, um, the numbers are something that that manufacturers like to brag about.

And they all like to say that, you know, we have the quickest car from zero to sixty and U or um. They might even have a different measurement, as we'll talk about here in just a minute. There's one that's maybe even less meaningful, if you can, if you want to put it that way. I mean, I hate to say it that way because you know, all this stuff means something to somebody, but you know, you and I on on a daily basis, it doesn't necessarily mean

a whole lot. It's it's really cool for the manufacturers to be able to brag about this stuff, uh, you know, for for bragging rights. But um, it doesn't necessarily play out in the real world the way that we think it will, you know, the way it does on paper. There's a there's a way to look at this, I guess. And I've asked my wife. I've asked my daughter. I've asked some people around the office here. I've asked, you know, some of my relatives. I've asked some friends that I have.

You know that I correspond with, what do you think about zero to sixty time? Is it important to you when you buy a vehicle and overwhelmingly so far. Everybody, every single one is really said it doesn't really come into their their thought process when they're buying a car. I think that there's you know, something that's like that. You know, when you're in the car and you're driving it, you want it to be quick, you want it to

feel good. I don't think you necessarily look at that car and say, you know, I'm I'm interested in this car because it gets uh, it goes zero to sixty and five point one seconds versus five point eight seconds in the real world. The truth is, you're not going to use that. And I didn't really believe that until I read several articles about this, and it's going back, you know, a long time. It's not it's not something brand new that people are looking at and saying exactly why.

It doesn't necessarily matter. And the reality, I guess is that you know, you don't actually experience driving a vehicle zero sixty. It's kind of like a mismeasurement of a car's performance because it's there's very rarely a time when you're actually going zero to sixty from from a stoplight. You're typically not doing that because the speeds on that road if you're if you're unless you're breaking the law

of course, and I think a lot of people do. Uh, you know, as far as like and trying to out accelerate the person next to you, You're not necessarily going to take it up to sixty or above immediately off the stop light, unless you are again trying to race against somebody next to you, or just you know, trying to have a little bit of fun. I guess when

no one's around. Um, if you're going on too, if you're on an on ramp, um, maybe, but you're already kind of like at a rolling, rolling start, unless you're at a metered on ramp, which we have a lot of here in Atlanta, and that typically means anyway that you are accelerating into heavy traffic, and that's something different. So you're not necessarily going to take it all the

way up to sixty again. UM, I do admit that, you know, I have a lot of fun kind of blasting onto a highway if there's you know, open road in front of me. The reality is, though you know you're already starting at a rolling start, you're starting at you know, ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty miles an hour as you come around the corner to get onto the on ramp and then and then begin your acceleration. So

that's a little bit different. And you know, some of the best cars that I've had, some of the manual transmissions. My favorite gear is sometimes you know, second or third gear in that car. It's not necessarily first gear. And a lot of these cars that we're going to talk about here have kind of cheated the system in order

to get to zero sixty by gearing. And I say cheated, I mean these are manufacturers that are doing this, but um, they have geared the cars so that you know, sixty is achieved in first gear for some of the bigger V eight engine cars. When you do that, you're you kind of take out the human equation out of the

whole thing. It's just a matter of mashing down the accelerator, you know, dumping the clutch, going as fast as you can, and you get up to sixty it and no time practically, but that takes out, you know, the point where you have to shift, and that takes out a little bit of the skill out of the whole thing. And uh again, I think i've or you know, the viper does that. I think the one of the Mustangs does that maybe Corvette,

I'm not exactly sure. I can't remember the list of manufacturers that have done that where you can achieve sixty in first gear and again just kind of take some of the some of the work out of it for for the human unless you have to shift. You know, there's really not a whole lot of skill involved in going sixty and it happens really really quick. UM. But honestly, like the thing is, zero to sixty is kind of

a misleading measurement of performance. And that's because you know, most of it, like I said, most of the real world driving that we're talking about, you know, you're either starting with a rolling start or you know, maybe a better view of this, a better a better look at you know, the maybe the more usable speed would be from like you know, the thirty or even forty to sixty. UM. A lot of people use that as a measurement of

performance of a vehicle. And and the reason behind that is because that's when you're passing another car on the highway, or if you're exited in the the corner on a track, or you know, even if you're exited in the corner, um, you know, not city necessarily, maybe out in the country or something, and you want to kind of get that that that adrenaline rush as you go around the corner and then and then accelerate out. Um really from like you know, forty to sixty thirty to sixty thirty to

seventy what however you want to measure this. I mean, there's a lot of different measurements there. That's really where the power matters, and that's where you can feel the acceleration of the car. You can feel, you know, the the strength of the car, the speed, the weight, the traction, all that matters more so, um, you know, as far as the gearing goes, UM, you know, the gearing tends

to be a little bit better in that range. It's not necessarily you know, the uh the real quick I'm in first, but I have to shift into second almost immediately, unlike some of those other cars we talked about, the uh you know, the Viper or whatever. But they have taken some of the sensation out of driving, if you want to put it that way. And I think that one of the cars that they mentioned here in UH in one of the articles that I looked at, it was it's called digital trends dot com and you can

look at something that they did here. They compared the Nissan gt R and the Aston Martin v Advantage gt. Now, both of these cars claimed to be entry level supercars and they both cost around a hundred thousand dollars. So I realize that these are expensive vehicles, but you know, because they are at that same price point and they are considered kind of these entry level supercars, you can compare them and uh, and maybe I don't know, judge them based on the sensation that they give you when

you drive them. And on paper, it seems like there, as it says here in the article, there should be no comparison. The Nissan does zero to sixty and something like three seconds flat and the the Aston Martin zero to sixty speed is four point six seconds. So it seems like the g t R would be the car to drive, right, That would be the fun one to drive, and the it's definitely faster, and um, it should be should be the one that you choose, right based on

zero to sixty. So the idea here is that if the zero to sixty times are are helpful, which they should be. Here, the difference between the cars isn't just a couple of tents of a second. It's it's actually a pretty big gap there. I mean there's there's um you know, between three seconds and four point six seconds. That's a that's a lot of distance between a lot of time. Rather be when the zero to sixty when it's reached. But but they do say this, And I've

never driven either one of these cars. I've seen both of them on the road and and they're both very impressive, but I guess when you're driving them, it's a lot different. The thing is, the Aston actually feels a lot faster, and the reason is because the Nissan, I mean the Nissan GT are that the the function of getting up to sixty is so easy, it's achieved so quickly and

in first gear, that there's really nothing to it. As I just mentioned before, it's just simply a matter of you know, dumping a collection going sixty miles an hour. Anybody can do it. All the all the sensation, all the feel, all the engine sounds, all of that is is relatively tame. And I understand that it's a it's a brutal car, I get it, but tame compared to the Aston. Martin so um, they say that, you know, the aston Martin acceleration is a little bit more exciting

because it's more visceral. You hear the engine noise, you feel the vibration, you feel the steering wheel. Uh, you know, there's more feedback to the car, and that gives you a better sensation of speed. Even though you're getting there in four point six seconds, which is still lightning quick. Really you're still feeling that car and and it feels faster.

It's kind of if I had to compare this to anything, I might even say that, Um, it's like when you're in a go cart or even an open top car and you feel like, you know, when you're low to the ground, you've got the wind blowing in your hair, you can hear the noise, you can feel it. It's it's kind of rough. Uh. You could be in a go cart going thirty miles an hour and you think you're going a hundred miles an hour. That's just a

sensation that you get. And that's it's kind of the idea behind some of these cars we're talking about, and and how they have you know, that that visceral feel, that sensation that you know they're going faster than they really are. And um, I know, just as a side note, I know my my my wife always thinks I'm going way faster in my car than she's going in her car.

She's got a Jeep Jeep Wrangler, and it's a relatively you know, tall vehicle, and uh, I don't know, it just doesn't have the same sound and feel as my car does, which is it's just a sedan. It's nothing special. It's a it's a Volkswagon c C. And um, it's just lower and it just has that since sation of of a faster speed. So we'll look over and think, I'm going, you know, ninety miles an hour and I'm

going sixty miles an hour on the highway. It just has a different feel when you're that much closer to the pavement and you know, you don't have maybe that commanding view that you have above. It's a little bit maybe she feels a little bit less in control, uh than when you have that that high view advantage point. I do want to talk about a couple of cars here that have, you know, some slower times and some

faster times. I guess that you know the best and the and the worst cars for acceleration and we will do that quickly and uh and I promise you we're gonna get to this, uh, this other thing because there's a new I guess you'd call it a new record claimed by one of the manufacturers, and we do want to get to that. But we'll do that after we

take a break for a word from our sponsor. And we're back and you're listening to the Fast Track, and I'm your host, Scott Benjamin, And just before the break, we were talking about some of the best and worst acceleration rates or speeds for cars in the in the world. And you know, I want to start out with a couple of cars here, the current production cars in the US, and then we're gonna talk about some of the uh the slowest cars in the world and some of the

slowest cars in the world. Has zero to sixty times UM. If you're still paying attention to zero sixty times after you know what we've just said here on this on this podcast, you want to get the best vehicles that are on the road right now in the US. You want to look at a couple of cars that are fairly expensive. There's the portion on eleven Carrera S, which is around four point one seconds zero to sixty per hour, and then the Corvette Stingray comes in next, the three

L T at four point three. There's a Jaguar, the Camaro S S. There's the portion of seven eighteen Boxer, which is the base vehicle, comes in at four point four seconds. There's the Ford Mustang GT Premium, which comes in at four point nine seconds. Then there's a bunch of others here on this list. We're not gonna list all of them. You can find these lists if you want to at Consumer reports dot org and they're listed

under the best and worst car acceleration. I'm gonna give you possibly a better site to had to go to even than that one in just a because um there's a site that is dedicated to nothing but zero to sixty times if you want to go buy these numbers. But on this list of best acceleration vehicles, we we just kind of wrapped up with the Ford Mustang, and uh, we'll mention here that there's also a Tesla, the Tesla model excess on their Mercedes Benz, another Tesla BMW, couple

of them. Uh, there's a Nissan, there's a Maserati, of course, Dodge Jaguar. There's a whole bunch here on this list.

And then they list the slowest vehicles, and I'm going to tell you that the slowest cars in the list, these are the current US production vehicles slowest times, and so that the slowest one on the list is by far not the slowest one ever to be recorded zero to sixty, and I'll get to that in just a moment, But the current slowest production vehicle zero to sixty in the U S is the MITSUBC Mirage E S, which comes in at twelve point one second zero to sixty,

and uh the Chevrolet Spark one LT which comes in at twelve seconds, then the Fiat five hundred Sport, which is funny that they call it the Fiat Sport at eleven point three seconds, and then the Toyota Prius, the Toyota c HR, then the Honda Kona, the Buke Encore Leather Edition, Ford Focus s E, which is the one leader engine, and then the Hyundai Tucson. All of those are right around eleven seconds, you know, somewhere around eleven point one, eleven point two three, you know, et cetera.

Up to the Mitsubishi Mirage, which comes in again at twelve point one seconds. Now, those are the current US production vehicles. And you know, one one quick thing that I don't know if I mentioned this, you know, we we said that zero to sixty might not be something that you necessarily pay a whole lot of attention to. But I can tell you one case where it probably does matter to you, and it's one that a lot of people find. It's a bad position a lot of

people find themselves in. You pull out into traffic. You know, you're you're exiting the shopping mall, or you're exiting you know, the grocery store or whatever, and you kind of misjudge the traffic that's approaching from the nearest stoplight. You pull out and you realize, hey, that traffic is moving a lot faster than I thought was going to try to accelerate and get you know, ahead of them or stay

ahead of them. Uh so you know, you know, you're not making a burden of yourself there in the middle of traffic, and you realize quickly that you know, everybody's overtaken. You can't get that little car to go as fast as you wanted it to go, or that big car to go as fast as you wanted it to go.

And that's one situation I think where it pays to have a car that accelerates kind of quick those situations where you you need to for your own safety go just a little bit faster or get up to speed quickly. And uh and I found myself in that position many many times. And uh, and that is kind of scary. So maybe that's one thing that you do need to consider when you're when you're thinking about a a quick

accelerating vehicle getting back to slow accelerating vehicles. And this is I find this to be a funny list and and this is the site that I want to tell you about. The site is zero to sixty times dot com. That's zero to sixty times and sixty is six zero times dot com. And they do have they have several lists here. I mean, you can search cars by make model ranges. You know, cars that are in the two second range, cars that are in the five second range.

You can search classics, hatchbacks, whatever you want. You can break this down just about any way. Really, you can browse by anything, manufacturer whatever you like. Uh. They have current and vehicles that were are out of production. And that's where this list comes in because this is the slowest cars in the world. Zero to sixty specs of the slowest cars in the world. Some of these are kind of funny, um and some of them you would

absolutely expect. Now, I know, a lot of cars aren't built for speed, and that's for the reason that they're on this list. They're built for practicality. So a couple of the cars here that are on this list, and I'm gonna just mention one right now. It's not the slowest, but the Tata Nano is one of the cars that we've kind of made fun of in the past a little bit on car stuff, but the car does have

its place in the world. There's a there's a purpose for the Tata Nano, and the purpose was that it was it was a vehicle that was at a very very low price point. I think brand new vehicle was something like you know, three thousand U S dollars whatever

that translates to UM in India. I can't remember exactly the price point there, but it's a vehicle that was created for people that normally would be driving or riding on a motorcycle or a moped to work and to school and around, you know, just around the city, and

it's very dangerous. Have you ever seen any of the these uh intersections that are just chaotic and crowded, and you know, you see three, four, sometimes five people on a motorcycle and any know, I'm laughing a little bit, but it's it's funny, it's humorous, but it's also exceedingly dangerous, and a lot of people are injured or killed on

these every year. And this gets them into a vehicle that you know, I don't know if any of them have air conditioning or anything like that, I'm not sure, but it gets them into a vehicle that has some type of structure around them. There's a there's there's something there to protect them in the event that, you know,

there's a collision. And if you do look at some of these, you know, these crowded intersections UM and some of these UH these developing nations, you'll find that, you know, the traffic control system, if there is one even at all, is definitely not what we have here in the United States, and it's it's it's exceedingly poor and and there's a lot lot of collissions that happened and it's it's very,

very dangerous situations. So the Tata Nano is a perfect example of of you know, a vehicle that is on this list not for speed necessarily, but because you know, it was it had a purpose in mind. It was built for a purpose. And some of the other cars in this list are classics. They're they're older vehicles that were just simply commuter cars. There were city cars again, you know, one step above many or micro cars even or even you know, maybe that's what they were. Many cars.

Really they weren't built for performance and or for getting up to top speed. And sometimes sixty is the top speed of these cars. That's another issue with some of them. You know, I think the Tata Nano the top speed is sixty two miles per hour. That's the very maximum on them. In fact, the number one vehicle on the list, that is the maximum speed. So I can understand why

it takes along to get there. I'm not gonna go through the whole list, but we'll start down at number ten, which is the night Fiat eight fifty in Romatic, which goes zero to sixty and twenty five point four seconds. Now, that's a long long time. If you were to start a stop watch, you would realize just how long that is to you know, to get out into traffic, Try to accelerate, try to get up to speed with what you know, the type of speed of traffic that we

see typically here in the modern day. Number nine on the list is the fourteen Tata Nano Twist x T, which which goes zero to sixty and twenty seven seconds. Um. Then there's a couple more a couple more Tatas here on the list, and then the nineteen fifty Triumph Mayflower is another one that's on the list twenty seven point

nine seconds. So we're creeping up a little bit here, but only up by one second as we get up to the midpoint on the list, as the two thousand nine Tata Nano, which goes zero to sixty and twenty nine point four seconds. And then we go back to nineteen fifty four for a Triumph of a model of the Triumph called the Renown, and the Renown is pretty slow. It's at at twenty nine point five seconds, but that is not the slowest vehicle, and they do jump up

incrementally here, just very very small amounts. We're talking about the nineteen fifty nine Austin Mini Cooper eight fifty m K which goes zero to sixty and twenty nine point six seconds. Then another triumpher noun model again twenty nine point nine seconds. Another Triumph again, So the Triumph is represented on this list many many times, as is Tata. This is the Herald model, the Triumph Herald from nineteen sixty.

It's editions so less than a less than a leader in this car, it's a little coupe model UM twenty nine point nine seconds. But the number one vehicle on this list, the slowest zero to sixty time according to zero to sixty times dot com, is a car called the Mia Electric Car. Now. It's an all electric vehicle. It's a French made vehicle does zero to sixty and exactly thirty seconds. Now, I have the MEA pulled up here on a website and I'm looking at it right now.

It was produced between June of two thousand eleven and December of two thousand thirteen, and it was built in France. It's a three door hatchback and there was also a van edition of this vehicle. And it's not a car that was sold here in the United States. It was a European market vehicle, and of course it's just a commuter car. The top speed on this one is and one hundred kilometers per hour, which is equivalent to sixty two miles per hour. So that is the maximum speed

on this vehicle. It had a small battery is I believe that, you know, the equivalent horsepower in this thing was something like I want to I'm gonna ballpark this. I think it was like around twelve horse power or something like that. It's a very very low, low horsepower vehicle to begin with. And of course horsepower is not all that matters in this We're talking about torque and all kinds of other things, and electric cars typically have

a lot of torque, which is surprising. But you know, I guess maybe this one just had such a small electric motor that it was unable to climb up to that that maximum speed very quickly, as we see in in some of the other higher performing electric vehicles that we do see today, because there are several that are that are you know, decent performers. Now it wasn't always the case, but there are some now. But again, the Mida Electric, I think they gave the two thousand twelve

model the lowest rating. You know, I think I have just about no more really to say about zero to sixty times at this point. And uh, you know, if you find zero to sixties still am a measurement that you want to go buy for buying your vehicle, you know, please do. If you find that still interesting, please do.

And I still do look at it as kind of a standard, and it's just one of those equal playing fields that everybody can kind of look at and say like, okay, I can I can see where one car relates to another one or how it compares on again, an even playing field. Somewhat, Um, maybe that even playing field isn't quite as even as as we're thinking when I when I tell you what I'm gonna tell you next, because there is a new article that came out just recently from Car and Driver, and there is um gosh, I

don't know the best way to put this. Maybe there's a there's a new king in town and it is the Ford Mustang Shelby GT. Five hundred, and this one goes by a different measurement, and it's a measurement that we don't hear an awful lot about, but it is out there, and it's something that manufacturers used for selling vehicles. It's a marketing tool, really, and uh it is impressive. I mean it is and until you maybe parse this out and figure out exactly what we're talking about here.

So we're talking about a standing start up to one hundred miles per hour and then back to us standing stop again. And there's a little bit of trickery that goes on here. And uh, I want to tell you that the Mustang Shelby GT five currently holds this record, and Ford claims the number is ten point six seconds, So zero one d to zero in ten points six seconds, which is really really fast. I mean that's a that's

a quick quick speed. We were talking about, you know, cars that could barely muster up to sixty in that time, and to climb from sixty to one hundred and then back to zero again that takes an awful lot more time in a lot of cases. And if they can even do it, really, this car goes on sale this fall and it will begin somewhere around seventy four dollars, So there's a seventy four m s r P on this vehicle. And the thing is you have to look at this number and again break it down into what

it really means. This has been done by several manufacturers before. And here's how this this all works out. And I didn't know this until I read this article. I thought that they were doing a a true you know, standing start accelerate up to hundred and then back down to zero. That's not the way that this all plays out. The way these magazines kind of put these numbers together is a little bit deceptive, but they're accurate in a way.

And I'll tell you how this all happens. What they do is they take a car from zero to one hundred and they measure that speed. So let's say that a car can go from zero to one hundred in I'm going to take the Camaro S S one ll E as an example here. Let's say it goes from zero to one hundred and nine point one seconds. So they get that speed, and that's easy to achieve, you know, you just hammer the accelerator and you get to nine

point one second, sets zero one. Then they take another separate test where they're already going one hundred miles per hour, and then they break as hard as they can without lock up. And for this car this Camaro S s L E and one L E that I'm talking about one hundred to zero the breaking speed in in time, I guess I should say the time is three point

eight seconds. So they add together the nine point one seconds and the three point eight seconds, and then they get the estimated zero to one hundred zero speed of twelve point nine seconds. So I think, I mean, everybody can understand how this is all working out right, It's not it's not zero to one D zero, it's it's more like zero to one hundred. And then we'll start a new test one D zero and then add the

two numbers together and that's what we get. And that's how they measure all these and uh, that is something that I just I had no idea that that's the way they were doing. And I think there have been cars in the past that have done this. Now, Carol Shelby did it back in nive in the Shelby Cover and you might be surprised to learn that the Cover seven had a speed This is still quick at fourteen point five seconds. But when you consider that the Ford

Mustang Shelby GT. Five hundred, the current vehicle that's gonna be on sale this fall does it in ten points six seconds. Uh, four teen point five sounds relatively slow. I mean when you're talking about, you know, vehicles in in this type of performance range. Other cars that do it quickly are the Ford Mustang G T which has the Performance Pack Level two. I don't know exactly what that means, h third teen point two seconds. And then of course there's the the Mustang Shelby GT three fifty

which does it and around twelve point six seconds. Other cars that you know have done this. There there are other vehicles, of course, you know, the corvettes always in there somewhere. Of course, manufacturers do kind of play around with these a little bit, as you can see, and

you know, they give you the best numbers. Obviously, of course they want to turn in the best numbers, as do you know some of the magazines that put out these numbers that the testing is just a it's a it's a little bit deceptive if you look at it that way. And again I had no idea. So what they're doing is they're extrapolating now how quickly the the Mustang, the current Mustang we're talking about, the the Mustang Shelby GT. Five. They're extrapolating that that one will be able to accelerate

in six points seven seconds. And that's based on what they assume the breaking is going to be, and they assume that it's going to be somewhere around three point eight seconds because in this group, you know, in this this this type of vehicle that we're talking about, you know, the heavy end of this group, they're estimating that one hundred zero times about I guess about three point nine seconds.

Then they subtract, you know, from the the ten points six seconds, and you know, they get the number that they think it's going to be. So and six point seven seconds zero to one hundred is what they're estimating to be the zero to one hundred times for this vehicle. So again you look into this whole thing because there's a lot of interesting ways that manufacturers play around with the numbers and and make it kind of work for them. And this is nothing new. Manufacturers has done this for

a long long time. Uh kind of played around with the stuff and and kind of uh slant the test to kind of go the way they want to, or you know, gear the car so that it exceeds um you know, certain parameters that they wanted to so they can then have these bragging rights, you know, zero to one hundred or zero to sixty or whatever it happens

to be. But definitely dig into that stuff if if that type of thing is important to you, and you can go to Car and Driver dot com or you know, zero to sixty times dot com or any of those sites that I've talked about. Digital Trends had some articles on this. You can find zero sixty times zero one hundred times for just about every vehicle out there. Really, it's pretty easy to do. And you know, honestly, um, I don't think I have a whole lot more to

say about this. Again, I hope you find it just kind of a good starting point for your research and you're you're delving into exactly, you know, what's important to you when you're buying a new vehicle as far as acceleration goes. And if you want to find us on Twitter, we are the fast Track Pod, and on Facebook and on Instagram we are the fast Track Show. And we also have a brand new website that you can check out and that it's called the fast Track Show dot com. Again,

the fast Track Show dot com. That's our new website, and that's where we're gonna house all of our podcasts from this point forward. So I know we're just beginning here, and uh, we'll soon have kind of an archive of material there for you to search back and you know, check out some of the earlier episodes. Right now, we're still early on and in this whole thing. Of course, you can you know, leave reviews if you want to, I mean, which I think is always nice to do. Um,

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