Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms 0-60

I know it's just arbitrary with a Morgan and we don't buy them for the speed and acceleration, ( except for Peter was Aldermog ). My handbook gives the 0-60 mph as 7.5 secs for both the 4/4 and the +4 as this hasn't changed for the GDI engined +4 is it just a figure plucked from the ether ? The 4/4 is lighter than the +4 so maybe that is why the figures are the same despite the difference in power . My car is effectively a 4/4 body with + 4 mechanicals so what should be the 0-60 mph ? Today I timed my 0-60, in far from ideal conditions accelerating from a layby on the A130. Just the one run, with no practice, not a very good launch but 0-62 came up in 7.5 and there was defiantly room for improvement so has anybody else timed their car ? And how did you get on ?

Umm! Might just be that 7.5 sec sounds like a nice number!

The online calculators for car acceleration show that for a 900kg car with 140bhp and RWD you could expect a 0-60 time of 6.5 seconds or so, so your 7.5 second real world time sound about right to me.

For me, the 0-60 time is pretty irrelevant. The 35 - 70 time, however, is much more interesting, as that's the range in which I do most of my overtaking.

If you have a smart phone, you could try one of the apps like Dynolicious / Log Box to get some data logging functionality.

I think Tim is spot on as it is the ability to pass safely and quickly which counts. I would like more of that and spoke with Henry at Williams about a bit more oomph. With gps mine hits the rev limiter (6500) at 72mph in second and 96mph in third and seems to do that quicker than my friends plus eight .However changing up at around 3500rpm seems to deliver a smooth band of power, enough to deal with the everyday conditions. If I could gain more power I would be happy but it seems quick enough and I am still learning to drive it after all these years.

0-60 is OK as a rough indication of a cars performance, but if anybody takes it too seriously, they need to really assess what happens when road testers do it for real. Peter Dron may be along in a minute with the details. The Atom, for example uses only 2nd gear because it avoids a change up, and reckon they can do it in around 3 seconds, saving at least half a second, and I know Caterham gear many of their cars so that they can hit at least 62mph in first gear for the same reason.

I am more interested in watching my 0-12 these days.
Licence points that is.

If you can do 60 in 5 seconds then it must be about 3 seconds before you get nicked on most of the roads around here.

I'm with Tim on this, mid range is the most important measure, top speed is largely unimportant.

Agreed. All the figures in the brochure are fine but I think the true measure is when you pull out to overtake and put your foot to the floor.
If the car gets faster and faster - great. If it suddenly flattens off you soon realise all sales numbers are meaningless.

Mind you Peter with 155mph and 490Nm torque to look forward to, in George, you will have more than the best of both worlds.
Enjoy.

0-60 times are largely defined by the weight and the total frontal area of a vehicle. Given a fixed frontal area and largely similar mass the amount of power has to be exponential to improve the acceleration to a given speed.

Therefore the minimal improvement in engine power is unlikely to make a significant difference to the 0-60 time.

One other slight complicatoin in all this is the Gearbox/Final drive.... ie. it's torque/power applied at the road which counts... so for identical gearbox/diff ratio combinations the above is true - alternatively through a trick of maths - changing the gearbox or final drive ratio's you can also achieve better 0-60 times given a fixed amount of engine torque/power.

One characteristic of Morgans is that they use off the shelf gearboxes - which tend to be geared for larger saloon's. The Aero with all that Torque has a pretty useless 1st gear and it goes off the boil too quickly between shifts - there are a few people on here who have puts them up against similarly powered/weighted machinery and have struggled to keep up due to this.

To a driver this can be felt as a "lively" driving experience as opposed to one which is either "muted", "runs out of puff" or just "hard work".

You may only need to change one of the characteristics above and a car can really come alive.

IF YOU WANT TO GO FAST BUY A MOTOR BIKE....THE SLOWEST WILL PROBABLY BE FASTER THAN 95% OF CARS