One of the best-known metrics when it comes to cars is the magical 0-60 time. And for good reason! It’s a really visceral sort of metric, something you can feel in your gut far more than how many miles per gallon or electric battery range or even top speed. It’s the amount of time it takes to transform an inert couple tons of metal and rubber just sitting there, immobile, into a couple of tons of metal and rubber that are devouring a mile every single minute. It’s exciting! You stomp that pedal, and get shoved back in your seat, and everything whips out of the back of your mind except that base, visceral joy of speed. I love it. I love cars that accelerate quickly! And yet, at the same time, I’m noticing something about the current automotive landscape. Pretty much everything is quick as hell now, so much so that cars that go from paperweight to cheetah in, say, four or three, or even two-point-something seconds aren’t even that uncommon anymore. As a result, I think we’re in a bit of a collective delusionary period, and maybe it’s time to take a hard look at things and remind ourselves of something important: Crazy low 0-60 times, while fun, just aren’t that important, and the vast majority of drivers – as we always seem to come back to when it comes to what our cars are really capable of – never really even graze the limits of what their cars can do.
I was thinking about this because of a tweet I saw last week:
Tesla has no business making a car this slow.
At the Model 3 event Elon said:
"At Tesla, we don't make slow cars."0-60 in 6.6 seconds is SLOWER than the Prius Prime.
Actually and literally embarrassing.
Tesla shouldn't make a single vehicle that does 0-60 in over 5 sec. pic.twitter.com/yjNwrgRJr7
— ???? Scaremy Pumpkins ???? (@jeremyjudkins_) October 4, 2023
Now, I’m not sure of this person’s motives here, but 6.6 seconds from a dead stop to 60 mph isn’t slow. And, sure, the Prius Prime only needs 6.4 seconds to get to 60. But a 1974 Porsche 911 needed seven seconds flat to get from 0-60. And no one thought that car was slow. A Ferrari 308, like the one Magnum P.I. drove, that took 6.7 seconds to get to 60. And he managed to catch all those Hawaiian ne’er-do-wells, no problem.
This guy says that Tesla “shouldn’t make a single vehicle that does 0-60 in over 5 sec” which, just for reference, is pretty damn close to what a Shelby Cobra would do back in the day (4.8 or so seconds), and people raced those things. Sure, 5 seconds to 60 is fun, no question, but the idea that a carmaker that makes mainstream, general-use cars that hardly anyone takes to the track needs to never make a vehicle that takes longer than 5 seconds to get to 60 is just, well, stupid.
Look, fun is fun! I get it! But here’s the thing: in the real world, on real streets, people don’t accelerate that fast! Unless there’s something really horrific happening right behind them, like if a pack of sasquatches caught on fire and ended up on a runaway hovercraft careening down the highway. Beyond that, people are – and I mean no offense to any people that may be reading this – are generally too chickenshit to really stomp that go pedal so hard they go from 0-60 in, like, 5 seconds. They just don’t!
People will hit the gas to get going and feel that burst of intoxicating speed, but the vast majority of drivers will very soon let up, because on public roads, they’re pretty good at not being idiots.
I know there’s an argument that you need to have a car that’s sufficiently quick so it can merge onto highways safely, and I think that set of cars comfortably contains, let’s see, oh yeah, every single car you can buy today. And, really, pretty much anything on the road that can hit highway speeds. I know this because I drive a car every day that is likely one of the most marginal ones, taking a hilarious 16 or so seconds to hit 60, thanks to those 52 moseying horses under the hood. That’s likely too slow for almost everybody, and I get that, but I also know that even that glacial pace is not unsafe for merging. I know because I do it all the time, just fine.
Though you know what? If I try to think objectively about getting 1600 pounds of mass to move at a mile-a-minute, a span of 16 seconds to make that happen really doesn’t seem like much at all. We take the power of cars for granted, I think.
Really, anything that can get to 60 in about 10 seconds will probably be completely fine for most drivers. I went ahead and said seven seconds in the headline because, well, why not? You should have a little fun.
Maybe that guy in the tweet was joking? That’s certainly possible. But even so, it’s still an interesting thing to think about. In this era of all-torque-from-a-standstill electric motors, fast 0-60 times are no longer the exotic, barely-attainable things they once were. Race-car-adjacent 0-60 times aren’t rare any more, and as a result our perceptions have become skewed.
So, all I’m saying here is that while I get moving very quickly is an absolute blast, we all may be going off the rails here. Getting to 60 in six, seven, even eight seconds is plenty. And, remember, getting these 0-60 times isn’t easy! To get these times, carmakers and test drivers do multiple runs in ideal conditions, and sometimes those numbers are not exactly what you think, because they’re often measured with what’s known as rollout.
That means that the cars aren’t being tested for a true zero to 60 time; instead, the cars start moving and get to go about a foot before timing even starts. That’s not really 0-60 at all, is it? Here’s a video talking about this with someone who once shook our own David Tracy’s hand without even looking at him or acknowledging he was even there:
Take away this rollout, um, advantage, and some cars that claim incredibly low 0-60 times can’t really do what they claim.
Point is, it’s all kind of bullshit, and chances are great that whatever you’re driving has a 0-60 time that’s just fine. If you want to drag race, then that’s a whole other thing! But, for everyone else? Seven or under is fine.
I’m fully in agreement with this, and honestly, I’d go so far as to say anything under 9 seconds is perfectly acceptable for 99% of the driving population. Hell, I’ve had trucks that won’t even do 60. My present DD is a ‘96 GMC and I think it’s 0-60 when new was around 9. Ive never once felt it slow, and it’s lazy torque curve means it pulls hard enough all the way up to 90 or so.
My current DD is listed as upper-6s 0-60 and it’s perfectly fine to drive. My first car was somewhere around 9s and it was fine, too. My other car can supposedly do 3.5s but good luck hooking it up on the street.
There’s so rarely an opportunity to punch it from 0-60 that it really doesn’t matter. Maybe 30-75 to cover freeway merges is more useful.
For me, it’s not the number, it’s the feel. A high torque/low hp engine can feel quicker than the numbers, while high hp/low torque engines can post good numbers, but not feel all that fast. I prefer the former (and for a dozen other reasons, as well).
1,320 reasons?
No, wider drivability, reliability, durability, and maintenance reasons, plus efficiency depending on how one drives and the car’s size. Like, my early’80s Subarus had a power:weight ratio of about 1:30 with a 0-60 in 13 seconds on a good day, but almost never felt slow and were even street fighters in traffic battles—certainly faster in the real world than modern economy cars with 0-60 around 10 seconds or even a little under because there was no electronic throttle lag, transmission lag, and the peak torque was basically off idle, so no waiting until an engine speed the Subaru would be at near redline* for peak torque.
*Near its redline, but at a higher speed than the modern shitbox, since the torque allowed taller gearing.
At my age, I’m looking for anything that makes going from 65 to 90 or so feel like it takes forever. I’m talking about years of course.
The biggest issue with the average person and their relation to 0-60 times is the average person will never actually put their foot to the floor.
I’ve asked several people who complained that their car is slow, why they won’t.
“Well because the car will make noises!”
Yep. Want to go faster? Deal with some noise for a few seconds. Though for a lot of people, that appears to be an unacceptable tradeoff. They’ll do 30% throttle or less only.
<head explodes>
I say this as someone at 4.5s or less for a decade (and had some sub-5 cars before then if you didn’t care about clutch or transmission life), and has rented a Nissan Versa in the intervening years and found that Versa just fine because I was willing to mat it.
I came here to say this, but you already did. I’ve met so many people who genuinely believe that they will harm their car if they get the rpms too high or if it makes too much noise. Idk where the belief comes from. Misremembered advice from someone referring to not over-revving manual cars?
“I’ve met so many people who genuinely believe that they will harm their car if they get the rpms too high or if it makes too much noise. Idk where the belief comes from.”
Years and years ago I once watched someone driving by in a ratty old Mazda RX4. I don’t know why but they were revving the shit out of that thing at 20-25mph. Its screaming kept going up, up, up while going just a bit faster till finally there was a bang, then nothing.
So I can assure you if you get the revs too high you WILL harm the car AND you will make bad noises. Even in a rotary.
Joke’s on you: rotaries always make bad noises.
Well I didn’t say the screaming was a GOOD noise…
I was more referring to people with automatics, who have driven automatics all their life, and for some reason still think their engine will suffer serious harm if the revs get a little high. Those are the only people I’ve encountered who are afraid of the upper end of the tach. In a manual, that advice makes perfect sense, doubly so on older ones that don’t have any kind of rev limiter.
I had a friend in college who drove a manual. She would lose her MIND if you let the rpms get to 3000 before shifting. It was a very slow, frustrating experience to drive that car.
I rode with a cabbie in Indonesia for a full day who would shift before the engine even got near 2K. The second the poor little Nissan Sunny stopped lugging, he’d throw it into next gear. I presume it was a gas saving measure, but I am not sure if shifting THAT early actually saves any gas.
When I was in the middle east, the cab drivers practically had an art of almost but not quite stalling when shifting. It was like they knew expertly and precisely how to buttery-smooth operate the clutch with the engine at the lowest possible rpm so that it wouldn’t stall, but simply protest a little.
And then once it’s moving, they’re terrifyingly efficient at finding gaps between other cars to dart through, getting you wherever you’re going as quickly as possible, fearing for your life all the way.
Great point, and the same dynamic is why people think they need an F250 diesel to tow more than 7,000 lb, because the gas engines need to use some RPM on hills/acceleration.
It’s loud, but it’s not hurting anything.
Fun story. I had a coworker who worked for an OEM doing engine work in the late 80’s and 90s. They ended up having a big warranty issue on one of their engines. They had done all the standard dyno durability tests and it passed with flying colors. What they discovered from the warranty investigation is that when the engine was only operated at very low rpm it could eventually lead to oiling issues and sometimes sludging. It passed the beat it to hell Indy 500 dyno test, but the customer base was older and drove slowly never revving the engine very high and thus the failure occurred. After that a new slower durability cycle was added.
What amazes me is a F150 hybrid does a sub 5.5 second 0-60 and a sub 14 second 1/4 mile. A world with pickups this fast is strange.
A world where pickup trucks can flirt with $100k is not my kind of strange.
the only street use i can think of for 0-60 (as opposed to 30-60) is from the red light at the bottom off a metered on-ramp. mine is red a few mornings per week, but the heavy freeway traffic is generally flowing about 15-30 mph at that point. occasionally the meter is on for no apparent reason (traffic is moderate and 65+), but even then, people are rarely dicks about giving you spacing (my car is listed at 7.8 seconds 0-60)
5-60 is much more important than a flashy 0-60 time, which is very often accomplished with clutch-dumping, brake torquing, launch control, or some other method unlikely to be used on public roads.
That said, fast cars are awesome and diminishing the importance of performance is how we end up all driving soulless appliances IMO.
True, but the stat wars of comparing 0-60 times isn’t really helping with driving engagement. Fast cars are great, but we should be pairing them with great handling and a good experience for the driver.
If it’ll go 0-60 in 4 seconds, but I need to slow way down for a gentle curve, I don’t really get to drive a fast car (unless it’s for drag racing, then there’s an exception).
Ironically the recent obsession with the stupidest, most overrated stat metric of all, Ring times, does help make better handling cars.
0-60 is dumb though and I’m happy not knowing how fast any of my cars can do it.
Valid point about ring times, though I only hear car folks talk about those. Normies talk about 0-60 because it’s easily digestible data.
I know this is a popular opinion among enthusiasts, but to play devil’s advocate for a minute I will note that I get to enjoy 0-60 times every time I stop for a light or stop sign or merge onto the highway. I only get to enjoy good handling when I find a fun road with curves to drive, which is far less common.
Obviously I want cars that both go fast and handle well, but if you put a gun to my head and made me pick one or the other I’d probably go with the better 0-60 time.
Sure, within reason. The faster the car, the less likely I am to floor it in either situation. While my Niro’s in the shop, I have a loaner EV6. I have floored it once, very briefly, and don’t really think there’s a lot of use for that acceleration on public roads. In normal driving, there is a limit to how much acceleration you’re going to want. I think that good handling in curves will feel better to drive any time you’re in curves. Maybe it’s my location in the mountain west, but I’ll use And anything under a sub-10 0-60 is going to give you enough power to speed out of a red light as fast as you really want to do on public roads.
And a poor handling car with fast acceleration is dangerous, especially in the hands of a person who isn’t a good driver. And, let’s face it, people who don’t even like driving are getting into faster and faster vehicles.
I’d say 10 seconds is fine for most. Maybe even slower. As we move toward PHEV’s and EV’s, it’s really the 0-30 or 0-40 that matters. How often does one really go 0-60? Most of my driving is from a stop to 30-40 mph. Our fastest car is a BMW 330e. It does 0-60 in around 5.3 seconds if you are using gas and electric, but in electric only mode (which is the way we drive it 95% of the time), it’s only using a 113hp/195lb-ft motor (without the assistance of the 181hp gas engine) and does 0-60 in something like 12 seconds, but 0-30 is about 4 seconds and that’s still faster than most cars will leave a stoplight because they aren’t flooring their cars. I’m not making any loud engine noises and there’s no drama, but I quickly move away from the stoplight faster than anyone else that is driving “normally”. And it feels plenty fast.
Most people don’t drive their car flat out every day, so I bet most people are using 25-50% throttle most of the time.
I drive my MGB full out most of the time, and I keep up with traffic just fine. I’m sure it’s near a 15 second 0-60 time with its 62.5HP engine.
For the average person (and even any enthusiast hasn’t had their hedonic treadmill reset by modern turbocharged cars) my metric for the average person is: 9-10 second 0-60 is acceptable, 8-9 sec 0-60 good side of adequate, 7-8 seconds feels pleasantly peppy even sporty, 6-7 especially by the time you hit 6 genuinely feels fast and will quickly exceed the sped limit anywhere. Faster than 6 feels like a super car.
My previous daily was a 2004 Mazda 3s, C&D 0-60 of 7.8 seconds felt zippy to me, fel to the average person felt borderline fast. Current daily a 2008 Porsche Cayenne S, C&D 0-60 of 6.1 seconds is enough when floored to piss off any “normal” non car enthusiast passengers. I have driven faster, notably 997 911 C4s, Tesla Model S P85D, new 3.0L Supra, and a F80 M3-none of the above can even come close to being fully “exercised” even by a skilled enthusiast on a public road, I cannot for the life of me fathom any non-enthusiast “my car is a refrigerator” car owner needing faster than 7 seconds. In my experience everyone likes cars in the peppy range: 6.5-8.0 seconds but beyond that it will rarely if ever get used and if it does I pity the drivers around them since its from someone who has neither the desire or skill to go that fast.
“Here’s a video talking about this with someone who once shook our own David Tracy’s hand without even looking at him or acknowledging he was even there”
Backstory???????? What did Dollar Store Adam Sandler do to hurt you???
Also, agree on the 10s. 7 is downright sporty.
I think it does depend on the engine too. I have a little turbo 4 that feels a lot slower around town than my old v8. Flat out probably 3s faster to 60 but I have to rev it out more to keep up with traffic.
I would say more like 14 seconds, that’s still vastly, vastly faster than most drivers accurate from rest at a red light or stop sign in real world conditions
I owned a 1977 Mercedes 240D with 4-speed manual. Factory quoted 28.5 second 0-60 time, which seemed pretty accurate. I’m still alive.
Good point. I learned to drive in my parents 81 Chevy G20 van with an automatic and the diesel engine option. I’m sure it was well into the 20’s for 0-60 and I’m still alive too.
I drove one of those but with an automatic, and was stunned to discover something slower than my 1972 Beetle.
I daily a 100hp car with a ~10 second 0-60 time and it is fine.
Only a few times a year is it an issue, and that is usually when some idiot in front of me is entering a free flowing highway at 7.62mph. Usually I can detect the slowness early enough to hang back and leave some acceleration distance. When that doesn’t work out, I test out the rev limiter.
I have a Model 3 from the first-ish batch in 2018 — the long-range one with just one motor for the rear wheels. It’s rated for just over 5 seconds and is way more acceleration than I ever need — and having previously daily driven a 2004 Prius, which took at least twice that long to 60. And I never had issues with the Prius’s acceleration being too slow for daily needs.
I daily a 2011 Mazda 2, 0-60 in the 9-10 second range. Plenty quick. I’ll admit it’s definitely more like 12-13 when loaded with people, but even then, it’s fine.
My Fiesta ST nominally does 0-60 in 6.7 seconds, and any number of Camrys and Siennas will stomp it in a drag race from the line. But there’s an awful lot more to fun in a car than 0-60; particularly braking and cornering, both of which the FiST is stellar at. Truth be known, if the FiST was actually a quicker, faster car I’d probably get into real trouble with it instead of it being more fun than a barrel full of monkeys. In my eyes an engaging “slow car fast” is still the ticket for driving fun.
I’m with you. I have a fast car (allegedly 5ish, but makes silly low end torque so is also fast in the real world) and a slowish car (over 7s, no torque below 3k) and the slowish one is probably more fun to flog on the street.
It has really good chassis balance, despite not handling that well by measures like body roll. I autocrossed it one time and even that was super fun. Had to throw it around like a lunatic to get it to go fast.
I daily about a 9 second 0-60 and it’s more than enough. It’s not the quickest or slowest I’ve had, and I am pretty set on getting something faster next, but that’s not because it’s necessary.
Even my Citation was plenty fast. Looks like it was good for 60 in about 12.5 seconds. I never had a problem getting onto the freeway or anything else. And there was a time that a lot of Geo Metros got by just fine and they had a 0-60 of eventually.
Amen.
To add, your average car shouldn’t accelerate any faster than its driver can keep control of it. If that means slower cars we’ll still be all better for it.
Overall I agree. The only time having a slow car 0-60 really sucks is when you get behind someone on an on-ramp who doesn’t use it as intended to get up to highway speed. That was always a painful experience back when I had a ’13 Subaru Crosstrek with its abysmal 0-60 in 10 seconds. If you could build your momentum before you have to merge it was fine, but alas there are stupid people out there.
Otherwise, the 10s 0-60 was perfectly acceptable in 99.9% of driving, though I do love the 4.3s 0-60 in my Volvo S60 T8 haha.
I agree as well. I drove a ’14 Impreza with the CVT for eight years and it was fine. My first car was a 1990 Volvo 240 (no turbo), which was even slower, and it was fine. Neither car was exciting to drive, but I never had a close call or anything that was related to slow acceleration, just frustration with how far in advance you had to think about passing. Now I have an Audi that does 0-60 in the mid 5s (which I know isn’t fast by modern standards) and it feels like a rocket ship to me.
With you. Drove shitboxes, then diesel Mercedes for decades. Now I have 2 cars that supposedly do 0-60 under 5&1/2 seconds and it feels like the scene in Spaceballs where the universe goes plaid when I stomp them.
I’m easily amused
Shoot, my CR-V does 0-60 in 7.9 seconds. I’ve never had an issue with it. Surprised to see my wife’s 2022 Elantra does it in 8.1 per the reports. They must have been using eco mode. In sport mode, I’ve done it in close to 6 flat.
This is about how I felt in the 90’s. 7 seconds felt quick. Same with 80mph. We have 80 mph limits and that is good enough for me. Some people still do 85-90, but im good with 80.
My old forester XT would reliably run mid 6’s at my elevation and sometimes high 5’s and that felt very fast. Of course, with the Land Cruiser, anything that gets there in single digit seconds feels fast to me.
I’m of the age where I think a 10 year old car is from ~2000 and anything that does 0-60 in 4 seconds or less is a supercar, so my brain is clearly stuck in about 2008 and my opinion probably isn’t very relevant, but I totally agree with you. My daily driver Mazda 3 with the smallest engine available does 0-60 in about 8 seconds, and while it’s not fast, it’s totally adequate. Ironically it does 0-60 quicker than my ’85 Ford LTD LX which at the time of its release was the quickest American sedan you could buy with a 0-60 time of 8.7 seconds!
Funny how much things change. Ten years ago most people were still looking at my friends and I weird for trying to build fast project cars. Tesla starts making quick cars and suddenly 0-60 matters.
To who?
My car does 0-60 in over eight seconds. It has never posed an issue. There is no such thing as a slow modern car. (No, a Mirage is still not slow)