3 ms·
Only electric vehicles start at 0 RPM. Normal combustion engines idle under 1,000 RPM and the M5 has a fairly flat torque curve for a naturally aspirated car wi
by kerryfalk 14y ago
Only electric vehicles start at 0 RPM. Normal combustion engines idle under 1,000 RPM and the M5 has a fairly flat torque curve for a naturally aspirated car with somewhere around 260lbs at idle. That's very good and about 50% of its peak torque.
The M5s also have SMG which is a computer controlled manual transmission. No manually operated clutch. Even has a launch mode if you want the computer to control wheel spin for you so you get the best possible launch.
Throttle response is still the wrong metric to use here. And is a bit of a red herring in the discussion.
- jblow 14y agoMy 2006 M3 had SMG and I didn't like it much. (Fine for highway driving, sucks for city street driving). Maybe the new one is better?
- kerryfalk 14y agoI'm not a fan of the SMG myself (or equivalents from other manufacturers) nor is anyone else I know. But it's not really because of any real performance metric. SMG is far better at changing gears than any of us mortals could accomplish. But it's just not fun. If you didn't like yours for the same reason I don't know if you'd like the new iterations. You're still not doing the shifting yourself. ps. Your project looks interesting and I signed up for the mailing list. The success page said an email had been sent but I haven't received anything. Not sure if there's a long delay or it's a bug.