[Humdizzle]

0-60 is one of the most useless measures in my opinion. 1/4 mile and more importantly trap speed and 60-130 times are more relevant for me and my driving. Most the time when I'm having fun its not doing a burnout at a light. Its doing pulls on the highway or hitting a back road where coming out of corners i'll probably be doing 50-60mph + anyway.

Also most car manufacturers intentionally have second gear go to 60mph rather than say 50-55... because they know people look at 0-60 times. Some cars like the viper/vette I think have 1st gears that go all the way to 60mph.

The whole reason dog leg gearboxes don't exist is because of this. the time for the 1-2 shift is heavily emphasized... when in reality on a track or doing spirited driving you would want 2-3 directly opposite of each other.

I'm not sure how 0-60 plays a factor in daily driving. why not just get in the lane you need to be in early on rather than trying to jockey around for position? my old ass civic will still do 60mph by the end of the on ramp... so its sufficient enough to get the job done.

Carlos Lago of Motortrend/Edmunds has a good video on this subject:

[SteveinArizona]

Originally Posted by billnchristy

I do know that nobody programs transmissions like BMW (in the "normal" car world). Be it ZF or Aisin, the job they do is incredible. A RAV4 has an Aisin 8 speed and 200hp and it can't get out of its own way and Toyota programmed it like a diesel to keep mpg up so it is a struggle to rev out past 2k unless you floor it but my X2 can drop the hammer pretty hard.

That plays a big part.

I do think on the street that rolling acceleration is more important than 0-60 and again, the transmission programming plays heavily there.

I agree. I cross shopped a Volvo 400 HP XC60 against the BMW 530e. With all the extra HP I expected the Volvo to shine. Instead it felt slower than the 530e (so I bought the 530e). I think most car makers tune the transmissions for fuel economy and BMW does that less and does an incredible job on tuning the ZF 8 speed.