top speed

Faster than you ought to drive. Don't test it.

North American Spec differs: the Canadian model apparently doesn't have a speed limiter on it, and three people I've talked to (here on the newsgroup and outside it) have all said that they were able to get it up to about

160mph flat-out.

There's not a lot of incredibly long stretches of safe, windless road where I live, so this is hearsay.

The American spec is supposed to be speed-limited to 155mph.

Don't know anything about the various U.K. and Japanese models.

Whew! Good thing for that. It would be unsafe to exceed 155!

Matt

UK spec

cheers

lee a écrit :

65mph ou 70mph depending your state ! ;-)

As in, the U.K. spec is speed-limited to 155 and *all* N.A. models aren't, U.S. model included?

Not to be difficult, I find 155 or 165 hard to believe, no matter how powerful the engine. I would think the aerodynamic drag of the body would limit it to something less than that. My Acura TL has an aerodynamic drag limit of about 145 (not that it would actually go that fast). I know that on the original Porsche 911's they had to do a lot to the bodies to get over about 160.

IMHO I don't believe the WRX (or STI) bodies would be capable of doing much over 140.

Jack

k. ote wrote:

What exactly is aerodynamic drag limit? Can it never be exceeded? What if the car is dropped out of a plane?

It's not a fixed limit, but it does increases with the square of the speed. Since at higher speed, the drag builds faster than the practical ability to add horsepower, a limit is reached with a given car.

See definition:

And yet Best Motoring tested it and got it into the 150s on their oval track, JD here in this group specifically said he got his Canadian model up into the 160s at an airport test track. Kits from various sources (APS, etc) bring the top speed up to the 180s..

I suppose in the end it's irrelevant what you believe it's capable of doing. :)

Jim is exactly dead on in his explanation of what causes any vehicle to hit a limit of speed. As a matter of fact if you dropped it out of an airplane you would hit a limit of how fast it would fall. Sky divers refer to it as terminal velocity and depending on the shape every object has a terminal velocity.

As to the top end speed of WRX. I don't know (let me repeat that, I don't know) what the aerodynamic limit of a WRX would be. I am not willing to absolutely say that a WRX will not go XXX mph. I would only say the farther above 140 they had actually got, the more I would want to understand any modifications they had done.

Maybe I am just too much of a doubter.

Jack

"On April 23, 1998, at the FIA qualified course on Highway 10 in La Junta, Colorado, the Legacy Station Wagon set a new world record at an amazing speed (average speed over one kilometer: 270.532 km/h; average speed over one mile: 270.047 km/h), drastically surpassing the previous record set by a second-generation Legacy in 1993."

That's 167.8 mph.

It was done by a stock (other than safety gear) 2.0l Legacy Wagon picked off the production line at random by FIA officials, on a normal road.

They are definitely ECU limited to 155mph and there's plenty of real world testing done at around the 150 mark if you Google it.

I'm sure I've seen 330km/h (206mph) in a performance car DVD - one of the Grip series I think, at one of the Jap tuner HQs like Top Secret or similar... will try and hunt it out. From memory, the body kit was nothing out of the ordinary - but under the bonnet...

A good stats page for all makes: (factory default tuning)

Cheers, Jason PC-Video-Gaming: MS Wireless Intellimouse $89

You're shittin' me, right? April 1 is past... Does this mean my geeky OBW can do 160 friggin mph? Really?

-John O

The implication that there is a "terminal velocity" for a ground-based vehicle is incorrect. Terminal velocity has very little to do with it. Standard falling body terminal velocity is about 124mph. I hit that all the time. However, the principle is similar: that which causes terminal velocity is the same principle that dictates drag-based top speeds.

I hit 140 just the other day. It was easy. I just don't know what my STi's

*top* speed is, as I've never approached it and felt safe about it. Too much wind around here buffeting me around the road.

WRX - 309 km/h on a wet NZ road... (~195mp/h)

600HP! Nothing crazy on the body shape though...

10MB clip (Japanese audio) here for a short time:

Enjoy!

Cheers, Jason PC-Video-Gaming:

128MB USB/MP3 Player/Voice rec $89

Or what your girlfriend believes.

Barry

Nope.

The record was set by the 2l GT turbo, a car that unfortunately was never sold in the US (you may notice on the linked page that the dude with the helmet on is sitting on the "wrong" side).

florian

75mph in MT