Fast car slowly or slow car quickly?

In reply to Knurled:

I believe you're right about the first two generations of modern Minis having an electric-powered-hydraulic setup, but the current F55/F56 cars are all electric. One of my gripes (two-parter) is that Sport mode, which turns down the assist, also turns the accelerator into an on/off switch. The other part of the gripe is that while effort rises noticeably, feel doesn't really improve. I'm sure that closer to the limit it would help with feeling the peak of the curve, but there's no nuance. It feels totally wooden, and when the effort goes up, it feels more like tight bushings than reduced assist.

Powerful light car is my preference. I find if I drive a slow car, I get in trouble more because I wail the e36m3 out of it to get it moving then retain that momentum whereas a powerful car I can just get on it to get moving then sneak around looking for opportunities to repeat at a safe (read cop free) time.

No reason you can't drive a fast car slow. Where I live I have some awesome roads with low speed limits, no sidewalks, and lots of dog walkers. My S2000 and now my 911 are more fun squirting between turns at a lower gear and way below it's capabilities than driving some econobox closer to its limits. Plus they sound a lot better.

I prefer a slow car fast but I even more prefer a good handling car at any speed to a crappy handling car at any speed. I'd rather drive a GT3 through a housing development than an Prius around Laguna Seca. OK, that's not true. I really want to drive anything around Laguna Seca but that's doesn't invalidate my point which is that on the street I don't drive anything hard enough to explore it's limits and if I'm driving I prefer something nice to drive.

The whole "it's better to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow" is one of those old car-guy adages that bugs the crap out of me. We've heard this to death already, and it's nonsense.

There's a short set of curvy switchbacks on Sheridan Road (conveniently right between work and home) and I can tell you that when nobody's in front of you, it's fun to drive that in any performance-oriented car. In a non-performance car, it sucks. When my Abarth was in for some service, I got one of those new not-fast Ford Focii as a loaner and it was TERRIBLE going through there. The car simply did not want to be doing what I was asking it to do, and I wasn't even pushing it. Better to drive a slow car fast? Not in this situation.

Driving through those same switchbacks in the Abarth is the same amount of fun as in my 911. There's no question the 911 is a faster car. There's a slight advantage to the Fiat here because of the noises it makes, but there's an equally slight advantage for the 911 because nothing else feels quite like a 911 when you're squirting out of a tight corner. I'll call that one a tie.

Up in the Kettle Moraine area, there's some decent driving. Here, too, the driving is about equal no matter what sports car you're in. I've had Miatae up here, Porsches, Mustangs, BMWs, the one Corvette I had, and all of them were probably more or less equally fun to drive. Slow car fast, fast car fast, fast car slow, slow car slow, you'll get as much of it as the northern midwest can give you (admittedly, not much). But in a E36 M3ty car, it's a E36 M3ty drive.

The whole slow-car-fast thing always seems to be to be an excuse for driving a cheap, slow car, when no excuse is remotely necessary! If you have a car that you like, good for you! It doesn't matter to me whether it's slow or fast or cheap or expensive. It's like these guys saying "the E30 is the last real 3-series!" Yeah, until you can afford an E46, then that will be the last "real" 3-series. We need to stop justifying ourselves and start enjoying ourselves.

I think I probably do it a little bit, too. I have a 997 C4. The reason I don't have a C4S or a Turbo is mostly because those were more money than I wanted to spend. I don't really need the extra speed of an S or a Turbo - the C4 is plenty capable and fun on its merit. But I sure would love to have more! But I have no "wisdom" to justify my slower car purchase. It's not better to drive the slow car fast.

I understand it more in the motorcycle world. I had a Ducati 999S and a Ninja 250R at the same time, and, honestly, on the street I far preferred the Ninja. I would whack the throttle open and not go to jail. The tires were skinny and I could actually lean the thing over. The Ducati wanted to RUN, all the time. It always reminded me of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. "T-Rex doesn't want to be fed. T-Rex wants to hunt!" The Ninja didn't care. It was like a puppy. It was happy just to be outside!

Cars, though, don't usually come like that. Commuting on the 999 was miserable. Commuting in a GT3 or a Z06 is totally tolerable.

Get the car you want, and drive it how you want. Don't coin an axiom to impress us all with your choices.

Last time my wife and I went to the California wine country we rented a convertible Mustang.
Great fun. I think we put the top up one evening on the Pacific Coast highway because it was cold as usual.

Remember that episode of Top Gear UK where they drove a Prius balls out around the test track and followed it in an M3? They were setting the same lap time but the driver of the M3 was falling asleep. On our local track, the lap record is 59 seconds (Viper ACR) and I have done a 1:01 in a new 911 Turbo and a GT3RS. I also did a 1:05 in a modified 1980 911SC and I can tell you that the 1:05 felt a lot faster and more fun than the 1:01 ever did. I also did a 1:22 in a modified classic Beetle and that was almost as much fun. Come to think of it, I did a 1:10 in a shifter kart and that felt faster than any of them, for obvious reasons.

My favorite drives in rental cars were:

A couple of weeks exploring the island of Crete in a 6-speed Peugeot hatchback.

A week driving from Italy to Croatia in a 5-speed Nissan Micra.

Twisty mountain roads, gorgeous scenery, and great company (my lovely wife) in both cases.

I was about to say "it's too bad you can't rent a manual hot-hatch in the USA" but with our boring roads littered with 9k lbs SUVs driving 35 mph in the passing lane ... what's the point?

I have taken several work trips out to the San Bernardo, CA area and driven several cars on the same mountain roads, like the Angeles Crest, Rim Of The World Hwy, Palms to Pines Hwy, etc. The lightest and slowest car i drove was a Nissan Versa and the fastest and probably heaviest car I drove was a v6 Camaro. The Versa would have been fun but the automatic just kills the entire drive with its constant upshifting taking you out of the power band, if it would have been a manual i think it would easily been 10x more fun, which probably pertains to most of the small rental cars. the v6 camaro was probably the best car i drove there as it had enough power to keep your speed up hills but wasnt over powered for the corners and even though it could easily over-do the speed limits it still has to work at it vs. a v8 car, it also had a pretty decent 'manual mode' with paddle shifters which made it a better experience being able to hang in a gear leading into the next corner.

Personally when it comes to rental cars and the usual inability to get a car with a manual trans i think it would be more fun to get something faster, and if you are worried about pushing the speed limits then i'd look into the v6 muscle cars as they have plenty of power on tap, i know the camaro i had was able to do 80-120 through the Arizona desert like it was nothing

But give me a fast car and I'm going to enjoy its' capabilities within the confines of safe yet fun driving on a public twisty road

I agree with you, but just make sure there's no other driving enthusiasts near you or involved or this will turn into the street racing thread where people 'lose a lot of respect for you' etc etc blah blah blah.

I enjoy power but don't care much about actual turning ability on the street. I think driving a slow car fast mostly ends up meaning turning it. I turn about as hard as I think is safe in my 1987 Montero and think it's downright hilarious. My Porsche 911 is a little boring in that way since i'm not willing to push it through corners as much. It's fast, but in a less dramatic way than my turbo cars. I like the option of hauling ass in a straight line, and the humor and 'thrill' of turning something with low limits about as hard as it will go. So, in the end i still do the majority of my driving in cars that are sorta fast and sorta poor at cornering: FWD turbo family sedans. I had a lightened/stiffened NA miata for a while and thought it was totally boring on the street because the only time it was any fun was when i was turning. Keeping in mind that i already had a convertible that was way better at being a convertible..

Related note: I plan to turbo my Montero, and at that point i thoroughly believe it will become the absolute most entertaining vehicle i own.

Really, it depends on the chassis. A well engineered, well sorted chassis beats that which isn't. How fast it's going after the fact is really a secondary concern.