3 Cars That Are Actually Much Faster Than They Look
Last week we talked about a lot of cars that looked like they should be fast but were actually slow, so this week I thought it would be good to give you some examples of cars that look very boring but can drive much faster than most sports cars.
One of the first cars to ever really have a reputation for looking slow but being extremely fast was the 1987 Buick Grand National GNX. Especially since the car was a Buick and a big sedan, people would heavily underestimate the National’s ability to go fast. However, the National was one of the fastest cars made at the time being able to easily beat the 1987 Mustang, Camaro, and Corvette which were all thought of as the main competing American sports cars of the time. This was thanks to the fact that their car’s engine utilized a turbocharger which was very rarely seen in other sports cars at the time, but was a great choice for the car as combined with its V8 engine it had a large amount of horsepower.
The second car I found which looks very bland but is actually a pretty quick car is the Ford Taurus SHO. The car’s exterior is simply just too bland and looks a lot like any normal economy car. This is mainly due to the fact that the ford Taurus was meant to be just a normal economy car with a small engine which was slow but cheap to fix and buy gas for. The Taurus SHO however was fords attempt at trying to create a more fun version of the car that was still as good on gas. Ford succeeded with the car’s MPG only changing by 2 yet somehow the car was able to gain 77 horsepower. The reason for this car’s success much like the Buick Grand Nationals was all thanks to turbocharging however since the Taurus had a smaller weaker engine than the Grand National ford still felt it would be too underpowered with a single turbocharger and decided that they should use a twin turbocharger setup to gain even more horsepower. One last thing that was a new improvement with the SHO version from the original Taurus was that instead of a front wheel drive setup it had all wheel drive. This meant that the car was able to accelerate using all four wheels giving it better traction which was another reason it was able to be faster than many new sports cars.
The third and final car on this list is the 2003 Audi RS6, and while it may look like it is just a boring family car it is actually the fastest out of the three cars without a doubt. These Audi’s were so fast they were actually known to often beat cars supercars like Lamborghini or Ferraris that were also built at the same time. This was all thanks to a potent trifecta of a large v8 engine, twin turbochargers, and a more performance focused version of the AWD drivetrain seen on the ford Taurus. However, since the car had such a powerful engine owners of the Audi RS6 have struggled with two big issues. The first issue is that the car is very expensive on gas both because like most European luxury cars it required premium fuel and because the car gets a meager 15 MPG on average. The second is much more detrimental which is the fact that replacing parts for this car was extremely expensive and things would often break at a lower mileage than a normal car due to the high horsepower.
Sources: https://carbuzz.com/compare/ford-taurus-sel-vs-sho
https://www.fuelly.com/car/audi/rs6/2003
I am not much of a car guy so I would not know much about the subject. The cars in the pictures look rather average so I’m curious to see a race between cars that look fast but are really slow. Perhaps you can mention in future posts how you came to learn about cars like these and why you have developed an interest. The only interest I have in cars myself mainly has to do with Tesla and driving by itself. I am also interested in flying cars although they haven’t been invented yet. I would like to see more advancements in car technology in our lifetime as they are responsible for problems like pollution and accidents. The switch to hybrid and electric cars seems to be promising and good for the environment as well. I remember liking racing games when I was a kid but even now it just seems like such a boring topic to center games around. I never developed any interest in engines and wheels either because it’s just too difficult for me to be able to understand how all the different parts work together. That is why I think people who do know about all this can be very knowledgeable.