Autocar (ASEAN edition) Nov 05

OK normally I don't bother to "defend" a bad review of an Evo so long as it's justified but this article is so full of egregious reporting that it deserves mention.

In this issue they try to find "Britain's Best Driver's Car" and they start off by categorizing the cars in contention. So the Evo 9 is grouped with a Nissan Nismo-tuned 350Z and a BMW 330i. They drive the cars around the same track, in both dry and wet conditions.

Now get this. They supply a graph showing the average speed of all 3 cars from start to finish. The x-axis shows distance between turns (a total of 6), and the y-axis is normalized to show average speed in kilometers per hour. From the graph, it is painfully obvious that the Evo 9 has a lower overall average speed. Before T1 its average speed is about 90 km/h while the other 2 cars are doing closer to 125 km/h. That's a full 35 km/h difference! The only time the Evo comes out ahead is before T2, where it does 170.4 km/h compared to 155.8 km/h for the 330i, and 162.7 km/h for the 350Z. The rest of the way, the Evo's average speed is much less than the other 2 cars (the Evo's average speed curve is below those of the other 2 cars). Since speed is a function of distance and time, and since distance is fixed, that would mean the Evo has an overall lower average speed compared to the 2 cars. Right?

Well if you turn to page 77, here are the lap times...

Dry times
Evo 9: 82.5 sec
Nismo 350Z: 84.7 sec
BMW 330i: 88.1 sec

Wet times
Evo 9: 98.4 sec
Nismo 350Z: 102.5 sec
BMW 330i: 106.5 sec

Spot the discrepancy? Can someone please explain to me how a car that has a lower average speed over the entire course can turn in a faster lap time? It simply does not compute.

According to the article, they used a special configuration of Rockingham, which is "2.7 km long". If that is correct, and if time-keeping is correct, then the Evo should have an average speed of 32.72 m/s (117.8 km/h) in the dry, the 350Z with an average speed of 31.87 m/s (114.7 km/h), and the 330i at 30.65 m/s (110.34 km/h).

Conclusion? Don't be taken in by fancy graphs.

Edit: I just read some of the other reviews and am astonished at some of the results. How fast do you think the Ferrari F430 is in the wet? 101.5 seconds. That makes it 0.3 seconds slower than a Renault Clio Trophy (180 bhp @ 6500, 200 Nm @ 5250). 333 bhp/ton loses to 167 bhp/ton. Now we know where the riceboys get their "kill" stories from.