Kind of a fun activity is going back and looking at performance specs of cars past, in particular ones you yourself may have owned. The information gets harder to come by over time, but this website has a good amount of information:
https://www.automobile-catalog.com/
I've always liked performance cars, and tried to buy performance cars, but I started out from humble beginnings buying my cars with my own money acquired by working on farms for local farmers. So I was very limited in my choices at least until I got out of college. I tended to favor Mustangs, but the higher end models were out of reach initially (I first bought Mercury Capris, as you could get them a little cheaper than Mustangs, but were basically the same car at the time). I installed performance mods on my first Capri (an Offenhauser intake with larger Holly carb and free-flow exhaust headers, probably shaved a good 3 or so seconds off the 0-60 time
, never really measured it though), and it's interesting to think of how those modest performance enhancements compare to the cars I drive today.
Using the site noted above, here are the 0-60 times for my past vehicles to current (excluding a few that were not for sport):
1981 Mercury Capri, 2.3L 4cyl, 4 spd manual, 88 bhp: 0-60 in 13.2 seconds
1984 Mercury Capri, 3.8L V6, 4 spd auto, 120 bhp: 0-60 in 10.3 seconds (I thought, almost 4L, should be good, no? No. No.)
1986 Mercury Capri, 4.9L V8, 5 spd manual, 200 hp: 0-60 in 6.8 seconds
1999 Mustang Cobra, 4.6L V8, 5 spd manual, 320 hp: 0-60 in 5.1 seconds
2011 Mustang GT, 5.0L V8, 6 spd manual, 412 hp: 0-60 in 4.1 seconds
2014 Tesla S P85: 0-60 in 4.0 seconds
2020 Tesla 3 Performance: 0-60 in 3.1 seconds
https://www.automobile-catalog.com/
I've always liked performance cars, and tried to buy performance cars, but I started out from humble beginnings buying my cars with my own money acquired by working on farms for local farmers. So I was very limited in my choices at least until I got out of college. I tended to favor Mustangs, but the higher end models were out of reach initially (I first bought Mercury Capris, as you could get them a little cheaper than Mustangs, but were basically the same car at the time). I installed performance mods on my first Capri (an Offenhauser intake with larger Holly carb and free-flow exhaust headers, probably shaved a good 3 or so seconds off the 0-60 time
, never really measured it though), and it's interesting to think of how those modest performance enhancements compare to the cars I drive today.Using the site noted above, here are the 0-60 times for my past vehicles to current (excluding a few that were not for sport):
1981 Mercury Capri, 2.3L 4cyl, 4 spd manual, 88 bhp: 0-60 in 13.2 seconds
1984 Mercury Capri, 3.8L V6, 4 spd auto, 120 bhp: 0-60 in 10.3 seconds (I thought, almost 4L, should be good, no? No. No.)
1986 Mercury Capri, 4.9L V8, 5 spd manual, 200 hp: 0-60 in 6.8 seconds
1999 Mustang Cobra, 4.6L V8, 5 spd manual, 320 hp: 0-60 in 5.1 seconds
2011 Mustang GT, 5.0L V8, 6 spd manual, 412 hp: 0-60 in 4.1 seconds
2014 Tesla S P85: 0-60 in 4.0 seconds
2020 Tesla 3 Performance: 0-60 in 3.1 seconds
Last edited:
