The motorcycling press sometimes publish articles involving a battle between a supercar and a superbike, and inevitably this involves an acceleration contest 0-60MPH. These contests reveal that a 180BHP superbike and a 600BHP supercar are usually closely matched at around 3 seconds. But the difference in gearing is overlooked - superbikes can go to 100 MPH in first gear whilst supercars usually go to just approximately 50 MPH. So at 60 MPH the bike is using about 60% of its maximum power for the first time, whilst the car has already used 100% and is chasing the same again in the next gear. Wouldn't it be a more accurate comparison if the car did the run starting in second gear?
For most cars, a 2nd gear start would see them pummelled even worse than starting in 1st. Remember that most will have DCG tech nowadays and swap cogs in a blink.
Let's have a quick look here - my very own bike kicks out ~160 horses at the rear wheel and weighs in at roughly 202 kg full. That very roughly equates to ~800 bhp/ton. There are very few road cars that come anywhere near that. Basic bhp/ton comparison is obviously a massive simplification but let's put in perspective. Back in my contracting days I worked on troubleshooting of the central management software for one of modern British supercars and I spent ample time diagnosing the car on the road (as a passenger). The car had very nearly 600 bhp and weighed about 1.4 ton. The pace on that thing was startling, enough to knock the wind out of me but still, the R1 basically wipes the floor with it. They're nowhere near evenly matched and I would say the car would need another solid 300 - 400 bhp to even be in the same ballpark.
The reason a bike can go 100mph in first is it's redline. Even a performance engine in a supercar is only good to like 9k rpms. Compare that to an r1 at 14k or so...
A fair comparison would be same redline. Say a Ferrari has a 8k redline then the bike couldn't go above that. I'd still have confidence in the bike beating the Ferrari though.
There is never going to be a fair comparison of bike vs. car. The closest you can probably get is if you compare race versions built for the same purpose (road racing, offroad, drag, etc...). In pretty much all cases the car kicks the crap out of a bike. Four wheels are simply better than two. The difference on the street is that a sport bike is a lot closer to a race bike than a street car is to a race car. DOT laws add hundreds (if not thousands) of pounds to every street legal car. Motorcycles for the most part don't have to deal with that. The old F1 cars used to be under 1500 pounds, had close to (sometimes over) 1000hp, a rev limit near 18k, and four really big tires for contact patch. No bike could touch them on a road course. Rally cars will beat dirt bikes, drag cars will beat drag bikes.
Like anything else you can skew this argument towards which ever vehicle you want to win.
Motorcycle usually win on cost, fuel mileage, power to weight...
Cars win on contact patch, cornering, cargo capacity, not falling over, safety, number of passengers, weather protection, creature comforts...
Ok, how about combining the best features of cars and bikes into one super vehicle? Take a race bike and add a side mounted one-wheeled capsule with space for a passenger. Put wide wheels on with slick tyres and call the whole thing a sidecar outfit - genius!
if the car only weighed 200kg, they could gear it the same I imagine.
you simply cant do a fair test imo between bikes and cars, how do you measure?
bikes are rwd, so can you ONLY use a rwd car to compare?
do you compare based on purchase price?
power to weight ratio?
a million different ways you can do it (and engineer your desired result).
The only person I want to be faster than, is the person I was yesterday
Also if you really want to skew the results, pit any car (no odd ball flying cars mind you) against any bike (even a YSR50) on the 405 freeway on a Friday at 5:00 PM... No contest... (man I miss lane splitting).
Exactly true - which brings me onto the next question and the ongoing popularity amongst a seemingly growing number of people with trikes. Why do people take a perfectly serviceable motorcycle and put a car like axle and extra wheel onto the back of it, hence creating a vehicle with the disadvantages of a bike and a car in one package? They don't lean, can't split lanes, have no weather protection, can only take one passenger and a very limited amount of luggage and can only park where a car can - what's the point unless you have no sense of balance? I respect the fact that people can do what they like and if people like them then I have no right to criticise, but I just don't see the appeal at all.
So-called "quad bikes" are even worse - so-called because even the name makes no sense: "quad" means four, but "bike" is an abbreviated form of "bicycle" which means two wheeled cycle. So quad bike means "four wheeled two wheeled cycle!"
This last one is REALLY interesting because instead or a real race they measure lap times and corner entry and exit speeds and mid corner speeds and braking points..... More Scientific than just a normal race. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0ZyQhROBE
ENJOY!
Yeah the Atom is impressive etc. but wholly unsurprising given its low weight and design. That last video with more "normal" street cars (even though one had race trim and slicks) vs a track-ready superbike was pretty interesting. The bike had better entry/apex numbers on quite a few of those corners. I kind of wanted some sort of corner exit speed number as well, but I suppose that is slightly arbitrary (maybe a second or a few after crossing the apex).
Its been a while since I watched the whole thing through.... I'm at work so I can't watch the full vid right now lol
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