Originally Posted by styla21
Abolutely agree with you, that specified performance should be accurate. 
I would be majorly pissed off however, if my new sportscar came in under the benchmark by which I thought it met. I would have been cheated.
But, if said new sportscar actually performs better, I'm not sure it gives the same grounds to feel cheated!
I don't agree with you that it's wrong of Nissan to understate their performance however, or that it "creates an illusion of being so much better than it is". That's just not possible by under-stating your product!
(And they were intended to be fighting words... And was gross tongue in cheek comment. I mentioned in another post that if anyone knew of decent RHD conversion shops, that I would actually consider buying the new vette and importing it downunder! - Comment was directed toward RC for his well known Vette support.) |
Low horsepower figures our what the various Japanese automakers used to do. Nissan has found a new way to deceive people. By claiming it runs the times it does with only 480 horsepower, it implies that the electronic wizardy in the car is nothing short of miraculous, which is just what Nissan would like us to think. There's no techno-cred to just going fast with light weight and power; otherwise the Vette wouldn't be such a target. It should be plain that when the horsepower figure is off by more than 8%, deception has occurred. I'm sure the Nissan powertrain engineers aren't so lousy that they can't get a decent estimate.
The last gen Viper was also, technically underrated. I believe that it would have been allowed to advertise a few more hp under the modern SAE standards. However, a 1% change hardly compares to that of more than 8%.