I’m reading the car section of the local paper where the writer is doing a year in review of the cars he’s tested in ’08. He’s driven quite a range of vehicles from a Mini E all the way to a Rolls Royce Phantom at $440,000. As with all good car reviews there are a lot of numbers used to measure the characteristics of the cars. Things like 6.2 litre, V8, 3,000 rpm, 375 hp, and then there is 96 km/h as in 3.9 seconds to reach 96 km/h (Cadillac CTS-V).
What is with 96km/h? I’ve never seen a speed limit sign for 96; 90, 100, 120 but never 96! Those of you of a certain age, or with excellent mental math acuity will have realized that this is 60 mph. Actually, it’s 59.6516, but close enough. Even today, many years after we’ve supposedly made the shift to metric measurements in Canada the US Imperial measurement system still exerts it’s influence in some not so subtle ways. I guess extrapolating 0-60mph performance into 0-100km/h would be risky for a reviewer and I’d assume that the US manufacturer didn’t porvide this stat for the rest of the non-imperial world.
Give me mpg any day after all what is L/100 km anyway?