RE: Your Dream Car
June 21, 2012 at 12:16 am
(This post was last modified: June 21, 2012 at 12:18 am by Anomalocaris.)
While I can see the appeal of super cars like the Veyron, they don't appeal to me because they don't represent what I consider good engineering. To me good engineering is constrained optimization of the sort that makes the best out of real-life limits, and do so in an economically competitive manner. Back in the 1960s, the Soviet Union tried to build a super high performance supersonic jet liner that would be economically competitive in the world market. The Soviets were not slouches in building some world-beating advanced jet fighter But it took them far longer to come up with the Tupolov-144 supersonic jetliner than it took for them to develop any of their top drawer military aircraft, and in the end the Tu-144 flopped.
Even during the cold war, the Soviet designers publicly conceded it was far harder to build a jet liner that would be economical to operate, competitively priced, and safe to use, than to build the world's best fighters whose cost is no object.
This is why a mid-range sports sedan costing less than $50K impress me more as an epitome of an engineering challenge well met than the $1 million Veyron.
A good performance sedan meant to be sold in the hundreds of thousands is a really engineering challenge similar to building a competitive jet liner. A Veyron is just a extravagant money burner developed without regard to economy, like a jet fighter.
Even during the cold war, the Soviet designers publicly conceded it was far harder to build a jet liner that would be economical to operate, competitively priced, and safe to use, than to build the world's best fighters whose cost is no object.
This is why a mid-range sports sedan costing less than $50K impress me more as an epitome of an engineering challenge well met than the $1 million Veyron.
A good performance sedan meant to be sold in the hundreds of thousands is a really engineering challenge similar to building a competitive jet liner. A Veyron is just a extravagant money burner developed without regard to economy, like a jet fighter.
