Quote:
Originally Posted by lil_chef
however with the recent advancements on new metals, sport/muscle cars should implement them in their structure to help minimize or even reduce weight (minor price hike obvious).
or if the use of exotic metals in the frame isnt an option yet. Decrease the size of the vehicle, NOT increase the size.
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The advancements in metallurgy isn't all that recent. Aluminum and high-strength steel has been around for a very long time...the issue has always been, and is still, cost. The price hike involved with doing something like that isn't "minor" at all. We're talking in the multiple thousands of dollars. And on $20,000-$30,000 cars, that's a huge amount of money just to save 200 lbs (on average)......which is 90% of the reason these techniques are not being implemented on a larger scale.
As for decreasing the size of a vehicle...I think we're seeing that, generally-speaking. For all the talk about how "big" the Camaro is...it's shorter in length than a 4thgen...and only about 2 inches taller (to facilitate a better seating position). It's also no bigger than a 2005-present Mustang.
Same goes for the Corvette (shorter than the C5 -- and the C7 is rumored to be shorter than the C6)...same goes for the new Cruze (shorter by a bit than the Cobalt), etc. The trouble with this theory is, however -- all this saftey, refinement, etc takes up space...and so to compensate for the space taken up in the interiors of cars, it's easy to just bump the body panels out an inch...
Again -- weight is bad, I agree...but there are reasons behind it...none of which are inherently 'bad'.