Talk:Riley One-Point-Five

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crikey![edit]

How weak was the clutch / badly arranged was the gearing / gutless was the torque / peaky was the max power / non-existent was the aero / all of the above that a 68bhp car weighing less than a tonne took almost TWENTY FIVE seconds to reach 60mph?

I present to you the 45bhp, not especially torquey, 4-speed, brick-shaped 80s/early 90s VW Polo. 950kg typical kerb weight. 0-62mph in just under 20, official; about 18 seconds off my own stopwatch. A 69bhp Vauxhall of a porkier 1100kg (and a 5-speed, but somewhat longer-legged box (4th being what the VW may have called "5th" if it had one) could do it in about 14 secs. Or not much worse than HALF the time.

So... WTF? Are these figures correct? Did it damn near stall out off the line, but then end up with vapourised friction disc material billowing out from under it as it struggled past 50? I mean, I can credit something that powerful still not being able to break 80mph, given the drag it must have, and the epically short gearing of a lot of older cars designed for hilly, twisty country lanes and monstrous overloading rather than light-duty motorway blasts; but still, 60mph is a long way from 76 in "losing acceleration to drag" terms, and motorsports-like gearing should have given it an accelerative BOOST... 77.102.101.220 (talk) 23:36, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: Whoops, I must have blanked the bit saying it was the Riley with 68, and the Wolsely (for whom the other figures were quoted) being a mysterious "almost 20hp" less. So, 49-50hp, then? The figures aren't quite so embarrassing in that case, but still. 50hp for a 25s 0-60; 45hp for a 19.8s 0-62 on cars of about the same weight and slipperiness, the slower of which more than likely packs 4 gears into the space of 3 on the quicker one (which can pull to just over 90mph in it's top ratio). Sure I've seen manufacturer claims for about 80mph max and low-20s 0-100km/h on a 40-odd bhp Skoda of the same period. There's still something iffy going on. Do we have a source for performance figures on the Riley at all? 77.102.101.220 (talk) 23:43, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]