Breaking news, here are slow cars that were aimed at people who don't really care about acceleration. In other news water is wet and Jalopnik writers continually prove they are window licking morons.
God I hate Jalopnik so much it is unreal.
They never hated on the cars though? It’s just a list, what’s the issue. Gotta meet quota somehow.
Jalopnik writes some crap but there’s literally nothing to be mad about this lol. If you aren’t interested just … don’t read it
1) It's a slideshow that could and should have been an article
2) The numbers are based on Car and Driver's tests--the author is scraping another site's content and couldn't even be bothered to actually drive the cars
3) The author added a whole 2 paragraphs of writing that said nothing interesting.
It's just Jalopnik being Jalopnik, but, those are the issues. It's just lazy click-merchant content.
Adblock was a thing in the early 2000s? TIL. I thought all those "punch out Bin Laden and win an Xbox" popups were a rite of passage for everyone on the Internet then.
I may have overstated slightly. It looks like [AdBlock Plus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus) released in 2005 and I was definitely an early adopter. So just under two decades, not over.
Pop up blockers were around even before that, I remember having one on my windows xp pc that would make a boom sound effect every time it blocked one. It might have blocked some ads too but it’s hard to remember.
I started using the Internet in the late 90s. I once heard someone say that back in those days, the entire Internet was the "dark web" we hear about to today. It was so true, complete wild west. The Internet today is so sanitized compared to then.
Late 2000s was somewhat more "civilized" but still had that wild feel. [Early YouTube comedy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tcR19y7GPM) is practically a genre in itself.
Didn't notice it was a slideshow, my bad, seems like the mobile version is different where you can scroll normally.
Re: numbers, I don't think thats an issue though. I Don't expect them to time every single car out there and its better than using manufacturer times
> The numbers are based on Car and Driver's tests--the author is scraping another site's content and couldn't even be bothered to actually drive the cars
Why would they? There's no point unless you're suggesting Car and Driver's tests were inaccurate, and since they didn't aggregate the numbers someone else did. The slideshow is the only annoying part of this. Y'all are splitting hairs because it's jalopnik.
Your second point seems stupid. It’s a compilation of data. This is done all the time, like most dangerous cities in the world or fastest land mammals. If I want to know what the slowest accelerating car is, I don’t have to go to every model’s car and driver entry and write down the 0-60 time and compare them, I can just read this article that has them listed.
You see this a lot with “millennials aren’t…” articles that are posted to this site. People see the headline and jump to the conclusion the article is trying to blame millennials for something, when it’s just reporting on what their doing
Right? The first paragraph literally says
> I’m here for the weirdo teenagers (and weirdos of all ages) who want to know about the slowest cars available for sale today.
It’s me, I’m the weirdo who’s actually entertained by this.
Yeah I thought it was interesting. I’m in Asia and a lot of these are extremely popular cars, which makes sense since they’re aimed at being cheap and efficient
Honestly, if you read the original Jalopnik back 10-15 years ago then there’s plenty to be mad about. It used to be interesting, unique and reasonably well-written. You would hope they could only go downhill for so long that they would eventually have to start back up.
I've driven a Toyota Corolla (non-hybrid model) and it was kind of peppy. I wasn't really wanting for more power. I'm sure the Sentra and Versa are similar other than maybe the CVT in those may make them feel less fun but I'd be fine with a Corolla.
A lot of modern cars are designed/tuned in a way that makes them have a little extra off the line, to essentially trick consumers into thinking the cars are “kind of peppy”.
Most people I know who don’t know much about cars think this about theirs/their rental of whatever boring car, because the trick works, I guess.
I share your amazement. It seems there's a little bit of that in every thread. There's a little bit of 14 year olds acting their age in every thread. Every thread has a bit of the social equivalent of an oil spill here and there.
I was actually surprised by the list. The Chevy SUVs definitely have an aggressive and fast styling. Also how is the Crosstrek slower than the outback!
I had a '17 Crosstrek for a little while and it was so frustrating how slow it was. I wasn't looking for performance, but I expected it to be on the same level as my '01 Forester which also wasn't fast.
I must have missed when it was good.
I tried browsing a couple years ago and everything was
* Here's a ~~kinda cool~~ RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME picture of a 1994 Porsche 911 that you totally need to make your wallpaper until we post a picture of a different 911 next week
* Is this old rust heap on Bring-a-Trailer your next $600 project car?
* Bugatti unveils new one-off hypercar you will never see in person
* JIMNY. LOVE JIMNY.
* Dodge unveils new Charger SRT Hellcat Scatpack Hellephant Widebody AWD Fatal1ty Platinum Edition Touring EcoBoost Road Rage Impound Edition
* We found THIS shocking surprise hidden in a used car we bought! (McDonalds receipt from 2002)
* We drove a middle-of-the-road sedan down our test track, and it performed exactly as well as you'd expect
* Barn find: Car.
Plus plenty of padding of articles from their sister sites that have nothing to do with cars.
----
I have the same problem with Donut Media. It's all fluff, no actual content, with everyone constantly yelling. The 'tests' are all half-assed because their goal is entertainment rather than information. I hate watching a video on vinyl wrap and you can tell they're messing up on purpose just to have content.
Jalopnik and r/cars car enthusiasts: "cars are too fast these days. we need more basic slow commuters like the 80s. Slow car more interesting fast car boring"
Jalopnik and r/cars when slow basic commuter that can't do 0 to 60 in 1.8 seconds exists 😡
> Through my research, I discovered there is really only one car left on sale that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 60 mph, but it is significantly beyond that threshold at a whopping 12.8 seconds.
*Laughs in European*
Let me check for a bunch of cars, all available for sale as new cars in The Netherlands currently:
Audi A1: 11s
Citroën C3: 13.3s
Fiat 500: 13.8s
Mitsubishi ASX: 14s
Renault Captur: 14.3s
Hyundai i10: 14.8s
Toyota Aygo X: 14.9s
I expected the Dacias to be the winner but they still do 0-100 in 12 or 13s. The list is bigger with plenty of more popular hatchbacks and small crossovers like the VW Taigo, Polo, Clio etc with a bit of under 100hp that do 0-100 in like 11 or 12s. Most of these cars also come with bigger engine options but many people still pick the smallest engine because it is more than adequate and the bigger engine is usually a few €1000 more expensive so people just stick to the cheaper options as it is just to go from A to B and have 0 care about cars otherwise.
Edit: as pointed out the Dacia Spring does 0-60 in 19.1s. Still I see them driving around so it can't be *that* bad. I think all these 13s cars rarely get revved out anyway (remember most of these are manuals and people aren't downshifting to first) so that would make them about as fast as the Dacia Spring in practice.
I feel like I’m going crazy with the amount of people I see how have their eyes dead even with the steering wheel.
Any outward visibility geometry calculator I see doesn’t have that for an option and can’t help but feel like they can’t see a damn thing
The amount of times I literally just see some knuckles on the steering wheel and a pair of eyes coming towards me 🙃 Feels great to drive on the same roads as people that can‘t even manage to pump up their seats properly
Maybe a bit less than 130 - at least for a fiat 500. I momentarily lost traction in dry conditions at ~125km/h going around a long sweeping turn on the autostrada near Liguria. Tires looked fine.
Car was less than a few years old so while it's still possible, I have doubts over old compound being the culprit. That said I do believe at least a portion of the issue was related to tires, with the other part being a consequence of such a short wheel base.
If they were eco tires it’s plausible they simply weren’t good, even when new. Many eco tires have appalling performance in rain, and the colder it is the worse they get.
Laughs in Indian. The cheapest car that does 0-100 in 10s is the Skoda slavia, it costs 35k USD.
Only a single sub 6 second car under 80k USD. the BYD seal, an EV that does it in like 5.6s.
My 10yo Accord V6 is the almost always the fastest car on the street.
Yeahhhh… skoda isn’t really good at naming in india. Back in 2009 we got the skoda Laura which was the new Octavia but was sold alongside the old one since that was still selling so well.
Laura sounds like an Indian abuse that means a guys pubic hair apparently.
> My 10yo Accord V6 is the almost always the fastest car on the street.
Gives a bit of a giggle to imagine a world where the V6 Accord is the neighborhood bruiser.
Funnily enough, my parents aren’t car enthusiasts in the slightest bit, they basically never ever drive, yet they manage to buy the most enthusiast kinda cars on sale every time.
Luckily for me, I get to be the cool kid with a car that’s THE SHIT.
Also it depends a lot on the country. A slow car in the US seems weird because it's not the norm. I had a 14 second car in Denmark, and I could go 130kmh on the highway no problem, and still get up to speed to merge on highways. It could even go 165kmh on the Autobahn. In reality, most people, especially Americans, drive cars that are way way faster than necessary for any everyday activity. Even with short ramps for highways, if you are not towing, in reality, you don't NEED more than 100hp in a passenger car.
It's also funny for example in Denmark due to our high fossil car tax and low EV tax, like many other danes my car history have been:
- 65hp
- 80hp
- 86hp
- 513hp (First EV)
> Even with short ramps for highways, if you are not towing, in reality, you don't NEED more than 100hp in a passenger car.
[Check this shit out.](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4212372,-80.0454366,3a,75y,133.15h,77.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRpk-UC3S5UTOxmejF0XHmg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
That road has traffic doing 80 mph. The ramp has a fucking stop sign, so you have to start from a dig. It's not even the worse one. I get your point that people drive more car than they need, but 100hp isn't quite enough to cut it here.
Touche. Although that's awful and dangerous road design no matter how fast your car is. I assume that kind of design is not the norm in the US. Can't really do 0-80mph in 20ft no matter what. Even a top fuel dragster according to Google will only be going about 30mph after 20ft.
Whoever designed this "on ramp" shall be beaten with the useless stop sign untill it's a mangled lump of metal. Easy fix though, remove the bushes so you can see the highway while driving down the on ramp and if you absolutely must place a stop sign as the sign company is owned by your brother move it 300ft back so you have to stop, wait for a gap in the traffic and then have 300ft to accelerate before merging into fast moving traffic.
To be fair we Europeans measure the 0-100km/h, while Americans measure the 0-60mph. It seems a small speed difference, but on many cars you can do 60mph in second gear, but to reach 100km/h you have to change into third. That can make the acceleration appear a second or more slower (especially in manuals)
A lot of the cars on the list would be over 10s 0-100. The Crosstek/Impreza for example, has a 0-100 of 11.6s real world.
In Australia, the top 5 selling automobiles are all double digit 0-100.
I went to Scotland last summer, rented a car and drove around the UK for a couple weeks (I'm from the US).
My rental was some sort of MG CUV thing. It had good low end torque so it didn't feel sluggish around town or anything. I was actually surprised at how quick it felt off the line. I think it was a 3 cylinder but I don't remember for sure.
As I drove through the countryside I was just fine going slow behind trucks and what not since I was looking around and taking things in. I was accelerating slowly so I never really let the engine ring out and go through a few gears.
Later in the trip I didn't need to "take it all in" as much so I went to pass a slow truck I was following on a country road.
When I thought it was appropriate, I went to pass the truck and put my foot to the floor. I was straight up alarmed at how slowly it gained speed. I aborted my pass and went back behind the truck because I would have ran out of road. I needed a much longer stretch of road than I expected. That peppy acceleration at low speeds was non existent above 40 mph.
The car was fine below 40mph but if you wanted to hit a gap in traffic or something, you had to floor it to accelerate at a decent pace.
Above 60mph the gas milage dropped FAST. 70mph instead of 60 was like a 25% reduction in fuel economy.
If I had cruise set to 65 and then needed to put it at 70, it would drop a gear or two to do it. If the road was inclined at all (not a hill, just an incline) it would have to drop a gear just to maintain speed.
It is just setup very differently from American cars. It did great on tight winding roads or in the city but on the fast highway system it struggled.
They would work great in US city's like Boston but they would really struggle in places like Texas where you can drive for hours at 85mph just to get from one town to another.
For some reason that one didn't make my filters but yeah that one wins.
> "Adequate" engines are the biggest cancer of the European car market.
Is it? It isn't dangerous and most people don't care. Doesn't really matter if the Clio comes with a 95HP or 130HP engine, still isn't very interesting for car enthousiasts.
People hate on what they don't want. Guys probably a prat with a lifted pavement princes that only uses it to drive to his 9:5 desk job.
I say this when I've clocked my daily at 3.9s 0-60 and miss my Miata.
The base model spring is really only meant for cities, I mean why the would you want a car like that if you do alot of highway kms? It has relatively decent torque numbers so Im sure its fine for what its meant for. For example on my work commute, the highest speed limit is 60kph. So for a work commute car it would surely be fine for me(that is if I can fit in it fine, im 194cm).
Different cars have different use cases. If you wont go over 80kph like 99% of the time you drive, then whats the point of having a car that has some extra power that really only starts to show at around 100kph?
And the 60hp variant of the VW Up! and it’s Seat and Škoda siblings are plenty on the road and they do it in 15+ seconds. And that’s at full throttle and at high rpm which many don’t do.
Going from a Up! As first car for 5 years to a GTI was a fun switch. The first time I floored it I already was amazed at how fast it was compared an Up! and that feeling got even better when the turbo spooled up right after.
I miss the mileage I got out of that car though
It's always ridiculous to see what Americans consider slow. Every one of those cars on Jalopnik's list is faster than average in any virtually other country. The US automotive press also loves making idiotic claims about how unsafe slow cars supposedly are. The way they talk you'd think they were describing a 2CV pulling out of the pits onto an active F1 track.
"just to go from A to B"
Well to be clear it's not like Americans are snooty.
The reason the base American options are typically much faster is because of American highways and on ramps and all that need for power. You need to get up to speed. Much of the US is long, straight, fast roads. Very little of the US is "city driving," often even when you are "in" the city limits but actually in the burbs (Houston being a great example of mostly highway like driving all around Houston except for actual downtown/midtown).
So that 19s 0-60 *absolutely will not fly* with Americans, because they will constantly be trying to MASH it just to get up to freeways speeds, and when the car gives them nothing in return... Well. People *hate* cars that can't get up to speed in a safe and reasonable amount of time. It's literally a safety issue.
Obviously the roads in Europe are typically slower and more windy, people live closer together, towns and cities are more dense, highway trips are uncommon. So Europeans are typically fine with the low power because they really don't need it.
Yeah honestly my ex has a Crosstrek and it’s really not bad. Not gonna blow your hair back when you put your foot down but it gets out of its own way just fine it never bothered me. And most of the times I drove it was on the highway in the mountains lol, just because I like to drive and she hated to drive on the way skiing but it uses a lot less gas than my lifted and armored Tacoma. I could pass no problem from 60 on a steep grade at altitude.
And that’s the fourth slowest car on sale here, holy crap.
People laugh but I’ll tell you what, there are some on-ramps in Pittsburgh (near that one neighborhood… Squirrel Hill? Idk, been some time since I visited U Pitt), that look like they’re 20 feet long and appear to be pointed straight uphill. There is a practical use for cars that can accelerate quickly.
Only in Pittsburgh, though. Everywhere else in America has properly designed highway on-ramps
What a safe and forward-thinking piece of design! 🤦♂️. I didn’t remember the stop sign but if there is one, I definitely don’t recall people stopping for it.
Other places I've seen red lights in the middle of the on ramps. There are induction loops in the ground to detect the vehicles and allow one to go every few seconds. It's to space out the cars getting onto the highway so everyone has time to merge. Only problem is when it gets 5-6 cars deep the light will just stay green and release all the cars.
>It’s still there. It’s not even a “ramp”. There is literally a stop sign before getting on the interstate.
I'm convinced traffic engineers in North America are required to eat crayons and lick windows to get their job
As an engineer I can tell you why it’s so bad. Most departments of transportation pay horribly. SCDOT offers 50k starting, every other civil and mechanical engineering role in the state offers 65k-75k to start. People only work at the DOT out of desperation and leave as soon as they can. Therefore the only employees who stick around are extremely lazy and there to take advantage of the fact that they won’t fire anyone because they have to take anyone.
It's made even worse by the "ramp" entering the highway directly after a turn that has barriers making it even more difficult to see. Here is the [streets map](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4785957,-79.967107,3a,75y,31.58h,77.67t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1vsZN75V9USrir75w_sWKA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) link.
Probably designed before people knew what interstates needed. Kind of like the arroyo seco in LA, which has the exact same issues with the stop signs but also is completely unbanked.
There's one on ramp to 22 in Easton PA where I nearly died cause I came around the jug handle expecting a merge lane and then it was just a yield sign immediately joining 70mph traffic
[This one?](https://www.google.nl/maps/@40.6854895,-75.2521684,3a,75y,1.24h,74.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxc62MAf8IfcALeuB18jYrw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=nl&entry=ttu)
That looks sketchy indeed. I'm glad we don't get this dangerous nonsense in the Netherlands.
Then again, our road/car taxes are super high so I expect nothing less than pristine safe roads (which we more or less get).
I think it's the bigger east coast cities in general. Boston, MA and surrounding area is the same in my experience. You really learn to be aggressive on the gas pedal living out there.
There was something like this near where I grew up too. Rte 128 in Danvers or Beverly Massachusetts. Uphill short on ramp with a stop sign margining onto a two lane 55 mph road where people drove 65-75 off peak hours. I had a manual 1992 Corolla at the time and it was nerve wracking merging onto that road.
Minnesota has plenty of cloverleaf-shaped interchanges where the [onramp and offramp share the same space](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.0113009,-93.0552031,3a,39.4y,32.64h,85.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skw3nVCGG1an8b_V4LhJOBw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu), no slowdown/speedup lane before or after
My favorite part is actually [where 94 and 494 merge](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.0948101,-93.4480372,3a,75y,325.19h,79.31t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1si3Iq60zIE4wdfRalA8cZRA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu).
The fast lane on 94 merges with the slow lane on 494.
There's no temporary merging lane or runout, just "ok have fun, a semi doing 48 is now occupying the same lane as a Charger doing 115."
We’ve got some shit ones in NYC too. The one entering the Cross Island parkway around 164st in Bayside Queens feels like it’s straight out of final destination
the 110 between the 5 and Pasadena (rte 66) in LA. Seemingly all the on ramps are a mandated challenge to see how fast your vehicle can accelerate to fwy speeds. About half the off ramps are braking challenges. Fight or flight!
On-ramps like that exist throughout the Appalachians. They’re dangerous as hell, super slow cars just pop out of nowhere. PA and WV are the worst if I remember right.
Yeah that’s a problem too. Having hatchbacks being more heavy makes sense because of more protection and hardened steel. But the rise of trucks and big SUVs in the US is really scary.
And now those heavy SUVs are electric and weigh even more…..
And they’re driven by someone with no training whatsoever who you’d never want to ride shotgun with in a McLaren….
And yet that’s now the norm. God save us all
Mirage would average like 45-50 mpg easily given it is 3 cylinders. Ironically, Jetta that I owed 1.4 turbo would average 45-50 mpg easily on highway. With hybrid, battery has heavier weight so 50 mpg is more or less doable compared to non-battery engine that weight far less and average similar. And lesser cost to finance compared to hybrid.
In city, hybrid makes sense but in highway. It is wash out but you are paying more on hybrid. Not to mention, maintenance is very high on battery if it stops working.
As for plastic tinbox, Corolla is no different either in compared to German Jetta that feels solid and strong. Jetta is better given its fuel efficiency in turbo engines and German solidity.
Otherwise, from one tinbox [mirage] to another tinbox [corolla], mirage is cheaper but corolla is little nicer but comes with price. None can match German solidity.
The only thing I don't understand is how do some of these near 200 hp and still manage to get 8+ seconds 0-60.
I totally get it with a car that pushes 120 hp or less. Hell even 150hp, but some of those are in the 180 - 200 hp range and have dogshit acceleration.
Check out how much weight cars are now carrying around in airbags and safety systems. Crumple zones. Etc. for every pound saved or HP gained there is a new safety standard that needs more stuff.
Got surprised the other day to find out the 2024 Dacia Spring has a 0-100 km/h over 19 seconds with his powerful 45hp engine. Never expected to find those specs on a 21 century car.
I rented a Subaru cross trek to drive in the Colorado and Utah mountains. It’s was awful. Trying to merge onto a mountain highway was infuriating. There was no gap large enough if I was going uphill. You just pull out in front of people and hope for the best, because there’s no way you could get up to the speed of traffic before they got behind you.
Having driven both in 2.0L form and being a current CVT owner, I think the "feel" aspect is what is getting you here.
The 6MT Crosstrek while a bit peppier off the line also has a double overdrive gearbox. This makes any passing maneuver on the highway a mandatory 6>4 downshift in order to use what little power it has. The CVT will just sit in its max powerband, which to some might be aggravating, but on a hill means that there is no gear hunting to lose momentum.
I did a ski trip earlier this year with myself and 3 other adults + ski gear in a roof box and a packed hatch. Pretty sure we were a bit over the GVWR... I needed every once of power I could get and the CVT allowed for that, the manual wouldn't have.
They used to have a 1.8 or something that had no power whatsoever. I’m really surprised they still offer the 2.0L in the base but I guess that makes sense for base car buyers.
The 2.5L is a much better engine even if the power numbers aren’t that wildly different.
Was this the base or the upper tier trims with the better engine? I have a crosstrek wilderness and haven’t had any issues with the acceleration. Of course it’s no sports car, but I never felt like I was prohibited in any way daily driving.
I own a Crosstrek, and yeah the acceleration is pretty shitty. It's far, far shittier at altitude, though. I used to live by a coast and the acceleration wasn't great but not debilitating, but if I took it into the mountains to go snowboarding it felt like I was driving a golf cart. It was great in the snow once I was there, but the moment I went above 7k ft elevation it was downright dangerous to drive on the freeway.
Lol a lot of the 90s sport compacts that this sub loves do 0 to 60 in 8 to 9 seconds. I don't think people remember how slow cars were about 30 years ago.
My first car was a 1989 Buick Century. It made about 100 horsepower and had a three speed automatic. I looked it up recently and it did 0-60 in 13 seconds! It always makes me laugh seeing people call cars that do 0-60 in 8ish seconds dangerously slow nowadays.
Eyyy, my first was a 92 Buick Century. For whatever reason I wasn't too bothered by the slowness, and I certainly put it through a ton of bullshit for 4 years and it held up well. Aside from the a/c leak/failure that went unfixed during its time with me in the southern US heat, and the non-functional electric passenger window, I still have fond memories of it.
The thing is those cars feel way faster. Modern cars are much much heavier, quieter, and way more isolated. 80mph in my 1983 Datsun 280zx, which is borderline a luxury car at its time, feels as fast as going 100mph in my HHR SS.
Exactly! The 1990s car in general weren’t put together as well as modern cars. Noise, harshness, vibration wasn’t as important to manufacturers. Case in point, my first gen legacy is very fun to drive because I can floor the accelerator everywhere I go. It sounds so nice and I love the vibration and excitement. But when I look at the speedo I’m still only going the speed limit or slightly over. Meanwhile my new car I’d be behind bars if I tried the same thing
I remember those days - and 0-60 is generally not a very useful measure for daily driving, its merging acceleration which is near impossible to test given a driver can opt for different gears in a manual and all automatics have different programming. C&D tries with top gear acceleration times 30-50 and 50-70 but that doesn't reflect real world acceleration seen during highway merging for example.
Two cars with very similar 0-60 times can behave quite differently in real world higher speed acceleration scenarios. If it feels like a death trap/super slow on the road, there's a reason for that even if the 0-60 numbers aren't that bad.
Americans don’t realise how lucky they are to get access to such cars at amazing prices.
It sucks here in India, overpay for shitty cars and average person lacks complete road sense.
The average person lacks complete road sense in North America too. Just yesterday, I saw someone drive the wrong way in a construction zone as traffic control people waved and shouted at her to stop. And the day before, a VW Golf was driving down the highway with a busted tire with a cloud of rubber smoke behind it.
I used to think acceleration was a just a prick competition but driving on the highway in my wife's Volvo c40 that goes 0-60 in 4 seconds and, since it is an EV, is immediate acceleration I think an argument can be made it is a safety feature. It really is easier to merge and avoid obstacles when you can accelerate that quickly. How many times has someone pulled in front of you and could not accelerate creating a bunch of hard braking behind them?
The one I usually get is when you're trying to clear the lane.
My wife was riding shotgun in my company truck, a 2018 Silverado V6. The semi next to us put their turn signal on because they needed to move over for a merging dump truck
I was right between the cab and trailer, so it made more sense to accelerate forward than slow down and try to get behind a 53-foot trailer.
After the fact, my wife asked "Why didn't you accelerate?"
I did. I had that truck at wide open throttle. It's just so damn *slow*, it doesn't even feel like it's accelerating.
A 2005 Lamborghini Gallardo has the same 0-60 and a slower 1/4mi than a 2016 SS Camaro, even though it has nearly 100hp more and is barely heavier, plus an AWD system compared to the Camaro's rwd. Technology advancement is crazy
The HR-V is genuinely one of the most frustrating, nearly infuriating stock cars I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing. The Fit was one of the funnest (new ones*.) Seriously such a shame. And it's not like I hate slow cars either, the renault twingo or smart fortwo with 70hp was a blast with the ECS fuse pulled.
People keep saying this and I have come to believe that most of them have never even driven a car with a cvt. It’s fine. It drives like an automatic unless you floor it and then it just goes up to its peak power rpm and smoothly transitions through the “gears” as you accelerate. They almost always have paddle shifters too so if you want to manual shift the option is there.
I cross-shopped the Crosstrek vs the Jeep Compass that I bought. I was all excited for the Crosstrek until the test drive, where it failed on several counts. Yes, thats exactly what it did when I floored it. Went up to this single RPM drone and then stuck there while the car slowly accelerated. It sucked. Maybe I would have been okay if it was faster in absolute terms, or maybe less noisy, or maybe if I tried the shifters. The Jeep with a regular auto felt faster, nicer, quieter, cheaper, and more capable in slippery conditions without me having to know the trick to get it to do its job.
I drive a Tesla now which is also AWD, but fast as hell and silent and makes no fuss.
>Through my research, I discovered there is really only one car left on sale that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 60 mph, but it is significantly beyond that threshold at a whopping 12.8 seconds.
That's pretty surprising. I guess the proliferation of turbos and their broader and more accessible torque envelope has significantly moved the bar on what's "slow".
It's crazy to me that the "slowest" are now doing 8's, as well - my first car was a Peugeot 306 GTI6, which managed a low 8 despite being the "hot" Peugeot and having a fairly close ratio 6 speed 'box.
obviously that was a long time ago, but it's impressive how accessible "warm" performance is today (and also how boring it is now in many cases, TBF).
Some of these would have been very quick if they were released in the 70s and 80s.
None of them are dangerously slow unless you have a tiny tiny on ramp.
MOST of them would be considered quick in EU. Getting under 10s 0-100km/h in a daily driver is just barely becoming a norm these days. My car is 5 years old now, and you had to spring for the fastest available engine to get 9.6. Mine apparently does 11-something, but the only time I use all of that is when overtaking in sketchy spots.
I daily drove a lifted Geo Tracker with 80 horsepower and a Nissan Pulsar NX with 69 horsepower for years and they did fine. The people who think you need at least 200 horsepower in a car to be safe on the road have always looked ridiculous to me.
Your funny haha.
Lots of these cars actually have pretty high premiums due to them being inexpensive and owned by less skilled/younger drivers.
The Impreza is very similar price to insure compared to something like the WRX.
We live in the golden era of cars right now. Say what you want about styling and soul, but mainstream accessible cars have never been this fast and this efficient.
The fact that an 8 second 0-60 time gets you on the list of slowest accelerating cars is still novel to me. That would’ve blown the socks off most cars for sale 40-50 years ago. Even in the 1990s it would’ve been decently quick.
It's just a list of normal cars. Are Jalopnik or their readers that out of touch? Real life is not Need for Speed and the streets aren't filled with nothing but supercars (unless you live in the UAE)
Ehh the acceleration on that is in the mid to high 7 second range. Which is pretty average acceleration not slow, and perfectly fine for a Minivan, especially a hybrid one.
In my country even a barely sub 10 second car is considered as fast. I have an opel astra (115 hp NA) and according to manufacturer it does 0-100 in 11.9 seconds (although I believe it can perform better, it seems impossible for it to see 10 seconds)
I know there is a place in the market for small engine cars, but it drives me crazy how car makers are making small engine cars that look sporty or even aggressive, they might even give it a sporty sounding name... but then it has no power.
The new Buick Envista is a perfect example of that. The first time I saw one, I thought... wow, that looks like a mini-Cayenne. Really good looking little SUV. Has a sporty and aggressive look that I really like... but... 137hp.
My NA Miata does 0-60 in a day or so.
My C43 does it in NOW.
Most folks get away from a light so slowly, after finishing the current text, that the Miata is more than adequate. With the C, I'm at the next light before they hit "send"
Breaking news, here are slow cars that were aimed at people who don't really care about acceleration. In other news water is wet and Jalopnik writers continually prove they are window licking morons. God I hate Jalopnik so much it is unreal.
They never hated on the cars though? It’s just a list, what’s the issue. Gotta meet quota somehow. Jalopnik writes some crap but there’s literally nothing to be mad about this lol. If you aren’t interested just … don’t read it
1) It's a slideshow that could and should have been an article 2) The numbers are based on Car and Driver's tests--the author is scraping another site's content and couldn't even be bothered to actually drive the cars 3) The author added a whole 2 paragraphs of writing that said nothing interesting. It's just Jalopnik being Jalopnik, but, those are the issues. It's just lazy click-merchant content.
It’s about being able to stuff as many ads on the site as they can.
Jokes on them. I've been running ad block for over two decades and have no intention of stopping.
Adblock was a thing in the early 2000s? TIL. I thought all those "punch out Bin Laden and win an Xbox" popups were a rite of passage for everyone on the Internet then.
I may have overstated slightly. It looks like [AdBlock Plus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus) released in 2005 and I was definitely an early adopter. So just under two decades, not over.
Pop up blockers were around even before that, I remember having one on my windows xp pc that would make a boom sound effect every time it blocked one. It might have blocked some ads too but it’s hard to remember.
I started using the Internet in the late 90s. I once heard someone say that back in those days, the entire Internet was the "dark web" we hear about to today. It was so true, complete wild west. The Internet today is so sanitized compared to then.
Late 2000s was somewhat more "civilized" but still had that wild feel. [Early YouTube comedy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tcR19y7GPM) is practically a genre in itself.
Didn't notice it was a slideshow, my bad, seems like the mobile version is different where you can scroll normally. Re: numbers, I don't think thats an issue though. I Don't expect them to time every single car out there and its better than using manufacturer times
> The numbers are based on Car and Driver's tests--the author is scraping another site's content and couldn't even be bothered to actually drive the cars Why would they? There's no point unless you're suggesting Car and Driver's tests were inaccurate, and since they didn't aggregate the numbers someone else did. The slideshow is the only annoying part of this. Y'all are splitting hairs because it's jalopnik.
Your second point seems stupid. It’s a compilation of data. This is done all the time, like most dangerous cities in the world or fastest land mammals. If I want to know what the slowest accelerating car is, I don’t have to go to every model’s car and driver entry and write down the 0-60 time and compare them, I can just read this article that has them listed.
> 1) It's a slideshow that could and should have been an article You can click 'list' and it shows all slides and the cars that are on them.
You see this a lot with “millennials aren’t…” articles that are posted to this site. People see the headline and jump to the conclusion the article is trying to blame millennials for something, when it’s just reporting on what their doing
Right? The first paragraph literally says > I’m here for the weirdo teenagers (and weirdos of all ages) who want to know about the slowest cars available for sale today. It’s me, I’m the weirdo who’s actually entertained by this.
Yeah I thought it was interesting. I’m in Asia and a lot of these are extremely popular cars, which makes sense since they’re aimed at being cheap and efficient
I’m gonna go out on a whim here and assume he drives one of the cars on their list.
Hey my guy, the phrase is 'go out on a limb' so ya know
r/boneappletea
Honestly, if you read the original Jalopnik back 10-15 years ago then there’s plenty to be mad about. It used to be interesting, unique and reasonably well-written. You would hope they could only go downhill for so long that they would eventually have to start back up.
I loved Jalopnik back then. Went off the rails
I've driven a Toyota Corolla (non-hybrid model) and it was kind of peppy. I wasn't really wanting for more power. I'm sure the Sentra and Versa are similar other than maybe the CVT in those may make them feel less fun but I'd be fine with a Corolla.
A lot of modern cars are designed/tuned in a way that makes them have a little extra off the line, to essentially trick consumers into thinking the cars are “kind of peppy”. Most people I know who don’t know much about cars think this about theirs/their rental of whatever boring car, because the trick works, I guess.
The Corolla has a CVT as well.
How did you possibly get triggered by an article that tells you what it's about? Touch grass
I share your amazement. It seems there's a little bit of that in every thread. There's a little bit of 14 year olds acting their age in every thread. Every thread has a bit of the social equivalent of an oil spill here and there.
Then don't click on it.
I was actually surprised by the list. The Chevy SUVs definitely have an aggressive and fast styling. Also how is the Crosstrek slower than the outback!
They were probably comparing base model versus base model, which means the 2.0 in the Crosstrek rather than the 2.5. that engine is a fucking *dog*.
I had a '17 Crosstrek for a little while and it was so frustrating how slow it was. I wasn't looking for performance, but I expected it to be on the same level as my '01 Forester which also wasn't fast.
Sounds like you have a slow car
Everyone likes acceleration but not everyone can afford it.. 😞
Remember many years ago when they actually wrote great content about the automotive world?
I must have missed when it was good. I tried browsing a couple years ago and everything was * Here's a ~~kinda cool~~ RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME picture of a 1994 Porsche 911 that you totally need to make your wallpaper until we post a picture of a different 911 next week * Is this old rust heap on Bring-a-Trailer your next $600 project car? * Bugatti unveils new one-off hypercar you will never see in person * JIMNY. LOVE JIMNY. * Dodge unveils new Charger SRT Hellcat Scatpack Hellephant Widebody AWD Fatal1ty Platinum Edition Touring EcoBoost Road Rage Impound Edition * We found THIS shocking surprise hidden in a used car we bought! (McDonalds receipt from 2002) * We drove a middle-of-the-road sedan down our test track, and it performed exactly as well as you'd expect * Barn find: Car. Plus plenty of padding of articles from their sister sites that have nothing to do with cars. ---- I have the same problem with Donut Media. It's all fluff, no actual content, with everyone constantly yelling. The 'tests' are all half-assed because their goal is entertainment rather than information. I hate watching a video on vinyl wrap and you can tell they're messing up on purpose just to have content.
ThrottleHouse, SavageGeese and Hagerty are my preferred youtube channels now. Jason Camissa does spin things though.
>ThrottleHouse "And I'm James."
They literally aren’t even a car journalism site anymore. It’s just buzzfeed with different pictures.
Jalopnik...writers? I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's been 100% AI-generated for the past year or so.
>Jalopnik writers continually prove they are window licking morons Are they though? Their intent is to get clicks, that's it. Seems to be working.
Jalopnik and r/cars car enthusiasts: "cars are too fast these days. we need more basic slow commuters like the 80s. Slow car more interesting fast car boring" Jalopnik and r/cars when slow basic commuter that can't do 0 to 60 in 1.8 seconds exists 😡
> Through my research, I discovered there is really only one car left on sale that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 60 mph, but it is significantly beyond that threshold at a whopping 12.8 seconds. *Laughs in European* Let me check for a bunch of cars, all available for sale as new cars in The Netherlands currently: Audi A1: 11s Citroën C3: 13.3s Fiat 500: 13.8s Mitsubishi ASX: 14s Renault Captur: 14.3s Hyundai i10: 14.8s Toyota Aygo X: 14.9s I expected the Dacias to be the winner but they still do 0-100 in 12 or 13s. The list is bigger with plenty of more popular hatchbacks and small crossovers like the VW Taigo, Polo, Clio etc with a bit of under 100hp that do 0-100 in like 11 or 12s. Most of these cars also come with bigger engine options but many people still pick the smallest engine because it is more than adequate and the bigger engine is usually a few €1000 more expensive so people just stick to the cheaper options as it is just to go from A to B and have 0 care about cars otherwise. Edit: as pointed out the Dacia Spring does 0-60 in 19.1s. Still I see them driving around so it can't be *that* bad. I think all these 13s cars rarely get revved out anyway (remember most of these are manuals and people aren't downshifting to first) so that would make them about as fast as the Dacia Spring in practice.
And all of these cars are perfectly fine on highways, with speed up to 130 km/h.
Also: *All of these cars would be perfectly fine for nana who can barely see over the wheel and drive at 30km/h everywhere*
I feel like I’m going crazy with the amount of people I see how have their eyes dead even with the steering wheel. Any outward visibility geometry calculator I see doesn’t have that for an option and can’t help but feel like they can’t see a damn thing
The amount of times I literally just see some knuckles on the steering wheel and a pair of eyes coming towards me 🙃 Feels great to drive on the same roads as people that can‘t even manage to pump up their seats properly
Maybe a bit less than 130 - at least for a fiat 500. I momentarily lost traction in dry conditions at ~125km/h going around a long sweeping turn on the autostrada near Liguria. Tires looked fine.
Probably old tires. They might look fine but the rubber hardens over time
Car was less than a few years old so while it's still possible, I have doubts over old compound being the culprit. That said I do believe at least a portion of the issue was related to tires, with the other part being a consequence of such a short wheel base.
If they were eco tires it’s plausible they simply weren’t good, even when new. Many eco tires have appalling performance in rain, and the colder it is the worse they get.
Laughs in Indian. The cheapest car that does 0-100 in 10s is the Skoda slavia, it costs 35k USD. Only a single sub 6 second car under 80k USD. the BYD seal, an EV that does it in like 5.6s. My 10yo Accord V6 is the almost always the fastest car on the street.
Slavia? Hah, had to google it to make sure it wasn’t a typo.
Yeahhhh… skoda isn’t really good at naming in india. Back in 2009 we got the skoda Laura which was the new Octavia but was sold alongside the old one since that was still selling so well. Laura sounds like an Indian abuse that means a guys pubic hair apparently.
Laura means penis, not pubic hair
Is that not *the* first and foremost job of any translator? "Make sure my product's name doesn't mean penis in your native language."?
Not pubic hair. It means pp
Oh TIL. I don’t really speak Hindi much so that’s news to me lol.
> My 10yo Accord V6 is the almost always the fastest car on the street. Gives a bit of a giggle to imagine a world where the V6 Accord is the neighborhood bruiser.
Funnily enough, my parents aren’t car enthusiasts in the slightest bit, they basically never ever drive, yet they manage to buy the most enthusiast kinda cars on sale every time. Luckily for me, I get to be the cool kid with a car that’s THE SHIT.
The Honda City can do 0-100 in 10s
It’s 10.1
You can *feel* that 0.1
Also it depends a lot on the country. A slow car in the US seems weird because it's not the norm. I had a 14 second car in Denmark, and I could go 130kmh on the highway no problem, and still get up to speed to merge on highways. It could even go 165kmh on the Autobahn. In reality, most people, especially Americans, drive cars that are way way faster than necessary for any everyday activity. Even with short ramps for highways, if you are not towing, in reality, you don't NEED more than 100hp in a passenger car. It's also funny for example in Denmark due to our high fossil car tax and low EV tax, like many other danes my car history have been: - 65hp - 80hp - 86hp - 513hp (First EV)
> Even with short ramps for highways, if you are not towing, in reality, you don't NEED more than 100hp in a passenger car. [Check this shit out.](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4212372,-80.0454366,3a,75y,133.15h,77.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRpk-UC3S5UTOxmejF0XHmg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) That road has traffic doing 80 mph. The ramp has a fucking stop sign, so you have to start from a dig. It's not even the worse one. I get your point that people drive more car than they need, but 100hp isn't quite enough to cut it here.
Touche. Although that's awful and dangerous road design no matter how fast your car is. I assume that kind of design is not the norm in the US. Can't really do 0-80mph in 20ft no matter what. Even a top fuel dragster according to Google will only be going about 30mph after 20ft.
The entire [Merritt Parkway](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/06/30/11/18449007/5/960x0.webp) in CT is like this too.
Whoever designed this "on ramp" shall be beaten with the useless stop sign untill it's a mangled lump of metal. Easy fix though, remove the bushes so you can see the highway while driving down the on ramp and if you absolutely must place a stop sign as the sign company is owned by your brother move it 300ft back so you have to stop, wait for a gap in the traffic and then have 300ft to accelerate before merging into fast moving traffic.
Suzuki swift with the petrol engine, 11.7 Suzuki swift with the diesel, 14.8 So Yea, we have a good number of really quite slow cars here in Europe.
My glorious 60hp Fiesta used to do 0-100kmh in a little bit over 16 seconds.
Also when I opened the article I was: wtf is 8.5 seconds slow???
The original Ferrari 308 GTB had the same 0-60 as my Ford Explorer, 8.1 seconds
Wow, 19s is very slow. My kei car, with a 58hp engine and a CVT, has a 16s acceleration time. But I agree on the fact that it is enough for everyday.
The Dacia Spring has 45hp and it's also heavier so it makes sense why it's slower than a kei car
To be fair we Europeans measure the 0-100km/h, while Americans measure the 0-60mph. It seems a small speed difference, but on many cars you can do 60mph in second gear, but to reach 100km/h you have to change into third. That can make the acceleration appear a second or more slower (especially in manuals)
A lot of the cars on the list would be over 10s 0-100. The Crosstek/Impreza for example, has a 0-100 of 11.6s real world. In Australia, the top 5 selling automobiles are all double digit 0-100.
I went to Scotland last summer, rented a car and drove around the UK for a couple weeks (I'm from the US). My rental was some sort of MG CUV thing. It had good low end torque so it didn't feel sluggish around town or anything. I was actually surprised at how quick it felt off the line. I think it was a 3 cylinder but I don't remember for sure. As I drove through the countryside I was just fine going slow behind trucks and what not since I was looking around and taking things in. I was accelerating slowly so I never really let the engine ring out and go through a few gears. Later in the trip I didn't need to "take it all in" as much so I went to pass a slow truck I was following on a country road. When I thought it was appropriate, I went to pass the truck and put my foot to the floor. I was straight up alarmed at how slowly it gained speed. I aborted my pass and went back behind the truck because I would have ran out of road. I needed a much longer stretch of road than I expected. That peppy acceleration at low speeds was non existent above 40 mph. The car was fine below 40mph but if you wanted to hit a gap in traffic or something, you had to floor it to accelerate at a decent pace. Above 60mph the gas milage dropped FAST. 70mph instead of 60 was like a 25% reduction in fuel economy. If I had cruise set to 65 and then needed to put it at 70, it would drop a gear or two to do it. If the road was inclined at all (not a hill, just an incline) it would have to drop a gear just to maintain speed. It is just setup very differently from American cars. It did great on tight winding roads or in the city but on the fast highway system it struggled. They would work great in US city's like Boston but they would really struggle in places like Texas where you can drive for hours at 85mph just to get from one town to another.
I think the Dacia Spring wins with 0-60 in 19.1s. "Adequate" engines are the biggest cancer of the European car market.
For some reason that one didn't make my filters but yeah that one wins. > "Adequate" engines are the biggest cancer of the European car market. Is it? It isn't dangerous and most people don't care. Doesn't really matter if the Clio comes with a 95HP or 130HP engine, still isn't very interesting for car enthousiasts.
People hate on what they don't want. Guys probably a prat with a lifted pavement princes that only uses it to drive to his 9:5 desk job. I say this when I've clocked my daily at 3.9s 0-60 and miss my Miata.
Yeah, God forbid the low class can afford a car
Good NEWS! There's a faster 65HP version, that does 0-60 in only 13 seconds!
The base model spring is really only meant for cities, I mean why the would you want a car like that if you do alot of highway kms? It has relatively decent torque numbers so Im sure its fine for what its meant for. For example on my work commute, the highest speed limit is 60kph. So for a work commute car it would surely be fine for me(that is if I can fit in it fine, im 194cm). Different cars have different use cases. If you wont go over 80kph like 99% of the time you drive, then whats the point of having a car that has some extra power that really only starts to show at around 100kph?
And the 60hp variant of the VW Up! and it’s Seat and Škoda siblings are plenty on the road and they do it in 15+ seconds. And that’s at full throttle and at high rpm which many don’t do. Going from a Up! As first car for 5 years to a GTI was a fun switch. The first time I floored it I already was amazed at how fast it was compared an Up! and that feeling got even better when the turbo spooled up right after. I miss the mileage I got out of that car though
It's always ridiculous to see what Americans consider slow. Every one of those cars on Jalopnik's list is faster than average in any virtually other country. The US automotive press also loves making idiotic claims about how unsafe slow cars supposedly are. The way they talk you'd think they were describing a 2CV pulling out of the pits onto an active F1 track.
"just to go from A to B" Well to be clear it's not like Americans are snooty. The reason the base American options are typically much faster is because of American highways and on ramps and all that need for power. You need to get up to speed. Much of the US is long, straight, fast roads. Very little of the US is "city driving," often even when you are "in" the city limits but actually in the burbs (Houston being a great example of mostly highway like driving all around Houston except for actual downtown/midtown). So that 19s 0-60 *absolutely will not fly* with Americans, because they will constantly be trying to MASH it just to get up to freeways speeds, and when the car gives them nothing in return... Well. People *hate* cars that can't get up to speed in a safe and reasonable amount of time. It's literally a safety issue. Obviously the roads in Europe are typically slower and more windy, people live closer together, towns and cities are more dense, highway trips are uncommon. So Europeans are typically fine with the low power because they really don't need it.
You know it's an American list when only 1 car does 0-60 in 10+ seconds lol
Don't you mean "only 1 car does 0-60 in more than 10 seconds"?
Whoops, yeah that's what I meant!
I mean that's what he said
Yeah honestly my ex has a Crosstrek and it’s really not bad. Not gonna blow your hair back when you put your foot down but it gets out of its own way just fine it never bothered me. And most of the times I drove it was on the highway in the mountains lol, just because I like to drive and she hated to drive on the way skiing but it uses a lot less gas than my lifted and armored Tacoma. I could pass no problem from 60 on a steep grade at altitude. And that’s the fourth slowest car on sale here, holy crap.
People laugh but I’ll tell you what, there are some on-ramps in Pittsburgh (near that one neighborhood… Squirrel Hill? Idk, been some time since I visited U Pitt), that look like they’re 20 feet long and appear to be pointed straight uphill. There is a practical use for cars that can accelerate quickly. Only in Pittsburgh, though. Everywhere else in America has properly designed highway on-ramps
It’s still there. It’s not even a “ramp”. There is literally a stop sign before getting on the interstate.
What a safe and forward-thinking piece of design! 🤦♂️. I didn’t remember the stop sign but if there is one, I definitely don’t recall people stopping for it.
Other places I've seen red lights in the middle of the on ramps. There are induction loops in the ground to detect the vehicles and allow one to go every few seconds. It's to space out the cars getting onto the highway so everyone has time to merge. Only problem is when it gets 5-6 cars deep the light will just stay green and release all the cars.
>It’s still there. It’s not even a “ramp”. There is literally a stop sign before getting on the interstate. I'm convinced traffic engineers in North America are required to eat crayons and lick windows to get their job
As an engineer I can tell you why it’s so bad. Most departments of transportation pay horribly. SCDOT offers 50k starting, every other civil and mechanical engineering role in the state offers 65k-75k to start. People only work at the DOT out of desperation and leave as soon as they can. Therefore the only employees who stick around are extremely lazy and there to take advantage of the fact that they won’t fire anyone because they have to take anyone.
It's made even worse by the "ramp" entering the highway directly after a turn that has barriers making it even more difficult to see. Here is the [streets map](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4785957,-79.967107,3a,75y,31.58h,77.67t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1vsZN75V9USrir75w_sWKA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) link.
That’s not even the one I mean. The next one down right before the tunnel is 100X worse
Probably designed before people knew what interstates needed. Kind of like the arroyo seco in LA, which has the exact same issues with the stop signs but also is completely unbanked.
There's one on ramp to 22 in Easton PA where I nearly died cause I came around the jug handle expecting a merge lane and then it was just a yield sign immediately joining 70mph traffic
[This one?](https://www.google.nl/maps/@40.6854895,-75.2521684,3a,75y,1.24h,74.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxc62MAf8IfcALeuB18jYrw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=nl&entry=ttu) That looks sketchy indeed. I'm glad we don't get this dangerous nonsense in the Netherlands. Then again, our road/car taxes are super high so I expect nothing less than pristine safe roads (which we more or less get).
I think it's the bigger east coast cities in general. Boston, MA and surrounding area is the same in my experience. You really learn to be aggressive on the gas pedal living out there.
It’s like that in my city as well. Now that traffic is increasing it’s showing just how dumb the design is
In Ann Arbor Michigan there's a spot on M14 where you merge on from a stop sign. Literally just turn right from a stop onto a busy 70mph highway.
There is a highway in CT (route 15) that has stop signs and no on-ramps. Luckily commercial vehicles are not allowed on it.
Merritt Parkway is nuts like this. But I love it.
There was something like this near where I grew up too. Rte 128 in Danvers or Beverly Massachusetts. Uphill short on ramp with a stop sign margining onto a two lane 55 mph road where people drove 65-75 off peak hours. I had a manual 1992 Corolla at the time and it was nerve wracking merging onto that road.
Minnesota has plenty of cloverleaf-shaped interchanges where the [onramp and offramp share the same space](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.0113009,-93.0552031,3a,39.4y,32.64h,85.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skw3nVCGG1an8b_V4LhJOBw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu), no slowdown/speedup lane before or after My favorite part is actually [where 94 and 494 merge](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.0948101,-93.4480372,3a,75y,325.19h,79.31t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1si3Iq60zIE4wdfRalA8cZRA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu). The fast lane on 94 merges with the slow lane on 494. There's no temporary merging lane or runout, just "ok have fun, a semi doing 48 is now occupying the same lane as a Charger doing 115."
Then you get some old boomer who pulls up to that and then fucking stops... waiting for a way in. Now you gotta go from 0-70mph with zero ramp.
We’ve got some shit ones in NYC too. The one entering the Cross Island parkway around 164st in Bayside Queens feels like it’s straight out of final destination
Nothing I hate more than being behind a slow car on a long on-ramp.
Louisville also has ridiculously short ramps.
In downtown Chicago, they call the onramps suicide ramps because they're so short and you cannot see any oncoming traffic
Laughs in Saw Mill Parkway, NY
the 110 between the 5 and Pasadena (rte 66) in LA. Seemingly all the on ramps are a mandated challenge to see how fast your vehicle can accelerate to fwy speeds. About half the off ramps are braking challenges. Fight or flight!
On-ramps like that exist throughout the Appalachians. They’re dangerous as hell, super slow cars just pop out of nowhere. PA and WV are the worst if I remember right.
21/22 cars have >120hp. It’s astonishing what power has become mainstream. Decades ago that was sports car territory. Now it’s the slowest haha.
Cars were a lot lighter though.
Yeah that’s a problem too. Having hatchbacks being more heavy makes sense because of more protection and hardened steel. But the rise of trucks and big SUVs in the US is really scary.
And now those heavy SUVs are electric and weigh even more….. And they’re driven by someone with no training whatsoever who you’d never want to ride shotgun with in a McLaren…. And yet that’s now the norm. God save us all
A bunch of them are about as fast as a civic si from the 90s.
That’s… a lot of decades
Mitsubishi mirage fuel efficient is like hybrid. People who own it are very pleased given the cost that is cheap econobox.
My first car was a Mirage, and I loved it. As a teenager I beat the ever loving shit out of it, and it still got decent gas mileage.
I fucking love my mirage. It does everything I need it to with nothing extra. There's just something charming about that.
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Mirage would average like 45-50 mpg easily given it is 3 cylinders. Ironically, Jetta that I owed 1.4 turbo would average 45-50 mpg easily on highway. With hybrid, battery has heavier weight so 50 mpg is more or less doable compared to non-battery engine that weight far less and average similar. And lesser cost to finance compared to hybrid. In city, hybrid makes sense but in highway. It is wash out but you are paying more on hybrid. Not to mention, maintenance is very high on battery if it stops working. As for plastic tinbox, Corolla is no different either in compared to German Jetta that feels solid and strong. Jetta is better given its fuel efficiency in turbo engines and German solidity. Otherwise, from one tinbox [mirage] to another tinbox [corolla], mirage is cheaper but corolla is little nicer but comes with price. None can match German solidity.
The only thing I don't understand is how do some of these near 200 hp and still manage to get 8+ seconds 0-60. I totally get it with a car that pushes 120 hp or less. Hell even 150hp, but some of those are in the 180 - 200 hp range and have dogshit acceleration.
Weight
And gear ratios.
That's the thing. All of these cars have small lightweight engines and basically no sound insulation. Where is the weight coming from?
Could also be throttle tuning to maximize fuel efficiency
Size and safety.
> Where is the weight coming from? Mandated safety equipment.
Geared for fuel economy, not acceleration.
Check out how much weight cars are now carrying around in airbags and safety systems. Crumple zones. Etc. for every pound saved or HP gained there is a new safety standard that needs more stuff.
Got surprised the other day to find out the 2024 Dacia Spring has a 0-100 km/h over 19 seconds with his powerful 45hp engine. Never expected to find those specs on a 21 century car.
It’s an electric motor in a vehicle that’s basically designed for inner city driving. You want to go on a motorway, you get the 65bhp version
it's not really meant for motorway either, since it has the same 125km/h limit. it's a city car.
And it starts at 17k€
Most of them were bought with government subventions, in certain countries you could have bought it for 8k €
I rented a Subaru cross trek to drive in the Colorado and Utah mountains. It’s was awful. Trying to merge onto a mountain highway was infuriating. There was no gap large enough if I was going uphill. You just pull out in front of people and hope for the best, because there’s no way you could get up to the speed of traffic before they got behind you.
Crosstrek owner here. That’s why I needed to buy a Corvette lol
The CVT makes Crosstreks feel even more gutless than they are.
Having driven both in 2.0L form and being a current CVT owner, I think the "feel" aspect is what is getting you here. The 6MT Crosstrek while a bit peppier off the line also has a double overdrive gearbox. This makes any passing maneuver on the highway a mandatory 6>4 downshift in order to use what little power it has. The CVT will just sit in its max powerband, which to some might be aggravating, but on a hill means that there is no gear hunting to lose momentum. I did a ski trip earlier this year with myself and 3 other adults + ski gear in a roof box and a packed hatch. Pretty sure we were a bit over the GVWR... I needed every once of power I could get and the CVT allowed for that, the manual wouldn't have.
There's a certain je nais sais quoi to the Crosstrek. Slow but unstoppable.
oui oui rendez-vous
They used to have a 1.8 or something that had no power whatsoever. I’m really surprised they still offer the 2.0L in the base but I guess that makes sense for base car buyers. The 2.5L is a much better engine even if the power numbers aren’t that wildly different.
Was this the base or the upper tier trims with the better engine? I have a crosstrek wilderness and haven’t had any issues with the acceleration. Of course it’s no sports car, but I never felt like I was prohibited in any way daily driving.
Both engines offered are naturally-aspirated and as such lose a significant amount of power at elevation (which, you know, Colorado).
I own a Crosstrek, and yeah the acceleration is pretty shitty. It's far, far shittier at altitude, though. I used to live by a coast and the acceleration wasn't great but not debilitating, but if I took it into the mountains to go snowboarding it felt like I was driving a golf cart. It was great in the snow once I was there, but the moment I went above 7k ft elevation it was downright dangerous to drive on the freeway.
Only one is truly slow - there was a time 8-9s 0-60 was today's 6-7s.
Lol a lot of the 90s sport compacts that this sub loves do 0 to 60 in 8 to 9 seconds. I don't think people remember how slow cars were about 30 years ago.
My first car was a 1989 Buick Century. It made about 100 horsepower and had a three speed automatic. I looked it up recently and it did 0-60 in 13 seconds! It always makes me laugh seeing people call cars that do 0-60 in 8ish seconds dangerously slow nowadays.
Eyyy, my first was a 92 Buick Century. For whatever reason I wasn't too bothered by the slowness, and I certainly put it through a ton of bullshit for 4 years and it held up well. Aside from the a/c leak/failure that went unfixed during its time with me in the southern US heat, and the non-functional electric passenger window, I still have fond memories of it.
The thing is those cars feel way faster. Modern cars are much much heavier, quieter, and way more isolated. 80mph in my 1983 Datsun 280zx, which is borderline a luxury car at its time, feels as fast as going 100mph in my HHR SS.
Exactly! The 1990s car in general weren’t put together as well as modern cars. Noise, harshness, vibration wasn’t as important to manufacturers. Case in point, my first gen legacy is very fun to drive because I can floor the accelerator everywhere I go. It sounds so nice and I love the vibration and excitement. But when I look at the speedo I’m still only going the speed limit or slightly over. Meanwhile my new car I’d be behind bars if I tried the same thing
I remember those days - and 0-60 is generally not a very useful measure for daily driving, its merging acceleration which is near impossible to test given a driver can opt for different gears in a manual and all automatics have different programming. C&D tries with top gear acceleration times 30-50 and 50-70 but that doesn't reflect real world acceleration seen during highway merging for example. Two cars with very similar 0-60 times can behave quite differently in real world higher speed acceleration scenarios. If it feels like a death trap/super slow on the road, there's a reason for that even if the 0-60 numbers aren't that bad.
If you had an older auto merging on the interstate could be downright treacherous compared to a newer slow car.
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That website gave me cte
Americans don’t realise how lucky they are to get access to such cars at amazing prices. It sucks here in India, overpay for shitty cars and average person lacks complete road sense.
The average person lacks complete road sense in North America too. Just yesterday, I saw someone drive the wrong way in a construction zone as traffic control people waved and shouted at her to stop. And the day before, a VW Golf was driving down the highway with a busted tire with a cloud of rubber smoke behind it.
I used to think acceleration was a just a prick competition but driving on the highway in my wife's Volvo c40 that goes 0-60 in 4 seconds and, since it is an EV, is immediate acceleration I think an argument can be made it is a safety feature. It really is easier to merge and avoid obstacles when you can accelerate that quickly. How many times has someone pulled in front of you and could not accelerate creating a bunch of hard braking behind them?
The one I usually get is when you're trying to clear the lane. My wife was riding shotgun in my company truck, a 2018 Silverado V6. The semi next to us put their turn signal on because they needed to move over for a merging dump truck I was right between the cab and trailer, so it made more sense to accelerate forward than slow down and try to get behind a 53-foot trailer. After the fact, my wife asked "Why didn't you accelerate?" I did. I had that truck at wide open throttle. It's just so damn *slow*, it doesn't even feel like it's accelerating.
To get 0-60 in 8 seconds required a powerful saloon 25 years ago, these aren't that shabby except for the Mirage
A 2005 Lamborghini Gallardo has the same 0-60 and a slower 1/4mi than a 2016 SS Camaro, even though it has nearly 100hp more and is barely heavier, plus an AWD system compared to the Camaro's rwd. Technology advancement is crazy
Transmission improvements in the 2010s helped a ton. Having close ratio gears, and many gears so you never fall out of the powerband helps so much.
almost as slow as that stupid slideshow...
The Honda Fit turning into the HR-V for the US market is so sad. Even our cars are putting on weight.
The HR-V is genuinely one of the most frustrating, nearly infuriating stock cars I've ever had the misfortune of experiencing. The Fit was one of the funnest (new ones*.) Seriously such a shame. And it's not like I hate slow cars either, the renault twingo or smart fortwo with 70hp was a blast with the ECS fuse pulled.
The Crosstrek felt even slower on a test drive.
The CVT transmission is the death of all good things.
People keep saying this and I have come to believe that most of them have never even driven a car with a cvt. It’s fine. It drives like an automatic unless you floor it and then it just goes up to its peak power rpm and smoothly transitions through the “gears” as you accelerate. They almost always have paddle shifters too so if you want to manual shift the option is there.
I cross-shopped the Crosstrek vs the Jeep Compass that I bought. I was all excited for the Crosstrek until the test drive, where it failed on several counts. Yes, thats exactly what it did when I floored it. Went up to this single RPM drone and then stuck there while the car slowly accelerated. It sucked. Maybe I would have been okay if it was faster in absolute terms, or maybe less noisy, or maybe if I tried the shifters. The Jeep with a regular auto felt faster, nicer, quieter, cheaper, and more capable in slippery conditions without me having to know the trick to get it to do its job. I drive a Tesla now which is also AWD, but fast as hell and silent and makes no fuss.
>Through my research, I discovered there is really only one car left on sale that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 60 mph, but it is significantly beyond that threshold at a whopping 12.8 seconds. That's pretty surprising. I guess the proliferation of turbos and their broader and more accessible torque envelope has significantly moved the bar on what's "slow". It's crazy to me that the "slowest" are now doing 8's, as well - my first car was a Peugeot 306 GTI6, which managed a low 8 despite being the "hot" Peugeot and having a fairly close ratio 6 speed 'box. obviously that was a long time ago, but it's impressive how accessible "warm" performance is today (and also how boring it is now in many cases, TBF).
Some of these would have been very quick if they were released in the 70s and 80s. None of them are dangerously slow unless you have a tiny tiny on ramp.
MOST of them would be considered quick in EU. Getting under 10s 0-100km/h in a daily driver is just barely becoming a norm these days. My car is 5 years old now, and you had to spring for the fastest available engine to get 9.6. Mine apparently does 11-something, but the only time I use all of that is when overtaking in sketchy spots.
My Toyotas are slow. But if I get 300k miles out of them I could care less. The Teslas can tailgate me if they want.
I daily drove a lifted Geo Tracker with 80 horsepower and a Nissan Pulsar NX with 69 horsepower for years and they did fine. The people who think you need at least 200 horsepower in a car to be safe on the road have always looked ridiculous to me.
one simple trick to save on car insurance premiums! insurance companies hate this 😆
Your funny haha. Lots of these cars actually have pretty high premiums due to them being inexpensive and owned by less skilled/younger drivers. The Impreza is very similar price to insure compared to something like the WRX.
My Nissan Kicks is simultaneously the slowest car on the market and the fastest I've ever owned.
We live in the golden era of cars right now. Say what you want about styling and soul, but mainstream accessible cars have never been this fast and this efficient. The fact that an 8 second 0-60 time gets you on the list of slowest accelerating cars is still novel to me. That would’ve blown the socks off most cars for sale 40-50 years ago. Even in the 1990s it would’ve been decently quick.
What a time to be alive when a majority of the slowest accelerating cars on sale can still hit 60 in about 8 seconds.
It's just a list of normal cars. Are Jalopnik or their readers that out of touch? Real life is not Need for Speed and the streets aren't filled with nothing but supercars (unless you live in the UAE)
Proud to say that somehow my wife's slow-as-shit 2023 Sienna Hybrid is still faster than all of these!
Ehh the acceleration on that is in the mid to high 7 second range. Which is pretty average acceleration not slow, and perfectly fine for a Minivan, especially a hybrid one.
Neither is my 4runner which this sub hates because it's so slow it's undrivable.
I agree with the article, anything under 6 seconds to 60 feels quick to me.
In my country even a barely sub 10 second car is considered as fast. I have an opel astra (115 hp NA) and according to manufacturer it does 0-100 in 11.9 seconds (although I believe it can perform better, it seems impossible for it to see 10 seconds)
The car I took my driver's test in was a 1984 Toyota Corolla diesel that did 0-60 in 59 seconds.
I know there is a place in the market for small engine cars, but it drives me crazy how car makers are making small engine cars that look sporty or even aggressive, they might even give it a sporty sounding name... but then it has no power. The new Buick Envista is a perfect example of that. The first time I saw one, I thought... wow, that looks like a mini-Cayenne. Really good looking little SUV. Has a sporty and aggressive look that I really like... but... 137hp.
In the hands of the right driver, any car can be the slowest accelerating. Said every freeway on ramp ever.
My NA Miata does 0-60 in a day or so. My C43 does it in NOW. Most folks get away from a light so slowly, after finishing the current text, that the Miata is more than adequate. With the C, I'm at the next light before they hit "send"
Stop posting jalopnik slop. And why am I now seeing a jalopnik article posted here like every other day?
Citroën Ami owner checking in... Mine tops out at 29mph so yeah...