weight- what the hell's going on?
 

OK folks,
Just got my Road and Track today. So now, all three major car mags have reported on the Z.

Yeah sure, not all there stats are the same, but they never are for most cars. 5.4-5.6 0-60. Around 14sec 1/4 mile, around 0.89 lateral Gs, and a 65-67.5 MPH slalom speed.. ok, ok...No gripe from me about ANY of that. In fact, I love it.

What I find amazing, though is the dicrepency in weight. Perhaps I never looked into it on other cars, but this is weird:

R % T : curb weight-3290 track model
C and D: curb weight-3320 track model
Motor Trend: curb weight-32xx (I forget) touring model.

None of these match Nissan weight listing. Do they all define "curb weight" differently? Were they all pre-production models that are different ? And isnt it a little bit ironic that the touring model that was tested weighed the least and had the fastest 1/4 mile racing time?

I hope someone with a little more knowledge in this matter could enlighten me a bit.

RaymanZ

that's messed up. the fact is if you look closely at these things there are a lot of errors in spec sheets, the C&D might have been 3220 (not 3320).

Road & Track list a curb wt of 3290 and a test weight of 3435.

Test conditions: 75F, 45% humidity, 350 ft msl, calm wind. Pretty ideal conditions.

R&T probably didn't launch the car very well either... I bet their 60' time is piss-poor...

I think the rules for us rabid Z fans are:

The "correct" figures for weight, 0-60 and 1/4 miles times is the LOWEST ever published, anywhere. Anything higher is due to testing errors, typos, and morons behind the wheel.

If there are no figures published anywhere that meet our expectations, there is some explanation, probably something to do with the use of pre-production vehicles. This goes for horsepower, too.

Hey, these are my rules! Why not be unreasonably optmistic if it makes us happy? (Uh-oh, treading on dangerous philosophical ground here -- there is no absolute truth...)

when C&D review came out, didnt everyone say "wait for R & T", they really know how to test a car?"

R&T always seems to have slower times for just about every car they test (the exception is the WRX, 14.4!). I always thought that Motor Trend and C&D had the fastest times.

As for the definitions of "curb weight," the owners manual claims that it's the total weight with all fluids + full tank of gas.

I'm not sure about the big variance in the listed curb weights of the 3 mags. I'm willing to bet C&D's 3320 lb is a typo, and was supposed to be 3220. I have no idea about the R&T weight (maybe it was loaded with all the options? 70 lb worth?):confused: