Quote:
Originally Posted by toEleven
That was probably rhetorical, but...a significant number of people seem to be wired for acceleration and top speed. When I mention the track, the most common reaction is a question/story/comment about drag strips. Straight lines. From my perspective, we (Americans as I view us) have a cultural bias toward needlessly powerful straight line vehicles. How often do you picture classic American muscle cars and reflect on their cornering 'performance'? How often do you see American made sportbikes? Perhaps I'm unfairly characterizing Nascar (I don't watch it), but if they could continue going fast for hundreds of miles without turning at all, rather than just left, it seems like they would.
As for size upgrades in other cultural backgrounds, I have no theory.
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I think America tends to be larger and flatter than Europe. We have more straight, wide open roads, where they have a lot of winding roads. Not that either place doesn't have the other, but they seem to be more prevalent in those places.
This:
vs. this:
To relate drag racing back to bikes,
https://www.facebook.com/AlwineRacing/ is the team of the guy who painted my truck. I don't think the lean angles are very good on it...
Quote:
Originally Posted by CaliGrrl
It's true. One of the cars we had was a 1974 Gran Torino, which was one of the muscle cars they used to race in the 70s (and was the car in Starsky & Hutch). Go fast, sure, but they had the reputation of bad cornering ability. We never had that problem, but we never raced him, either.
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And even the fastest version of that car still only did 0-60 in about the same time as a Ninjette (8.1s). The slowest version was 13.7s, which isn't really even an amazing 1/4 mile time anymore.