[nyguy]

What's up guys!. Last week, I saw on MSN.com that a new convertible is coming out for 06', and from the little picture, I had no idea it was a Saturn, let alone an affordable car. When I clicked on the article, and saw it was a Saturn, and under 30k, I said to myself.. THAT is my next car!!. So, upon googling "Saturn SKY", I am so thrilled to have found this forum! :willy:

I am by no means a racer, but I do like fast cars, even though i've never owned one. I live in Upstate NY, and I want to be able to cruise, yet.. when an 18 yr old punk pulls up in his ricer Honda with his fake Vtec decals.. I want to be able to smoke the punk!! .

Although I would love to be among the first ones who own a SKY, I also want to hold out for a more faster engine. I'm not one to do an extreme amount of engine mods. I'm one, to buy an already quick car, maybe add an aftermarker Intake.. and that's about it. It's no doubt that i'm buying a SKY.. that's a given. I even went to my local Saturn dealer with cash in hand for a deposit, but with the exception of handing me a nifty brochure on the car, he said he can give me a call when he get's more info on ordering one, and I gave all my information to him. He was pushing a Redline Ion on me.. and I was like, "uhh.. i'll wait for the SKY". He was sort of basing the SKY, by saying, "Well, I am curious to see how much leg room is in that thing.. that might be a major downfall for alot of people". Whatever dude.. i'm 250lbs, and 5' 11"!. I used to work at a Dodge Dealership.. and if I was able to fit into a Crossfire, i'll be able to fit in a SKY!!

I guess my main question is, are there any semi-confirmed rumors on what type of engine will be offered next?. Because, I went through this once, and don't want to go through it again. Back in April of 00', I ordered a 01' PT Cruiser.. I needed to have one.. needed to be the first person to own one!. And I did, $24.000 later. At that point, the Limited Edition was the highest end someone can get, with a peppy 2.4. Ordered it.. got it in July of 00', and it was great. But, a year later.. the GT Turbo comes out.. I go to trade my 01' in.. and it depreciated $9,000. It just didn't pay for me. So, needless to say, I took my 01', totally decked it out, and made it into a show car.. which you can see in my sig. Of course if I could do things differently, I would have waited out and got the Turbo.

So, i'm being very cautious in jumping into this. There is no way that i'll buy a 170HP SKY, only for there to be a 250HP option available less then a year later. The SKY looks fast, and I want to be able to back that up!. So, my question is, does anyone have any idea what will be offered next?.. and when?. Because I am itching to own one of these mini Vette's!!. I can't wait!!!

 

[101jinx101]

Well, Strong rumors are that they'll be using a 2.0L Turbo Ecotec in the redline sky (253 hp) so that's what I'm getting... also rumored that it's coming out in april? I doubt it, but i won't be complaining if it does...

 

[achieftain]

I'm from the old school where cubic inches ruled. I would rather have at least a 2.3T as in the Saab (also GM product and surely available for the Kappa platform. Saab also has in the works two other interesting concepts. First is a dual blown engine with turbo for high end power AND supercharger for zero lag off the line performance. Second they have a computer controlled engine that has equal mpg on regular unleaded as well as biofuel. Difference is that the engine is tuned to get about 30 more hp on biofuel automatically so certainly there is incentive to buy "green" fuel. Of course that is for Europe only at this point.

I still fail to see the logic in substituting a smaller displacemenmt engine with turbo when adding a turbo to a larger displacement engine should result in higher hp. Here's the argument> if a n.a. 2.0 produces about 145hp and a turbo version unenhanced otherwise gets 205 ( as in Cobalt SS) why not put the turbo (or s/c) on the standard 2.4 and see the power go from 170 to 250 without extra tweaking. If the rumored 2.0 can achieve 250 in the Sol and Aky then why not break the 300 barrier by blowing the standard 2.4?

 

[sky_vue]

I'm kinda liking this idea.. would anyone on the forum be able to accurately gestimate (oximoron I know I know) what the 0-60 times would be if the car had >300 hp on it.

??

 

[brentil]

Over at the Solsticeforum.com we have a couple threads about the leaked images of the Turbocharged ECOTEC engine that will be in the Solstice GXP. You can pretty much bet it'll be in the Sky too. The Solstice GXP is rumored to be about a year behind the base car, so that would be the Aug-Nov 2006 time frame. Rumors we've seen here and over there have both cars coming out about the same time too. We keep hearing about 230~250HP numbers for this car. We're hoping this Nov at SEMA we'll get some more official information, at least GM hinted at it once in a podcast that we would.

I'm kinda liking this idea.. would anyone on the forum be able to accurately gestimate (oximoron I know I know) what the 0-60 times would be if the car had >300 hp on it.

??

We actually just had a very in depth discussion at the Solstice forum about this recently. Rough estimate is (Weight/HP)*0.45 = Estimated 0-60 times. For example;
Solstice (2860/177)*0.45 === 7.27s (Pontiac official 0-60 time is 7.2s)
Sky (2860/170)*0.45 === 7.57s

Ok, lets say the GXP/RL adds 100 lbs of weight and has 250HP;
GXP/RL (2960/250)*0.45 === 5.33s
(Sounds very close to a podcast slipup doesn't it?)

Lets say your 300HP RL had to add another 40 lbs for extra parts/cooling;
(3000/300)*0.45 === 4.5s

Remember these are rough estimates. Gearing, extra shifting, power hop, bad power delivery, etc can all add extra time to a 0-60 time.

 

[brentil]

Since this thread could end up going very technical I've moved it to that section.

 

[Snowy_Beast]

We actually just had a very in depth discussion at the Solstice forum about this recently. Rough estimate is (Weight/HP)*0.45 = Estimated 0-60 times. For example;
Solstice (2860/177)*0.45 === 7.27s (Pontiac official 0-60 time is 7.2s)
Sky (2860/170)*0.45 === 7.57s

Ok, lets say the GXP/RL adds 100 lbs of weight and has 250HP;
GXP/RL (2960/250)*0.45 === 5.33s
(Sounds very close to a podcast slipup doesn't it?)

Lets say your 300HP RL had to add another 40 lbs for extra parts/cooling;
(3000/300)*0.45 === 4.5s

Remember these are rough estimates. Gearing, extra shifting, power hop, bad power delivery, etc can all add extra time to a 0-60 time.

Is that actually a decent mathematic formula???

( Weight / HP ) X 0,45 = Times require for the 0-60 mph

Let's compare with this

Mazda Miata Speed (34,395 CAN$)

( 2539 / 178 ) X 0,45 = 6.42

In real, the miata does it in 6.50 sec! Wow pretty accurate after all! :cheers:

 

[brentil]

It's nice because you can use it in various ways (just like most formulas).

Say we wanted to find the weight on a given car to get to a certain speed without touching the engine at all.
(Weight/HP)*0.45 = (Estimated 0-60) becomes ((Estimated 0-60)/0.45)*HP = Weight

Example of a 7s 177HP Solstice would be;
(7/0.45)*177 === 2753 lbs

How about HP needed to move a car faster without changing its weight;
(Weight/HP)*0.45 = (Estimated 0-60) becomes Weight/((Estimated 0-60)/0.45) = HP

Example of a 7s 2860 lbs Solstice;
2860/(7/0.45) === 184 HP

And if you did both
(2753/184)*0.45 === 6.73s
That's a very doable performance gain too. Shave 100 lbs and gain 7 HP and you cut off about 0.5s of time.

 

[sky_vue]

It's funny because the only way I'm going to shave off .5 seconds will require that I loose weight myself.. cause I love the whole car..

It would be fun though to get it under 5.

Just to piss off most of the sports car world.. as in :: "HA HA you got whipped by a Saturn.."

Or .. that saturn just ran rings around you
Or.. you suck... (plain english version)

Push under 5 .. so 300 hp is the way to go.

 

[geerhed]

put an LS7 or any 400+ cubic inch LS2 in the sky and 0-60 times will be in the low 4's or even 3's with the right suspension set up and good tires.

 

[radtech]

put an LS7 or any 400+ cubic inch LS2 in the sky and 0-60 times will be in the low 4's or even 3's with the right suspension set up and good tires.

Low 4's maybe...3's might be a problem even with the best tires. The widest rear tires you probably can get away with is 275s. And that's being optimistic since the stock 245s appear to be out to the fenders already.

 

[Snowy_Beast]

It's nice because you can use it in various ways (just like most formulas).

Say we wanted to find the weight on a given car to get to a certain speed without touching the engine at all.
(Weight/HP)*0.45 = (Estimated 0-60) becomes ((Estimated 0-60)/0.45)*HP = Weight

Example of a 7s 177HP Solstice would be;
(7/0.45)*177 === 2753 lbs

How about HP needed to move a car faster without changing its weight;
(Weight/HP)*0.45 = (Estimated 0-60) becomes Weight/((Estimated 0-60)/0.45) = HP

Example of a 7s 2860 lbs Solstice;
2860/(7/0.45) === 184 HP

And if you did both
(2753/184)*0.45 === 6.73s
That's a very doable performance gain too. Shave 100 lbs and gain 7 HP and you cut off about 0.5s of time.

So then... when I dreamed all my life to be under 5s on the 0-60... at 320HP and around 3100 of weight it could be it?

(3100 / 320) *0,45 = 4.36!!

Well now we're talking!

 

[brentil]

A slight warning about the forumula. The greater the HP the greater the margin of error. I've been working on trying to come up with some data points from various cars to get an idea how to calculate the error value as HP changes.

For example a 3240 lbs 400HP C6 calculates as being a 3.645s 0-60 car, which is incorrect. The C6 Corvette is a 4.5s car. The 3132 lbs Z06 with 505 HP should by this calculation be a 2.8s car, but it's actually a 3.7s car.

This ends up being 19% and 24% off their real values.

So I'm guessing your (3100 / 320) *0,45 = 4.36s estimate is off by about 15% making the real time closer to 5.014s.

Like I said I'm working on a more exact formula that will take error into account for more realistic values.

 

[swatthefly]

We actually just had a very in depth discussion at the Solstice forum about this recently. Rough estimate is (Weight/HP)*0.45 = Estimated 0-60 times. For example;
Solstice (2860/177)*0.45 === 7.27s (Pontiac official 0-60 time is 7.2s)
Sky (2860/170)*0.45 === 7.57s

Ok, lets say the GXP/RL adds 100 lbs of weight and has 250HP;
GXP/RL (2960/250)*0.45 === 5.33s
(Sounds very close to a podcast slipup doesn't it?)

Lets say your 300HP RL had to add another 40 lbs for extra parts/cooling;
(3000/300)*0.45 === 4.5s

Remember these are rough estimates. Gearing, extra shifting, power hop, bad power delivery, etc can all add extra time to a 0-60 time.

i checked it with a few other cars ive owned and it does seem to be a good guessing tool for 0-60 times/hp/weight etc...

i'm wondering if anyone out there has any quick guessing tools to figure a quarter mile time/spd?

 

[Snowy_Beast]

So I'm guessing your (3100 / 320) *0,45 = 4.36s estimate is off by about 15% making the real time closer to 5.014s.

Like I said I'm working on a more exact formula that will take error into account for more realistic values.

Well that's exactlty where I wanted to be.... 5 sec for the 0-60. :willy:

 

[KappaMan]

Brentil, just to add to the caveats on the 0-60 estimation:

I think part of the application of the "45%" fomula may be the difference between cars that are "mostly engine" limited vs. cars that are "tire traction limited".

The point at which it seems to break down is right around 5 seconds 0-60, or slightly less - but cars that do that quick 0-60 times usually have so much power that you either a) use electronic traction control, b) launch in a cloud of tiresmoke, or c) try to get that optimum launch. The 5-seconds seems to be the point where gearing and tire traction become dominant.

Was looking at the ford GT - 0-60 in first gear at some riduculous number, like 3.7 seconds. No gear shifts, though. I didn't look up the numbers to see how it calculates vs. how it actually does.

Gear shifts add time to the 0-60 (as we've discussed on SF).

AND the 45% time is back calculated to work with "Curb" weight, assuming some reasonable constant for driver and measurement equipment.


Swat', online, there are several estimators that use power:weight ratio to estimate 0-60 and 1/4 trap times and speeds. Be sure you plug in the right numbers - some use curb weights, some use "as tested" weights.

 

[swatthefly]

Swat', online, there are several estimators that use power:weight ratio to estimate 0-60 and 1/4 trap times and speeds. Be sure you plug in the right numbers - some use curb weights, some use "as tested" weights.

thanks.

as usual i missed the obvious solution of google.