>> On the contrary, it appears that unless you're in 6th gear, you can't 
>> exceed about 65 MPH.
> 
> Wow.  Are you really saying that at 60mph the RPMs in 5th gear are at 
> 6000 or something?  That sounds more like 3rd gear in my car - I can see 
> now why you are annoyed!

I didn't actually check the rev count, but in 5th gear, the car seems 
very reluctant to go much faster than roughly 65. Which means that if I 
want to drive on a motorway, I literally *have* to switch to 6th - 
difficult as that is. If it weren't for this, I probably just wouldn't 
use 6th at all.

Like I say, in 1st gear, accelerating generally isn't an issue, no 
matter how whimpy your car is. It's when you're zooming down a motorway 
that there's no acceleration left, so that's where I would have expected 
extra gears to be added.

>> BTW, is drag proportional to speed linearly? Or quadratically? Or...?
> 
> Roughly speed squared.  But the power needed to overcome a certain force 
> is also proportional to the speed.  So in the end the power needed to 
> maintain a certain speed is proportional to speed cubed.

I see... That would explain the statistic about the Bugatti Veyron only 
needing 100 horsepower to get up to 100 MPH, but needing a further 800 
hp to get up to top speed. (Or something like that.)

>> It's news to me that it *is* the other way around. I thought F1 cars 
>> had drum brakes. (You'll be surprised to hear that I haven't actually 
>> taken too many F1 cars apart.)
> 
> You used to be able to see them easily before they started using those 
> silly bits of aerodynamic plastic around them.  You can also sometimes 
> see the discs glowing bright orange through the wheel under heavy braking.

Ah yes, F1 cars, the ultimate example of engineering in the raggid edge. :-)

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