[BoorishBears]

Without a rollout most 0-60 times would be useless. You make things like the surface the car is on matter way more than they should.

What's more of a problem is the opposite: if you increase the rollout so that the car's ECUs think it's being driven normally, and then mash the pedal to see how fast it goes, you get dramatically slower numbers: https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/buying-maintenance/...

That reflects how fast a car will feel in daily driving as opposed to a drag strip

[NikolaNovak]

Thx; hilariously, I own both the Honda Odyssey and the Subaru WRX example cars from the article :)

>>"It’s that 5-to-60—the first number you should look at, and when the light turns green, the only one that matters. "

I think 0-60 from stop, 0-60 with foot rollout, and rolling start 5-60 are all valid and useful metrics, when explicitly indicated as such. While I've never participated in a public-street red-light drag race, I don't think 5-60 is a valid metric for it, precisely for the reasons it mentions - the 5-60 eliminates a lot of drivetrain and surface components which would impact the launch; and more directly compares just the pure power. My Subaru WRX has less power, but has AWD and grippy tires, will leave my 1-wheel-drive heavily-traction-controlled, all-season tires Minivan in the dust at launch (but things may become more equal from the rolling start or even on highway overtakes).

[BoorishBears]

> more directly compares just the pure power

That's closer to what most people racing in a straight line want to measure as opposed to who can hook faster: hence drag racing using a two stage starting position

No metric will every reflect racing from a dig on a public street between the random surfaces, heat soak (it takes one or two pulls for most cars to start pulling timing stock), tires, etc... and I don't think any publication is really interested in satisfying that comparison.

[NikolaNovak]

I don't disagree. To your and authors point I have no interest in wrecking my daily driver transmission. I was just amused at the author spending 3 paragraphs explaining confounding factors that affect from-0 performance, and then offered the canonical from-0 situation, a red light, as suitable for 5-60 metric :-).

Anyhoo. Good read nonetheless :-)

[ilyt]

>What's more of a problem is the opposite: if you increase the rollout so that the car's ECUs think it's being driven normally, and then mash the pedal to see how fast it goes, you get dramatically slower numbers

No, that's a good thing, maybe that would force them to not fuck up their throttle response!

I think that particular quirk is just car companies trying to make slow speed driving easier by filtering inputs more.