Trio of cars make a clean sweep of autopacific’s 2009 awards
09-01-09, 02:56 PM
#16
Lexus Champion
I've always liked the styling of the ES. Unfortunately, it doesn't get it's share of respect from many so-called auto enthusiasts.
Car reviews these days have columns for horsepower, torque, 0-60 times, but they never talk about comfort, quietness, and the "smooth" ride. There are so many qualitative elements to a car that enthusiasts commonly overlook. Obviously, people who buy the ES are satisfied with these elements.
I remember watching TV in the late 80's and they would review cars where they have a decible meter to measure interior road noise. Whatever happened to this?
Car reviews these days have columns for horsepower, torque, 0-60 times, but they never talk about comfort, quietness, and the "smooth" ride. There are so many qualitative elements to a car that enthusiasts commonly overlook. Obviously, people who buy the ES are satisfied with these elements.
I remember watching TV in the late 80's and they would review cars where they have a decible meter to measure interior road noise. Whatever happened to this?
Edmunds.com actually does give decibel readings at idle, 70mph cruise, and WOT in most of their full tests and they do their best to describe how the car drives over bumps and such, too. If you're missing them, click on the specifications link on the left hand side of most any full review or comparison.
Dan acknowledged the importance of these readings and told me they really would like to expand on this in the future, though. He said there were some serious challenges they had to face, though. For one thing wind speed/direction, humidity, and temperature can all have a fairly significant impact on in-car noise. It's for this reason he said they're looking at getting some sort of dedicated chamber for testing noise in a controlled environment.
You'll notice in their current tests they may test the exact same car one time from the next and you'll see as much as a 40% swing in noise levels between tests.
In addition to that, some cars produce noises that don't really show up very much on a decibel meter because they're not really technically loud, but they're very annoying, and more easily perceptible to humans than other louder noises that slip by unnoticed. So a decibel reading really isn't always telling anyway.
In regards to ride quality... that's even harder to do. They need to use the exact same road course in the exact same temperature at the exact same speed, then use some very complicated sensors to measure tens of different ways you can scientifically measure everything that a human perceives as good and bad when the car goes over a bump... and then the hardest part of all, finding some realistically meaningful way to actually convey that to your average reader.
Motor trend actually tried this in a couple of family sedan comparison tests they did a few years ago. The results were very confusing for most people... lots of scary looking charts and graphs. I bet you 95% of their readers just gave up on understanding it and would have preferred to see them just use subjective words to describe how the car rode. I did write them an email telling them I appreciated their effort, though... they ended up publishing the email in their magazine a couple months later and wrote a response about how they really wanted to continue doing those tests but would only continue if people were able to understand the results.
09-03-09, 12:36 AM
#18
I've always liked the styling of the ES. Unfortunately, it doesn't get it's share of respect from many so-called auto enthusiasts.
Car reviews these days have columns for horsepower, torque, 0-60 times, but they never talk about comfort, quietness, and the "smooth" ride. There are so many qualitative elements to a car that enthusiasts commonly overlook. Obviously, people who buy the ES are satisfied with these elements.
I remember watching TV in the late 80's and they would review cars where they have a decible meter to measure interior road noise. Whatever happened to this?
Car reviews these days have columns for horsepower, torque, 0-60 times, but they never talk about comfort, quietness, and the "smooth" ride. There are so many qualitative elements to a car that enthusiasts commonly overlook. Obviously, people who buy the ES are satisfied with these elements.
I remember watching TV in the late 80's and they would review cars where they have a decible meter to measure interior road noise. Whatever happened to this?
a followup commercial has a diamond cutter in the back seat cutting diamonds.
09-03-09, 04:02 AM
#20
Pole Position
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I talked at length directly to Dan Edmunds of Edmunds.com about this.
Edmunds.com actually does give decibel readings at idle, 70mph cruise, and WOT in most of their full tests and they do their best to describe how the car drives over bumps and such, too. If you're missing them, click on the specifications link on the left hand side of most any full review or comparison.
Dan acknowledged the importance of these readings and told me they really would like to expand on this in the future, though. He said there were some serious challenges they had to face, though. For one thing wind speed/direction, humidity, and temperature can all have a fairly significant impact on in-car noise. It's for this reason he said they're looking at getting some sort of dedicated chamber for testing noise in a controlled environment.
You'll notice in their current tests they may test the exact same car one time from the next and you'll see as much as a 40% swing in noise levels between tests.
In addition to that, some cars produce noises that don't really show up very much on a decibel meter because they're not really technically loud, but they're very annoying, and more easily perceptible to humans than other louder noises that slip by unnoticed. So a decibel reading really isn't always telling anyway.
In regards to ride quality... that's even harder to do. They need to use the exact same road course in the exact same temperature at the exact same speed, then use some very complicated sensors to measure tens of different ways you can scientifically measure everything that a human perceives as good and bad when the car goes over a bump... and then the hardest part of all, finding some realistically meaningful way to actually convey that to your average reader.
Motor trend actually tried this in a couple of family sedan comparison tests they did a few years ago. The results were very confusing for most people... lots of scary looking charts and graphs. I bet you 95% of their readers just gave up on understanding it and would have preferred to see them just use subjective words to describe how the car rode. I did write them an email telling them I appreciated their effort, though... they ended up publishing the email in their magazine a couple months later and wrote a response about how they really wanted to continue doing those tests but would only continue if people were able to understand the results.
Edmunds.com actually does give decibel readings at idle, 70mph cruise, and WOT in most of their full tests and they do their best to describe how the car drives over bumps and such, too. If you're missing them, click on the specifications link on the left hand side of most any full review or comparison.
Dan acknowledged the importance of these readings and told me they really would like to expand on this in the future, though. He said there were some serious challenges they had to face, though. For one thing wind speed/direction, humidity, and temperature can all have a fairly significant impact on in-car noise. It's for this reason he said they're looking at getting some sort of dedicated chamber for testing noise in a controlled environment.
You'll notice in their current tests they may test the exact same car one time from the next and you'll see as much as a 40% swing in noise levels between tests.
In addition to that, some cars produce noises that don't really show up very much on a decibel meter because they're not really technically loud, but they're very annoying, and more easily perceptible to humans than other louder noises that slip by unnoticed. So a decibel reading really isn't always telling anyway.
In regards to ride quality... that's even harder to do. They need to use the exact same road course in the exact same temperature at the exact same speed, then use some very complicated sensors to measure tens of different ways you can scientifically measure everything that a human perceives as good and bad when the car goes over a bump... and then the hardest part of all, finding some realistically meaningful way to actually convey that to your average reader.
Motor trend actually tried this in a couple of family sedan comparison tests they did a few years ago. The results were very confusing for most people... lots of scary looking charts and graphs. I bet you 95% of their readers just gave up on understanding it and would have preferred to see them just use subjective words to describe how the car rode. I did write them an email telling them I appreciated their effort, though... they ended up publishing the email in their magazine a couple months later and wrote a response about how they really wanted to continue doing those tests but would only continue if people were able to understand the results.
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