misadventures of ah liak: a brief motoring history

My father’s first foray into motoring started with a humble EP70 Starlet. It was his kind and affable Sqn S3 who literally shoved the car keys to him and ask him to drive around. Yes that Starlet was his. Nice uncle. He knew that my dad was feeling uneasy about driving since he had not driven for a good 7 years since obtaining his licence. After taking the keys and driving the car for a good 2 week (Uncle Watt was on holidays for a good 2 weeks hence he passed him the car), he never looked back ever since.

The EP Starlet XL

Not too long later in 2001, he bought the venerable AE101. It was a manual 1600 Gli which was enjoyable to drive with good handling, decent power to weight ratio and low centre of gravity.

The AE101 Corolla (G7)

i was sad to see it go actually. Such a fine looking car. Not many COE specimens found nowadays.

My dad had scrapped the AE101 and bought a firsthand AE120 Corolla from Borneo Motors in 2003. Instead of a manual, he now opted for an automatic and the the 1500cc Xli had pretty high equipment specification levels. While i noticed most other corollas running around had fabric seats and manual dial air conditioning, ours came stock with leather seats and dual zone climate control. I affectionately called it the Hipporolla and it had a special place in my heart because it was the first car i drove. I remember her fondly for her frugality in fuel consumption and nimbleness.

The AE120 Corolla (G9)

I remember that i casually took a photo using my grainy handphone’s camera on a nondescript evening. It turned out the be the last time i every got to photograph the car. I can still feel a tinge of regret thinking about it. 14km/l fuel consumption with more than brisk traction. Who is going to complain about this hipporolla? Nissan and Honda i am sure. I supposed it was a good reason why the Hipporolla had to go. Curse the COE for irrevocably inprinting the impression that cars have an artificial shelf life of 10 years. I guess the high annual depreciation was abit too much too swallow for this ride too.

I would have to say that i am impressed by the NVH performance of the second iteration of the Altis. But i am not pleased about the worse off build quality considering that it hailed from Thailand. I am sorry but i think Thais are miles behind the Japanese when it comes to QC, work ethic and professionalism.

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Enough about the reminiscing. Lets go to where it matters the numbers. As a driver, the numbers that matter to me in the performance department are namely;

1. Kerb weight

2. Torque band

3. Power band

4. Power to weight ratio

5. Torque to weight ratio

1. Kerb weight

Newton’s first law as i quote here, prints

An object will remain in its state of rest or continue its motion in a straight line, in the direction it was originally intended for at zero acceleration in the absence of a net force.

Consequentially, this law can be interpreted to mean the law of Inertia in which an object has an inherent resistance to changes to its state of motion. This inherent resistance is proportional to its mass. By keeping the kerb weight low, the inertia is decreased and this helps to ensure two things.

1.) the net force required to change the car’s state of motion is minimal

2.) the time required to execute the change in state of motion is minimal

Honestly, who did say that everything is bound to get better with time with the development and refinement of technology? Look at the kerb weight/ It is increasing! Damn it!

2.Torque band

The torque band is a graphical term, very much intended as a term to describe an engine’s torque output response in a dynamometer test. Ideally speaking, the engine should be able to throw out some torque at extremely low revs. Torque is required for all vehicles to start moving and it is the foundation which pick up is centred upon.

You don’t even have to chance to talk about how fast the vehicle is increasing its velocity if the vehicle is not even moving in the first place.

A good torque band is one which is flat and spreads out the torque adequately along a wide range of rpm. The reasoning against peaks in torque bands is because sudden increases in torque results in a very uncomfortable ride i.e. jerking. Deft control of the accelerator would be mandated thus a flatter torque band is desired.

3. Power band

Similar, you would want a wide spread of power across the rpm range. But honestly, you would want to prevent yourself from accidentally accelerating like a jackrabbit when you were originally planning to move really slowwwwwwly in the mall’s carpark prowling for a lot right? That means that you would want a increasing function for a power band. And oh, have you ever experienced the car running out of breath at a relatively high rpm of say 6500rpm? That’s because the power band has essentially ended its incline there. Abruptly. Ideally, you would want it to increase till say 10,000 rpm like in AE86’s 4A-GE. Woohoo

4/5. Power/Torque to weight ratio

We often heard of braggers boasting about their BHP figures. Honestly, BHP figures along are useless. Consider that you have an engine putting out 400BHP at crank. Impressive? YES when i fit it into a car that weighs maybe slightly over a tonne. How about a portly coach bus that weighs about 5 cars combined? Not that 2 fast 2 furious i am sure.

Power is defined generically as the rate at which work is being done. In our context, we are concerned with the rate at which the car’s velocity is being increased. And surely, the rate at which the velocity is increased is affected by the weight of the car. if the car is really hefty, it will really tax the engine more to accelerate at an equal rate as an identical engine mated to a light weight car.

I can offer no textbook numerical value for an ideal power to weight ratio. It is all subjective to an individual. To a driver used to driving Chery QQ, any other car’s power to weight ratio seems superb. To a newly converted driver used to riding a 2000cc bike, all NA cars fitted with any engine lower than 2400cc in capacity seems to be lacking in the power to weight ratio department.

For my study, i have opted to use the Honda Civic 2.0 Si as a reference because in my opinion, this car has the power to weight ratio which is ideal (to me) Data crunching matters, the power to weight ratio which is defined as W/kg should be as high as possible. Only the Hipporolla is close with 10 points off (which is still a staggering difference)

Like i mentioned earlier on, BHP is useless without torque, it is the BHP that keeps your car moving at an ever faster rate but it is the torque that shoves the car from standby in the first place. Ever asked a toddler to push a fully laden shopping trolley all the name of humour? That’s the point i am going to make. If an engine cannot make enough shove to push a car from rest, it is going to be HELLUVA work.

I have defined the torque to weight ratio as (kg/Nm). For example, an engine rated at 200Nm and mated to a car having a kerb weight of 2000 kg means that each Nm of torque is responsible to pushing 10 kg of deadweight. From this logic, it is understood that as opposed to the power to weight ratio which should be desirably high, the torque to weight ratio should be ideally as low as possible.

So now if you look at the Altis’s power to weight ratio and torque to weight ratio and compare it to its predecessor as well as the reference standard i.e. Honda Civic 2.0 Si, you understand why i am so depressed.

i have attached the torque/power bands of all 3 engines below for reference.