Here are some short movies I recorded with my digital camera showing the acceleration of a stock 1993 Toyota MR2 Turbo. Sorry, but they are all in-gear movies, since I don't have anything to hold the camera with except my right hand! No fifth gear runs either, since the fourth gear run was already close to 100mph at the end...
The Canon digital camera I have encodes movies using an “MJPEG” codec. If you don't have this codec installed on your system you won't be able to view them. You can either download an MJPEG codec (although I'm not sure there are any available for free), or you can download the alternate versions I created which use the Intel I.263 codec. The Intel codec produces much smaller files due to its higher compression, but the tradeoff is worse picture quality. You should be able to download an I.263 codec from Intel's web site if you don't have one already installed.
Please right-click on the links below and select "Save Target As" (Internet Explorer) or "Save Link As" (Netscape) to save the movies to your hard disk before viewing. That way the video won't be all choppy since you'll be viewing straight from your computer.
| MJPEG | I.263 | |
| 2nd gear | Download/Play | Download/Play |
| 3rd gear | Download/Play | Download/Play |
| 4th gear | Download/Play | Download/Play |
A stopwatch gives me the following acceleration times:
| Speed (mph) | Gear | Engine Speed (rpm) | Time (seconds) |
| 20-40 | 2 | 2300-4750 | 3.0 |
| 30-50 | 2 | 3600-6000 | 2.5 |
| 40-60 | 3 | 3200-4750 | 3.4 |
| 50-70 | 3 | 4000-5500 | 3.7 |
| 60-80 | 3 | 4700-6250 | 4.3 |
| 50-70 | 4 | 2900-4000 | 5.1 |
| 60-80 | 4 | 3500-4500 | 5.5 |
| 70-90 | 4 | 4000-5100 | 5.2 |
Interesting that the 70-90mph acceleration time is less than the 60-80mph time in 4th gear. Obviously the power developed at 4-5000rpm is sufficient to overcome the increased aerodynamic drag at the higher speed. Note that all runs above were performed on a 90 degree Fahrenheit day, with the t-tops removed. The A/C was switched off for the runs. 93 octane (average of RON+MON) Chevron gas is all I use.
Feedback and comparison times & videos welcome: cars [at] noegruts [dot] com
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