164 and speed

[VLADDS@xxxxxxx]

I do believe that the factory advertised speed for the EU 164 (that is lighter
form the factory 150 lb. and 1 hp more...and try and see in the simulation how
much weight matters with this car's numbers..) is 142.92 MPH. I also believe
that it's reasonable to assume that the speed has been measured at the factory
tests with 2 people and 40 lb. cargo as far as load of the car.
As opposed to US, in EU one gets the factory figure as far as max speed and
acceleration and consumption within the owner's manual.
Speed tests are quite popular there too and usually one sees a significant
deviation between the indication and real speed as far as maximum. Some even
believe this to be a factory designed feature in 90% of the cars for
advertising purposes.
It is quite common there to have indicators for speed that have numbers on the
dial 20% more than what the car can reach. Officially the factories say that
this is a money saving feature, so they don't have to make a different one for
the top model. Well, this is not the case here..
The drag coefficient for the 164 is Cx=0.305
If you plan to use the simulation program that was described some time ago in
the digest, don't forget to change for the L to 5 speed transmission and enter
the correct values for the ratios.
My guess is that the US version probably should be somewhere in the
neighborhood of 140Mph.
I also think that the best performance upgrade for the 164 is if possible
making it lighter. The simulation will confirm this.
It would be interesting to see what 164 B have been able to get as far as max
speed although the limit is ultimately the ratio and the limiter since drag is
same.

Now, I'm very curious about this "33 stradale".I have seen all kinds of 33's,
but the fastest one was the 33 1.7 16v that had 132 HP and could reach just a
bit over 120 MPH. It was however accelerating quite nice and handling
beautiful and had my second favorite engine sound after the 164 3.0 V6 (I
haven't heard the 24 valve).
I have seen also 33 limited editions of all kinds but most were only
advertising news and none had increased power. Maybe I missed thisnone...
Vlad 
'91 164L 
Long Island

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