E30 Zone

Standard Mk 7 Golf: 1508kg or 3325lb

My iS: 1125kg or 2480lbs

That's almost a third lighter than a current average family car!

Modern cars are plainly too heavy.

yep, when you add crumple zones, airbags, aircon, 87,893 speakers and cupholders it soon adds up! PLus, cars are just so much _bigger_ now. Wider and taller, even if they're shorter than an E30.

yes that's one of the big reasons modern cars aren't as fun to drive. My guess is manufacturers will halt this behemothism in future though if for no other reason than fuel costs.

Yet, even a 1980s E30 is a heavyweight compared to typical saloon cars of the 1970s and early 1980s, e.g., Ford Escort Mk1 weighs 785kg, Ford Escort Mk2 880kg, Ford Orion 894kg.

This is the main problem with all modern cars. All the electric everythings sat nav, power seats, steering wheel, windows, climate control, and of course Ncap, has done this.

Your example, the golf, look how that started off.

And all this modern suspension stuff is to keep the extra weight in check.

Indeed. The sophisticated modern multivalve engines are having to lug along all that extra weight, so the cars are no faster or more fuel efficient than older cars!

This was even the case when the first catalytic converted cars appeared in the early 1990s, e.g. a 1992 Ford Orion 1.6iLX with the 16-valve Zetec engine only developed about 90 bhp and would only return around 30 mpg because you had to drive the nuts off it alot of the time, so no better than a 1970s Ford Escort 1.3, for example.

From memory my e30 is 1300kg, it was stamped somewhere.


Compared to a mk1 golf its a real fatty. They weigh in at 810 kg


Modern cars are too big, like the new mini... it's bloody huge, and looks like its been "touched", golf's annoy me because they have got so bulky.

It would be nice to see VW go back to their mk1 gti roots. Small nippy fun cars but seeing as that wont happen, everyone should buy a fiat 500 abarth

The heaviest E30 I can find is a 325IX Touring, and that's still only 1350kg.

A 316 is only 1080kg.

The E30 in my sig weighed 1242KG while it was still M20 on reliable scales.

In a lighter car, everything works better. The brakes and suspension are not trying to bend the laws of physics. The engine needs less power to obtain the same performance, or the same power and increased performance.

And thinner pillars, so you can actually see out of a car, I would have thought could make you crash less Just thinking outside the box here.

The 325i Cab weighs in just under 1400kg!

FinalD wrote:The 325i Cab weighs in just under 1400kg!

According to the manual a 325i convertible is 1310kg, that's BMW's figure.

BEERBOY123 wrote:According to the manual a 325i convertible is 1310kg, that's BMW's figure.

Depends on the age from what I've read:
Specs Link

It's still ~200kg fatter than the 2 and 4 door...understandable though given it has no roof but loads of extra metal to make it stronger etc.

Also for some reason chromie's are lighter than face lift, so the lightest of all is a poverty spec 2 door chromie.

Where are you getting these figures from Beerboy?

leeparkes wrote:Also for some reason chromie's are lighter than face lift, so the lightest of all is a poverty spec 2 door chromie.

That will be the rust

My E46 Touring was so heavy when I used the trolley jack on it on the road outside the house the front wheels sunk into the tarmac It needed the 3.0 donk because it weighed as much as a small house

On a job i was at recently i managed to weigh my works transit and before i put anything on board that extra to what i carry every day it weighs in at 2980kg no wonder it wont go fast

leeparkes wrote:Also for some reason chromie's are lighter than face lift, so the lightest of all is a poverty spec 2 door chromie.

Where are you getting these figures from Beerboy?

Owner's manual, the dark red cover one. Specs at the back.

maggspower wrote:And thinner pillars, so you can actually see out of a car, I would have thought could make you crash less Just thinking outside the box here.

Passive safety feature - avoid hitting something in the first place.
Drove a mates mk4 golf the other day, can barely see anything in the blind spot!

Modern cars have lots of stuff, and stuff has a weight.

Makes it even more remarkable that the modern cars offer similar or better performance with vastly improved economy and corner quicker.

Sure, they don't have the feel of an e30, but 99% of people just want a bland vehicle to get from a to b comfortably with minimal fuss.

No airbags, no cup holders...

Must be more to than that? If modern cars are 30-40% heavier than 70s/80s equivalents there must be something else? Like, are petrol engines fundamentally lighter than diesel or something?

Beats me. My iS has a sunroof, elec windows, power-steering and a 1.8 unit, yet it's still 30% lighter than a current 1.6 or even 1.2 Golf.

Where's the extra weight on the Golf then? Is the steel heavier or something? Or is it just heavier because it's bigger? (Due to us all being lardoes these days?)

Ncap ratings answer pretty much all that question for you. You look at a modern front end, to any car really, and compare that to the cardboard carton the e30 sports. Along with side impact bars, huge A pillars, B pillars, C pillars and if you've got a Q7, the D, E and F Pillars too. Plus the rear impact zone, the beefed up transmission to cope with the extra tourque needed to move the extra metal. It soon all adds up. It's not a case of one single item pushing up the weight bill, its the fact that everything has been beefed up to cope with everything else having been beefed up. It's one of them ever decreasing circles . . . . or is an ever increasing circle . . . . . . Or something clever anyway.

Plus, all the wheels and tyres on modern cars are huge compared to the tiddly 12 and 13" wheels most cars had as standard from the 1960s through to the early 1980s.

Even some teeny modern 'Smart' cars have quite large 15" rims.

positive feedback loop....

Morat wrote:positive feedback loop....

What he said. Glad someone has the zone brain cell atm.

bab-91 wrote:From memory my e30 is 1300kg, it was stamped somewhere.


Compared to a mk1 golf its a real fatty. They weigh in at 810 kg


Modern cars are too big, like the new mini... it's bloody huge, and looks like its been "touched", golf's annoy me because they have got so bulky.

It would be nice to see VW go back to their mk1 gti roots. Small nippy fun cars but seeing as that wont happen, everyone should buy a fiat 500 abarth

The 500 abarth is great fun, the wife had a regular 1.4 sport a few years back. Least depreciating car we ever owned. We test drive the abarth when we came to trade it but we got offered a better deal on a CTR GT.

FWIW most diesel engine designs are fundamentally heavier due to the constraints imposed by such high compressions and cylinder pressures, couple that with much more complex fuel systems and turbo systems and they come in about 20-50% heavier.

[quote="leeparkes"]Also for some reason chromie's are lighter than face lift, so the lightest of all is a poverty spec 2 door chromie.

Ha Ha, just like mine, should go well with Nissan CA18DET

maggspower wrote:
And thinner pillars, so you can actually see out of a car, I would have thought could make you crash less Just thinking outside the box here.

My Thoughts exactly with new cars, the visibility is just a dreadful. Reverse parking seems to be particularly difficult to do.