Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt
Without wind resistance, you could get a car with 10hp to 200mph with the correct gearing.
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Actually you couldn't.
Rolling drag is very considerable and also increases with speed. Everything that rolls in a vehicle--tires, bearings, gears, and brake drag chew up power. Alignment settings such as toe-in add drag. To the point where chassis settings are very often the trick to the extra mph that wins a NASCAR race. Grandam cars test on speedways for optimum alignment to get top speed with a given aero package.
In street cars the break point for equal drag from aero and rolling is about 55mph--in racing cars with big sticky slicks it is much higher. Prius designed their own low drag tires to boost low speed mpg.