Variants, variant reduction and the germ of an idea

[ItsPeteReally]

I admit to possibly starting to be an obsessive! Perhaps I should go on some kind of medication

Why so many market variants? I can understand that legislation may force market differences, the US headlight design, the US motorised seatbelts, and the JDM speed limiter being prime examples of this. But there are other variants, such as the brakes and transmissions, where some markets appear to have different implementation for reasons that are less obvious.

Looking at this road test page http://www.geocities.com/jamsvx2/autocar5.html ( many thanks to the poster) it is pretty obvious that the gear ratios chosen for the UK market (and any others?) is pretty much optimal, the 3.54 ratio of other markets not letting the engine wind up to anywhere near peak power in top gear, whereas the 4.11 swap-outs that the five speeders are putting in will mean that the car will be over the power peak and sit on the rev-limiter when flat-out.

Question???? is there a manual gearbox option that lets you keep the 3.70 ratio?

As for the brakes, the only reason I can see for the solid unventilated rears is that they may well run at higher temperatures under less than punishing use, and thereby may not glaze up so readily. But then we don't all drive like Nigel Mansell in the UK, I certainly don't, so am I risking less than optimal braking when I really need to throw the anchors out?

Did all these market variants do little more than make the car even more expensive for no good reason?

Finally the germ of an idea.

Has anybody got access to a wind tunnel? The SVX is pretty slippery out of the box, its drag coefficient of 0.29 is pretty damn good, but it could probably be improved. If it could be got down to 0.25 say, my back of fag packet calculations seem to indicate that the car would max-out at 151-152mph, something that would otherwise need another 30-40 horsepower to achieve.

Unfortunately something that looks right, may not necessarily be right, and fiddling with air dams and spoilers may not actually achieve anything. Has anybody looked at underbody wind trays, modified wheel well shapes, radiator air flow management etc?

It seems to me that unless you can find a really significant increase in horsepower, of the order of 30-40 horsepower, then it is not going to make any significant difference to the performance of the vehicle, whereas a reduction in drag would pay off in both performance and economy.

A manual gearbox would be good too!