Quote:
Originally Posted by Regenerit
You hit it right on the head with performance as my primary interest, followed by fuel economy.  However, fuel economy is a close second as noted by me getting a 2 cylinder turbo charged engine over typical V6 of the other competitors and in addition, I researched the Cd's and fuel economies of all of the competitors...
As a final important note, if I decided to install higher gearing (which I'm a bit skiddish about due to the fear of it costing too much), would I have to have my transmission replaced or would it simply be literally installing an extra tall gear and how much money would I expect to pay with the parts and professional installation? |
When I was in the market for a car, I looked at all of the aspects that you mentioned, but overlooked the drive ratio. Since my car is a 6-speed, I just assumed it has a tall 6th gear. Unfortunately it's rather short, as is your ratio. I'm sure 6th gear would never be used on a race track anyhow, so I'm disappointed the engineers didn't just make the last gear tall. Since I have a close-ratio manual gearbox, I find that stop and go driving yields the same MPG as steady freeway cruising.
For my manual gearbox, I can swap out the final drive with a different ratio. The RSX has a taller ratio, but only marginally so and the cost of the part is $300. No idea how hard it is to install. Then there is a $1000 custom part with a good ratio, but that is a lot of money and I have no idea what it would do to my speedometer, cruise control, odometer, stability control, ABS, etc.
I don't know what the cost or complexity would be to change your ratios, but it would likely have a negative impact on performance and possibly mess with other systems that rely on having a stock ratio. This would be a better question for a Genesis forum.
EDIT: From what I have read on other forums, the best value for dollar you can spend in the performance department will be lightweight wheels/tires.