Choosing the proper car/engine size for 50-mile commute in London highways

forgotmyname

vacheron said:

My wife had 900KG, 1.0 Yaris a few years ago and I used to borrow it whenever I was doing short trips as the 3 litre, 2,700KG VW Phaeton I had at the time was a bit pointless for short trips. The Yaris was perfectly happy merging on to motorway slip roads and could reach 90mph relatively easily. We also took 3 adults and 3 bikes over the lake district once in it, yes, you needed to drop an extra gear on the hills, but it was perfectly safe.

However, if you told me I had to drive the two into each other head on at 70mph I know which one I would have chose to be sitting in!

And you may have chosen the wrong car, think 5th gear tested that theory a VW golf and a 4x4?  Could be wrong but it was a car and a 4x4.
The car ran under most of the 4x4's bumper and crossmembers until it hit the engine block, the car then pushed that engine into the bulkhead
which deformed the 4x4 quite a lot.  Neither of them would have walked away.

Another test was a car that was lowered and/or loaded with passengers and luggage, crashed into the same model of car with just the
driver and the car that was loaded and lower down did worse in the crash.

tr7phil

ontheroad1970 said:

If you are having to accelerate to get yourself out of trouble you have already failed at real driving.  I thought you were other than specific UK rule a competent driver?  99% of the time, it's the middle pedal that will help you, not the outside right one.  To accelerate out of trouble you need to be trained or lucky.  

I have accelerated out of trouble once in 28 years of driving and I was indeed VERY lucky.  I was driving up a hill in cold conditions, there were cars parked on the other side of the road, a car going much too fast pulled out to overtake the parked cars without looking to see if it was clear and I could tell that it would definitely hit me even if I stopped straight away.  There was a turning on the left slightly ahead and so I accelerated hard towards it and turned in.  About two seconds later the car that I'd avoided went past the end of the road with its wheels locked up!