Jimmy Wong of Hong Kong spent six months and untold fortunes converting his 2002 Lotus Elise to an all-carbon fiber body. The result? About 80 pounds of saved weight. Life’s tough on the bleeding edge.
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Uh………ok.
Hardcore.
So now the questions is, what kind of performance gains are seen with this new CF skin?
Jimmy Wong of Hong Kong sounds like the opening line of a dirty poem.
Jimmy Wong of Hong Kong sounds like the opening line of a dirty poem.
Best line of the day!
That’s really neat.
Talk about going beyond the point of diminishing returns. Oh well, Everyone needs a hobby.
Reminds me of the guys who will spend $2500 for a road bicycle that is 400g lighter that the $500 model.
Reminds me of the conversation I had with a tuner trying to sell me on the benefits of knocking 20 lbs off the weight of my car by using his composite components. As I was listening to him, I remembered the fact that I was about 50 lbs overweight. I decided the better option was to lose the weight off of my own body rather than the car and get the same benefits.
Weight fanaticism is even worse in the bicycle world. They call them weight weenies. You have people obsessing over a few grams of weight. Again, my body weight is usually a bigger factor.
Hopefully he’s already a really good driver..Still, I applaud any effort to get weight out of modern cars, even if in one that didn’t really need it.
Weight fanaticism is even worse in the bicycle world.
Yeah I saw someone without whose bicycle didn’t have a kickstand. The reason they gave was weight saving. So saving around 1 kg is worth this inconvenience?
But does he have lexan windows, magnesium alloy wheels, ceramic brake rotors, or the ultimate in weight reduction: a ceramic engine block….
Carbon fibre body kits are soooo last year.
I haven’t seen a bicycle with a kickstand since grade school, in the ’50s. How inconvenient is it to lean a bicycle up against a tree, lamp post, parking meter or the local drunk?
Anyway, how is wanting the lightest bike any different than paying thousands for an audio system with inaudible improvement, a flat-screen TV with imperceptible benefits or Bugatti Veyron with unusable attributes?
You people are hilarious, jumping all over bikers while 98 percent of the world would say, “Excuse me, you paid an extra $60,000 for that Corvette because it accelerates to 60 a second or two faster than the regular version? Do you have a life?” Unbelievable.
The Lotus isn’t exactly a porker in stock form. And this is a demonstration of effort beyond diminishing returns..
It would be very beneficial to remove some weight from regular production cars. You can get better performance and gas economy in one fell swoop. I wish more engineering effort was put into reducing weight and not compromising strength (which usually means more exotic materials). Can you think of a new car that got lighter without getting smaller?
Sweet! Since you all think this car is stupid – that’ll help lower it’s resale value to something closer to what I can afford!
And yeah, losing the weight equivalent of a fashion model is significant, especially in a car where lightness is the entire point.
Jimmy Wong of Hong Kong is my personal hero of the week
Now all he needs to do is electrify it and he has a Tesla.
Forget bicycles, look at motorcycles. Browsing a Ducati performance parts catalogue is a quick way to go bankrupt. A titanium clutch cover, which will save you MAYBE half a pound of weight, costs over 400$. Then you can go batshit crazy with complete carbon fibre frames, magnesium engine covers, titanium engine internals, or right down to nitty gritty bits like billet aluminum drain plugs and filler caps.
If you went nuts on a decent sportbike and lopped off 80 lbs (to the tune of many thousands of dollars), you would see a staggering change in perfomance. I spent a lot of time and effort shaving 40 lbs off one of my bikes, and the difference was very much noticeable (anyone who rides a motorcycle and has ridden with a heavy backpack can tell you how much you can feel a 20-30 lb difference in weight). But 80 lbs difference in a car is less than the difference between a full tank of gas and a near-empty one – you’d have to be quite mad to notice from the seat of your pants.
Stephan Wilkinson :
You people are hilarious, jumping all over bikers while 98 percent of the world would say, “Excuse me, you paid an extra $60,000 for that Corvette because it accelerates to 60 a second or two faster than the regular version? Do you have a life?” Unbelievable.
Actually I do have a life. I’m a cyclist and have a very expensive bike, but I spent the money for better reliability and not weight. My criticisms were directed primarily toward myself because I need to lose body weight before I can even think about obsessing over components on my vehicles.
While I might not spend $60k extra for a Corvette for a few extra seconds of acceleration, I will spend extra money on a car to get what I want. What I want always goes beyond simple zero to 60 times.
There is a point of diminished return with weight reduction. I’ve known people to obsess over a few grams of weight on a bike (a few ounces) that might be lost through perspiration anyway during the ride. The subject of the post is another example. While dropping several hundred pounds of vehicle weight is a great thing, a major effort to drop just 80 lbs probably wasn’t worth the expense.
When I bought my bike, I was offered upgraded wheels that would have dropped the weight of the bike by a couple of hundred grams – 7 ounces. The upgrade would have cost about $1600 if I remember correctly. Losing 7 ounces off of my body is not difficult, so I passed on it. I’ll pay extra money for performance, but when I can accomplish my goals using a cheaper or better alternative, I’ll go for it every time.
My bicycle has a kickstand. And it’s pretty high end.
Then there’s the wonderful side-benefit of being invisible to radar guns!
When I bought my bike, I was offered upgraded wheels that would have dropped the weight of the bike by a couple of hundred grams – 7 ounces. The upgrade would have cost about $1600 if I remember correctly. Losing 7 ounces off of my body is not difficult, so I passed on it.
Yeah, but that is 7 ounces in the rotating wheel which is worth 10 pounds of love handles. Besides, after you lose the 10 pounds, you have the best of both worlds.
People obsess. Let them.
GeeDashOff:
To be fair, that’s not a carbon fiber body kit. It’s a carbon fiber body. Big difference.
I think the car looks great. Of course, it’s probably a little extreme considering the already light platform, but at least it’s not *only* cosmetic.
On that car, maaaaaybe it shaves a tenth off of his 1/4 mile and/or 0-60. And yes, that’s one expensive tenth… but who knows how much cash Jimmy Wong from Hong Kong has.
what a dipshit. He could have saved 80 lbs with a good wheel/tire combo, removing one of the seats and taking out some more amenities.
this guy is amazing and that was money well spent…just so long as he never, ever, sells the damn thing.
Reminds me of the guys who will spend $2500 for a road bicycle that is 400g lighter that the $500 model.
He probably spent the extra money for quality too. You can’t buy a quality bike for $500 new. You can get something that will reliably get you around the city for $500, but it’s not something that you’re going to want to spend multiple hours a day riding. It usually takes $1000 or more to get a good quality mountain or road bike.
Some people are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money to lose only a little bit of weight. $1600 to save 200g off the wheels is for the extremely wealthy or professional level athletes. Really, you could probably build a wheel without much more rotating mass for much cheaper anyway.
Why would I want a kickstand? If I’m not on my bike, it’s locked to something upright that can support it. I don’t think those who have never engaged in competitive cycling understand how much easier it is to control a lighter bike during quick transitions, or what it’s like to ride at your limit. That said, the mountain bike I used for racing was under $2000, and the BMX I used for racing was under $1000. The returns diminish quickly after a certain price level, and there would be no significant advantage to going above those levels unless you’re near the top, where every second counts and you’ve already reached peak physical condition.
Sure, saving weight is a good thing, but this is a bit extreme.
But, I have nothing to say… I was an early adopter of carbon fiber (mid 90’s) with my road bike… the frame weighs around 4 lbs with no components attached. (Kestrel)
Reminds me of the guys who will spend $2500 for a road bicycle that is 400g lighter that the $500 model.
$500? LOL. My cycling shoes cost that much. $500 barely gets you a middle range crank these days.
Jimmy Wong of Hong Kong sounds like the opening line of a dirty poem.
With apologies to any sensitive readers…
There once was a young man from Hong Kong
Whose driver’s license read “Jimmy Wong”
Excess weight he could rid,
But from women he hid
The shame of his carbon fiber dong
Keep in mind that dropping 80 lbs on a car that weighs 1800 to begin with has a lot more effect than dropping that same amount on an average vehicle.
I like it.
He was probably not reading TTAC the whole time he worked on it. I was. Umm. Who’s the loser here?
Rivendell bikes come with kickstand mounts now. Grant Petersen is right. Weight weenie-ism is quite appropriate for racers and their teams and factory support if any, very fine indeed. If you are not racing its stupid and counterproductive unless hell, you just like a really light bike and are OK with the costs in which case its OK again. No worries.
Bikes- light is now coming with more and more divergent materials and designs. The improvements are also associated with altered bearing dimensions and locations and basic materials and electronics etc, although simple classic brazed lugged steel is still best for me.
The thing missingfrom my bike equation is time to ride and place, I am trapped by job in suburban Boston, an extremely bicycle unfriendly place.
My friend owns Yoyodyne Titanium, a company that specializes in light weight fasteners and racing components for motorcycles. His motto: “The more you pay, the less you get.”
What if he just bought -80 lbs. worth of helium balloons and tied them to the car? That’s got to be cheaper than all that carbon fiber, no? And he’d be popular at kids’ birthday parties.
I’m sure he went CF not to save 80 pounds but for the cool factor or to show off his MAD CF abilities. Good On Him.
Of course, if he is racing say in the HK equivelent to the SCCA and racing other Lotus drivers, loss of 80 pounds is a big advantage!