While many of us think that engine upgrades, turbochargers, or superchargers are the best ways to get a car to go faster, there are some other ways in which you can do so. One of those is with weight saving, as DriveTribe has shown off in a recent YouTube video.
Daily driver cars carry a lot of weight, even more so than some of the fastest cars on the planet. Things such as the extra seats, hardware for electric chairs, the radio systems, and all the electrical wiring. Even the materials that they are made out of can have a big impact on a car’s speed.
So, how do you get around that? Well, DriveTribe and new presenter Alex decided to take a regular Kia Picanto, take it to the Castle Combe racetrack in England, and see just how fast they could make it by shedding weight from the cabin.
The Picanto is Kia’s smallest car, and with just 77hp and 83lb-ft of torque, it isn’t fast. In fact, its 0-62mph time is only 13.1 seconds, with a top speed of 98mph. But it is the perfect platform to see just how much weight you can shed from a car, and to see how fast it will go.
How Much Weight Was Taken off the Kia Picanto?
The aim was to set a lap time in the Picanto, and then shed as much weight as possible to beat that lap time. In terms of what could be shed, the seats and anything not bolted on would come off, but not too much to upset Kia. The car set a time of 2:00.96 around the Castle Combe track, which isn’t a fast lap. Taking Alex’s passenger, Isaac, out of the car did save some time, bringing the lap time down to 1:57.10.
So, what else was taken out of the car? Next up was the front seat, which allowed another second to be shaved off the lap, with a 1:56.39 as the new benchmark. The rear seats were next to be taken out of the car. So far, 139kg had been taken out of the Kia, roughly 306lbs, so already a solid amount of weight had been taken out of the car at this point.
Alex set off for another lap, this time with only the front seat left in terms of seating in the car. With those gone, the lap time dropped further to 1:54.23. So, give or take, they had managed to go six seconds faster over the lap just by removing a passenger and the seats in the car. But the DriveTribe team wasn’t done yet.
More Weight Was Taken Out of the Little Kia
With all the seats gone, the next steps taken were to remove smaller items. This included the license plates, some badges, the rear trunk shelf, and a few bits of plastic trim that do add up to the overall weight of the car. That was only another 2kg taken out, around 4.4lbs, but every item of weight taken out will always help bring a lap time down. It’s why some of the fastest cars in the world are very light.
This all led to the final lap. The interior was looking incredibly bare, and the Kia did look slightly strange with so much of the interior taken out. However, the results seemed to speak for themselves. In total, 141kg, or 310lbs, was taken out of the car. And the final lap time was a 1:54.00. So it was only a couple of tenths shaved off, but as Alex said, “didn’t your mates, and you too, can save six seconds on your commute.”