Many tuners today lack the basic idea, which states; less weight equals a faster car. In terms of the proper theoretical explanation, less mass means less inertia of an object. With that reduced inertia the object is able to be propelled quicker and have much better control overall. How does this apply to a car you may ask. Well it applies to a car such as. If you remove the "glamorous" parts of a car which is usually considered dead weight/mass (weight/mass which is not needed in a car but only put there for creature comforts and for people who have no idea how ot drive or even take care of a car). Usually this dead weight/mass are carpets, interior trim, and etc... In most cars the manufacturer wants to make the car quieter, luxurious, and etc. This usually means large amount of mass from extra electronics which will probably never be used, interior trim that will fall off, sound deadening material to make the ride a bit quieter even though the tires and wind make up most of the noise you hear in a car, and the extra compartments where you can stuff useless medical aid kits and sweaters which will be long forgotten.
All these things adds up to large amount of weight/mass. A lot of people will always say that taking weight/mass off a car will not make it go any faster and that 1 to 2lbs will not make a difference. Adding more power will solve that issue in no time even the car manufacturers imply this in the newer production cars as of late. They get more massive and have even more power. Apparently 0-60 times rule the automobile sales market.
Well to start off, I completely disagree with people who think that saving weight on a car is a useless task. I did a small test this past weekend with my own car and I found that my mpg has increased by 4 to 6mpg. I didn't have to buy anything extra or spend anymore money than I needed to. All I did was take off 190lbs from my car. Now, before you start doing this to your own, let me just say this isn't the kind of modification which is left for the faint of heart. This weight reduction was meant for my car to perform better at the track, yet it does ahve a side effect of performing better on the street as well. By reducing the weight of my car by that much, I managed to put less overall stress on the tires, brakes, suspension and most importantly the engine. These components worked less due to the simple fact that weight was removed. The engineers whom designed this car designed it to be driven with weight, the components can undoubtly handle the stress with the original weight/mass of the car. Since I've reduced the weight/mass of the car it is now able to put less stress on these components, therefore increasing control and longecvity of these components in stressful situations. As a side effect of this, the engine worked less to propell the car and therefore, used less fuel. Hence the increase in mpg while cruising on the highway. My simple test was to see how my mpg would look like after driving 175 miles one way and back. Usually I would get around 20mpg on the highway before I decided to strip my car. After I stripped it and drove all those miles, I noticed that my car uses less gas than usual even though it was an uphill decent for the most part. On the way back was even better because it was going downhill most of the way and that yielded 26mpg. I find that amazing for something anyone can do themselves. The car does handle much better and seems a bit quicker.
