Er.... it's
exactly to do with gears in auto gearboxes!
"kick-down" originated in the automotive industry during the mid-20th century to describe the mechanism that forces an automatic transmission into a lower gear when the accelerator pedal is pressed all the way to the floor".
Early auto boxes used to have a bowden cable with a bit of slack in it, directly from the throttle linkage to the auto gearbox. When correctly adjusted, for most of the pedal travel, the cable was just slack and didn't do anything. They were set up so that when the driver "kicked" the throttle to the floor, the last half inch or inch of pedal travel took all the slack out of the "kickdown cable" and pulled on a lever on the side of the auto box that forced it into the next gear down (assuming the centrifugal governor allowed it - i.e. it wouldn't cause the engine to over-rev). Modern auto boxes do it too, but by electronic means.
...except it doesn't make one jot of different to the engine's maximum power output! "Sport" mode is a gimmick on most cars. It sharpens the throttle response, but all it's doing, is giving you more of the available power output for less pedal travel. Dead easy to do with software these days, now that pretty much all ICE engines are throttle-by-wire. So if, for argument's sake, your engine is capable of producing 100 horsepower and you have it in normal mode, and (say) 50% throttle gives you 50% of butterfly movement on the engine, sport mode would give you (say) 50% butterfly movement for only 25% pedal travel. It creates the illusion of more power, but your engine's power output remains at 100 horsepower, you just get more of it for less pedal travel. If it were any different, manufacturers would have to quote separate fuel consumption and CO2 figures for "normal" and "sport" mode. My last Peugeot was even naff enough to play a slightly amplified recording of its own asthmatic 4-pot diesel engine over the car's stereo speakers in "sport" mode, to make you think it was more powerful!
Good job you're not Secretary of State for Transport then!
Would you go for the full "red flag" policy too?
It partly due to attitudes like these that road safety isn't improving at the rate it should be...
But on the plus side, you do get a car that will actually turn-in rather than just wallow and splurge about on the "blancmange" fitted to each corner! That's a great thing for road safety you know...
As collision avoidance systems evolve to take over control of steering as well as throttle and brakes, it's advances in tyre technology that will play an important part in avoiding that kid who just ran out from in between the parked cars...
If anything, low profile tyres actually waste LESS energy, due to their stiffer sidewalls. What happens, is that they tend to go hand-in-hand with bigger and wider rims, which increases rolling resistance, air resistance and wheel inertia. A low profile tyre of modest overall width is what you ideally need, but as you say, people like the "big bootz" aesthetic. And to be fair, you do, (within reason) get more grip out of a wider tyre - at least in the dry.
