6

I'm more specifically interested in performance vehicles.

My current car has gauges for coolant temperature, oil temperature and oil pressure. The coolant temperature gauge is there so you can tell whether coolant temperature is too high so you know whether you should cease driving. In some modern cars, this is simply replaced with a warning message when the temperature gets too high telling you to pull over. This makes sense for regular vehicles, and also performance derivations.

On a performance vehicle oil temperature is a better guide for deciding whether the car is ready to be driven enthusiastically. Even without the oil temperature display, this can be estimated by waiting for the coolant to reach normal level and then leaving it a few more minutes, the amount of time depending on current weather conditions.

However, some modern performance vehicles have neither a coolant display nor an oil temperature display. This is obviously a deliberate design decision. Are manufacturers of performance vehicles confident that their engines will not suffer permanent damage being driven on cold oil? What is the rationale behind this decision?

My guess is that modern engines and modern oils can much better cope with cold conditions, that this is no longer an issue.

SilverlightFox
  • 463
  • 2
  • 6
  • 16

1 Answers1

4

Your sample may just be non-representative.

All the ones I know (I'm mostly into Japanese performance cars) have oil temps. Even many non-performance cars have an indicator that goes out once the engine is up to temperature (such as my wife's Honda Jazz)

I think cars like the M135i have some cost based design decisions in order to meet their price point - it's only an entry level performance car. But for a car like that it doesn't really matter - the ECU will control attempts to push too far out of standard envelope.

Rory Alsop
  • 18,600
  • 7
  • 60
  • 100