I have a vast number of years experience in high performance testing and their methods, and have attended numerous performance driving academies both locally and internationally. I am also a full member of the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists and an evaluation jury member on the annual SA Car of the Year competition.

Now although car sales remain bleak, the local car manufacturers are still bringing more and more new cars to our shores. And you can be assured that a big proportion of them will be high performance machines, machines that sometimes build a reputation and are sold almost purely on the basis of how quick they can get to 100 km/h or how fast they can go flat out.

So whose test figures do you believe?

Well you already know from my website that I only use the world recognised Racelogic VBOX test equipment and test at Gerotek, a controlled environment of sorts, but what other factors affect the results of a performance test.

First the test car or bike is delivered, and most manufacturers use a fleet of test cars and bikes, so various publications get different cars to start with. Some have higher mileage than others, some have different makes of tyres and then there are different rates of wear and tear across these test cars and bikes. All of this already starting to add to a potential difference in figures that is going to be achieved for the same make and model of car or bike.

Now as you head off to test you need to ask yourself, is the location the same every time, are road surface conditions the same, is the road level in both directions? All these things will make a difference to traction and the ability to run true on a level surface, no uphill to hinder the car or downhill to help the car.

So now you are ready for your first run. How much fuel is in the car, what octane is it, how hard or soft are the tyres? All these things will affect your results before you have even let the clutch out for the first time. And this is before you take into account; you have altitude that robs the car of natural power, high ambient temperature, brisk wind and atmospheric pressure all doing the same.

Having taken note of all the above conditions and recorded them, you are now on your way down the test strip and here the biggest variable in the equation has an effect on the figures achieved, and this is the test pilot. Everybody has varying levels of ability when it comes to driving a car, never mind trying to extract test type data from a car. Change drivers and the results will change without any of the many other variables changing.

Another very important note to bear in mind, the best performance test drivers are not necessary the quickest, they are the most consistent and need to be in order to bring you figures that can be realised over and over in the real world that we find out on the road.

So the next time you want to rip into your best friend because you have seen or read somewhere that his car is no longer the undisputed speed king of the road, just remember that the figures you have seen are only a reflection of what that test car was capable of on that day when driven by a particular tester, under whatever weather and road conditions were present when the test was done.

Change any of the parameters of this test and these figures WILL change, change them again and these figures WILL change once again, that is the simple bottom line to proper performance car testing.