There's been some talk about why the 328 may be slightly "faster" than the 2.8 30v because of the gear ratios. I was wondering how does gear ratios fit into this whole picture. Does anybody have any links that I can read up on this subject? Thanks.<p>Jeff

Well, I don't know any resources that tell you about this issue but I can give you an example that you can understand very quickly.<p>I am assuming that you are familiar with a bike that has multiple speed gears(18 speed bike, etc). The car gear ratio works in a similar way. <p>If you set your bike with biggest gear in the front crank and the smallest gear in the back wheel and try to start from a dead stop, you probably noticed that your bike takes off really slow and you have to put a lot of efforts to make your bike move. <p>When you put your back wheel gear to bigger gears, you will have easier time taking off from dead stop with less effort.<p>This is how the A4 and 328's gear ratios are compared(sort of). Audi's gear is smaller(similar to the bike starting from a dead stop with a small gear) than the 328's gear, therefore it will take more efforts to launch the car from a dead stop.<p>Bigger gears will, up to a certain point, make your car take off faster.<p>Here is the actual gear ratio numbers for A4 and 328. As you can see 328's gear is 'bigger' than A4's throughout the entire gear sets. If you look at 1st, 2nd (and 3rd) gear which is mainly used for 0-60 mph test, 328 has much bigger gears.<p><br>Audi A4<br>1st - 3.50<br>2nd - 1.94<br>3rd - 1.30<br>4th - 0.94<br>5th - 0.79<br>Final - 3.89<p>BMW 328i<br>1st - 4.21<br>2nd - 2.49<br>3rd - 1.66<br>4th - 1.24<br>5th - 1.00<br>Final -2.93<p>of course this is not the only reason why 2 similar car with a simialr powered engine can perfrom differently, but this is, I belive, the main reason why 328's 0-60 is much faster than A4(besides the quattro and weiights aand etc).<p>BTW, eventhough 328's gears are bigger, they can attain higher speed than A4's on each gears, don't ask me why, maybe 328 has a higher red line, though I doubt it.<p>