Originally Posted by
Lesbrill54
If you stuck a 1.5L Kia engine (me) in a Suburban, I think you'd find that weight matters even on a flat road. My new bike is 10lbs lighter than my old one-wahoo!
And is any road totally flat?
Even my new bike isn't as light as the OPs tho, it's a hybrid- Trek Fx 3 stagger( surely Trek didn't know that Fx means fracture? Especially terrible combined with Stagger! )
Most vehicles consume very little horsepower once up to a steady speed. I think you'd find your Suburban quite capable of driving on the flat road with the Kia engine no problem. I read an article on this that used the Ford Flex iirc around 20 HP was all that was needed to maintain highway speed. I've also studied some kit car designs like one that used a Kubota 3 cylinder garden tractor motors. They were sluggish to accelerate but they could hit highway speeds. I got to see one in Cleveland, and Urba Centurion car with 18hp Kubota engine that didn't get the 128 claimed MPG but still close to 100. But people today want fast acceleration, an underpowed dog would not sell good no matter what mpg it got.