The measurement is exactly what it sounds like. Car stationary, throttle open, stopwatch running until the speedometer reads sixty. Outside the UK and North America the same idea is usually quoted as 0-100 km/h, which is a slightly longer run and so a slightly slower number for the same car.
Why two numbers for the same car disagree
What's worth knowing is what's missing. We couldn't find a published standard test procedure governing how a 0-60 time has to be produced, and that absence is the honest answer to the question. Surface, tyre temperature, fuel load, altitude and how the launch was managed all move the result, and different publications run the test differently. One published difference is where the clock starts. Some American testers quote a figure with rollout, meaning the timing beam is broken after the car has already begun moving, in the manner of a drag strip; a figure timed from a genuine standstill is the slower of the two. We could not read a rule book that fixes either method, so treat the distinction as a reason two numbers for the same car disagree rather than as a quantity we can put a value on. Two quoted times are only properly comparable when the same tester produced both.
How to read the figure
So read it as a rough ranking rather than a specification. It's also a poor guide to how a car feels on a real road, where torque low in the rev range does more for the experience than an outright sprint figure. The number attaches itself hardest to the supercar conversation, which is a category with no fixed definition either, and it tells you nothing at all about how big the engine is.
Written by Craig Fearn, Petrol & Ink. Last updated .