Vector W8: Driving Experience and DougScore

this is more Doug demure oh and today I'm driving the vector w8 but before I do a little overview the vector w8 was an American supercar made in the late 1980s and early 1990s incredibly rare and meant to resemble a fighter jet both in appearance and interior cockpit layout naturally this car is tremendously quirky and so the video of all the quirks and features ran almost 40 minutes which is pretty much the limit of what I found people are willing to watch or click on on YouTube people see a video that's 48 minutes long and they think no thanks I'm not gonna watch that documentary I'm just going to go watch something else so I figured instead of trying to cut things out and cram everything into 40 minutes and then you would lose some of the quirks and features of the vector and the driving experience would be really short I would just split it up into two videos so yesterday on my main channel you saw 40 minutes of vector quirks and features and today I'm going to drive it now if you want to check out the vector quirks and features I've linked that video in the description below the original video but today I'm going to get behind the wheel of the vector get it out on the road and see how it drives and then I'm going to give it a dug score here goes all right driving the vector w8 definitely the most insane car I am ever driven for this YouTube channel and already it is just a wild world the accelerator and brake pedal although they are next to each other in the usual plate place the brake pedal is like six inches behind the accelerator pedal so it's over and then you've got to go way down to find it which is kind of funny the width is pretty substantial it is a surprisingly wide vehicle and there's an unusual amount of car to your left as the driver to on the driver's side between the door that's where the transmission lever is which of course is ridiculous the owner told me people just swarm he told me he took it to his local cars and coffee here in Jersey lines and people just emptied to go and look at this thing the brakes are not great well they're actually good they're okay you just have to do a deep deep stab of the brake pedal and of course the brake pedal is already pretty far back there so it's a real commitment now you're looking at this your speed and your revs on this ridiculous screen not in front of you over to the left and there's a lot of stuff going on on that screen so you got to kind of figure it out there's actually a reasonable amount of room in here my head is tight up against the glass but my knees and legs are just fine in fact I tilted the wheel down a little bit it was it was too high then you can hear the blob valve in the turret it sounds so cool what is this thing this is one of the most bizarre vehicles you see all your windshield wipers in front of you which of course is just so strange all right I'm going to give it some real acceleration here and see what happens [Music] it feels reasonably quick although the owner did tell me that it's sluggish down low and he's having maybe it's a problem maybe it's just how it was and that's definitely true the car doesn't really feel incredibly fast until the turbos start to spool whoo but when they do it is it is nice and quick and it's a lot because the three-speed auto which is ridiculous but it doesn't shift all that often and so it can just kind of go and go once it's going into higher rpms and just kind of go and go like a CVT which is actually almost a benefit now obviously be better if you had to do a clutch just like that but this is the world we're living in here visibility is tough to the right and down just because you just you just don't know what's going on down there in the front of the car is sort of an a vague place out there the brakes you just have to really floor the brake pedal to go anywhere this engine sound is just massive I mean the car just has an incredible sound to it not necessarily a great like exotic car sports car sound but a big sound of a substantial one part of giving some gas here well that blog valve is unbelievable it's quick it does feel pretty quick but you do have to get going you definitely do have to get your your speed up because it's a three speed there's not any gears that it can downshift into so you're just basically waiting for the engine speeds to climb in the engine to the turbos to spool up you do kind of bake in here the art film in the air conditioning is actually not only exists but really really good I can't turn on because it'll mess with my mics but um I guess that's the that's the antidote for the fact that there's this glass panel sunroof in terms of steering and handling the steering is lighter than I was expecting that it would be given that this is a car from this era so many have this really heavy you know non assisted steering it's just awful whatever this car and I actually could it could be a little heavier and that would be nice visibility is truly ridiculously terrible absolutely awful but pretty normal of cars from this era rear visibility is just a total nightmare you can't see a thing behind you the mirrors are just atrocious it's almost kind of funny how they are their positions sort of fixed in place on the doors there you actually can see using them they're not that bad but they are small they're in the right spot they're just small the ride quality is not that bad you can probably hear it and see it bumping around but I've driven a lot of exotic cars this is much more comfortable than most modern exotics I would rather be in one of these than in a modern McLaren which sounds ridiculous but I'm sincere about death obviously if you own one of these if you run into the problem of maintaining it and that sort of but in terms of drivability I could sit here for a while and if I had the AC on I think it wouldn't really be all that bad man this thing is just so bizarre it's even crazier than a Countach from this era although I have a little bit more room in this you have more of a centered driving position feel you have the crazy windshield wipers this car just looks absolutely insane and even from the inside I mean this screen is just the most ridiculous thing you'll ever see it's just absurd Hardiman get on and again here it's actually pretty quick it really is especially for a car from this era by modern standards I imagine and especially with age you know this one sample I imagined it's lost something but I find it to be quicker than I was expecting it to this car is actually better built and better driving than I was thinking that it would be probably a testament to the current owner who spent an enormous amount of time and effort keeping it up but I'm actually surprised the vector w8 doesn't suck it's not the greatest car but this is very comparable and probably better than Testarossa Countach it's definitely on that level even though this was an upstart company that only made 20 cars it very much feels like those things and in some ways it's actually an improvement and so that's the vector w8 twin turbo truly everything about this car is insane the look the interior the engine the transmission the story of the company all of it I have only ever seen one of these in person before today and I have always wanted to drive it and now that I have I am absolutely certain in my belief that this is the craziest supercar ever made and with that in mind time to give the vector a Doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling this car isn't beautiful but it's so cool so amazing so daring it easily earns a ten out of ten acceleration to zero to sixty and four point something in turns a seven out of ten handling is good but it could be better it certainly doesn't measure up against modern supercars though that's to be expected and it earns a six out of ten fun factor is decent though it's dulled by the three-speed automatic and the fear that at any moment you could break something which you'll never be able to find a replacement for and it gets an 8 out of 10 cool factor is obviously as good as it gets I can think of almost no cars that would draw as much of a crowd at cars and coffee and it gets a 10 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 41 out of 50 next up are the daily categories and features it's pretty low on tech by modern standards no surprise and it gets a 2 out of 10 Comfort is surprisingly decent and it gets a three out of ten quality is also surprisingly decent it'll be impossible to find any replacement parts but this is a low production 30 year old car and basically everything works and works pretty well it all feels reasonably well done of course with the caveat that it could break at any second and you have absolutely no support or replacement parts if it does so it gets a three out of ten practicality I can think of few cars a less practical given the visibility the small interior and the impossibility of maintenance and repairs and it gets a 1 out of 10 finally valuing these aren't as expensive as I think they should be they're under a million bucks way under which isn't much considering the legend around this car but of course if you actually got one attempting to use it or plying somebody to work on it could be tricky I think these will go up in value but still it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total daily score of 17 out of 50 added up in the dug score is 58 out of 100 which places it here against other 1980s and 1990s supercars I've reviewed the vector w8 is near the top of the weekend scores which makes sense because basically nothing is this cool and insane but the daily score is abysmal lower than the Jaguar xj220 tied with the Countach because you could never use this car with any frequency but imagine if you did you

Channel: More Doug DeMuro

Views: 911,619

Rating: 4.9146795 out of 5

Keywords: vector w8 drive, vector drive, doug demuro, vector, vector w8

Id: UPyL6dye1U0

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/TRS2917]

This car is simultaneously the coolest thing ever and the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen... I love it, the world would be boring without dream machines like this.

[u/TheBaltimoron]

Video total is different than spreadsheet; math mistake?

[u/balzac2m]

I honestly think the W8 warrants a 11/10 for Coolness.

[u/KingPetunia]

What a biblical engine sound. Imagine what it could do had it had anything other than a 3 speed slushmatic.

Also Doug, the only way you could top this is with the Cizeta-Moroder V16T ;)

[u/snowthunder2018]

I love this car so much and I really am happy that he had such a nice clear shot of the screen on the dash in the first vid. My computer is set up to look like a hybrid of Vector W8 / Compass Grid interface. I did it as a joke and it turned out the color scheme is really easy on the eyes!

[u/Whitestorm2]

So I noticed that Vector got those door handles from the Subaru XT! imgur.com/gallery/jA0s1QJ

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Edit: The interior handles are the same too!

[u/Ebolutionx]

LamborghiniKS has 2 of them 😳

[u/nukelauncher95]

Nice shirt, /u/doug-demuro . I didn't know you were into F1. Do you usually go to the races?

[u/MattTheIdiotBoy]

I give none of the shits about how practical this car is... that thing's amazing. I remember seeing them in magazines and such when I was a kid and just kind of assumed they'd all disappeared. I had no idea they were such a small production car either. Thank you u/doug-demuro for the video, (I can't believe you actually got to drive one of these you magnificent bastard), and thank you to whoever owns that car for beautifully maintaining a piece of forgotten automotive history.