Tom McCahill Was The Inventor Of The Zero To Sixty MPH measurement

Tom McCahill is the major inventor you need to know of. In fact, you wouldn’t’ve even known about the road-test benchmark without the guy. It’s straightforward: how many seconds pass when you drive from zero to sixty miles per hour? It’s a heavy-hitting fact is often mentioned in automotive advertisements. Though this is prominent, there usually remain no other figures. Quarter-mile times are not in any way as significant. The top speed resonates with a true car-connoisseur. So then where did it come from?

Why did Tom McCahill create this?

It was because of a published article in the February 1946 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. In it, McCahill illustrated the vibrancy of any car with a fail-safe 0-to-60 time frame. There was no fearful bone in Tom McCahill. He was a true go-getter with words-a-plenty.

Tom McCahill was around cars all his life. When he was young, his dad would manage a Mercedes dealership. At fourteen years of age, Tom McCahill was the proud owner of an Old Winton. He would eventually sell for Marmon and open a garage in 1930s Manhattan. Later on, another in Palm Beach, specific to exotic models. When the Great Depression put a big stinker, Tom McCahill would churn out storytelling for various publications.

When life started going into a bit of a longer flow, Tom McCahill revolutionized publishing by testing out cars and giving unadulterated reviews of each model. He would borrow a vehicle, posing as a photographer and test the vehicle quickly, with little to no one ever being the wiser. You can even undrstand that Tom McCahill was one of the few reporters that ever got to drive Preston Tucker’s infamous vehicle. Quote, “The best-performing automobile in America by far,” un-quote. In his golden age, Tom had tested over 600 vehicles and created a hearth of fast fans, who to this day still believe a car’s only as good as the time it takes to punch it to half of 120 mph.