This is a downright laughable statement.
My car does 0-100 km/h in about 8-9 seconds. Plenty fast. In fact, I'm not really encountering any road users that accelerate faster than I do. No issues with merging, no issues with overtakes, nothing.
Here's someone joining the Autobahn with the same engine and gearbox as me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUiXwbbITGQ Please watch and observe at how undramatic this whole thing is.
Also, no one on the roads has any trouble catching up. The reason why people tailgate is because they're annoyed by people driving slowly (while possible still at the speed limit) in front of them.
It's not the catching up that's a problem. The problem is being to catch up while the dynamic, temporary, window in traffic is still open.
Were I to be driving a slow ICE car, that option of passing would not be available at all in many traffic windows that appear, because I wouldn't be able to close the n-car-length distance. This leads some people to tailgate, or follow more closely than they otherwise would, for various values of closely, because they are clinging to that hope of getting through a temporary window in traffic at some point.
(Setting aside the other less practical reason for tailgating, simple aggression / macho signaling).
Perhaps you are an exception. Thank you. :-)
No. I drive a 2001 Ford focus automatic. It's only 4 gears, has a torque converter and driven by a 100BHP engine. On paper, it's a sluggish car.
The gearbox has two kickdown modes. Give throttle a gentle push and it shifts down (interpreting we need to go faster) but, if you floor it, the gearbox quickly kickdowns until engine near-redlines, engine program changes to beast mode and the acceleration becomes unbelievable. I had used the feature a couple of times involuntarily and it literally saved my life.
0-60 in 9 seconds is not terrible. Not adding required emergency features is.
It's a bit simplistic, but if your engine puts out a reasonably constant amount of torque over different RPMs, then horsepower is proportional to RPM. If you have 100 peak HP, and a similar figure for torque it implies you have that horsepower at over 5000 rpm. So if you are accelerating moderately and your engine is turning maybe 2000 rpm, then it's only making 40% of the peak power, which in this case is 40 hp.
Say you had 300 hp, but you don't rev to 5K - you'd be aware of how it feels and think 100 hp is nothing - but you are getting barely more than that at 2K.
I actually have a newish car with 300 hp and an old one with about 150, and so from experience, the difference in power is very misleading, because the low powered car is usually running at twice the RPM on the highway, whereas the high powered one has an automatic transmission that really doesn't like to downshift. So it doesn't feel especially powerful unless you force it to rev.
Now and then I read an article about a car from roughly the late 70s, early 80s, when it appeared most cars made a ridiculously low amount of power. People say "wow, that big V-8 only made 200 hp" (or something like that). But comparing it with the torque figure should make it clear that if you compare it to a modern engine at a given, low RPM it's going to be much closer. They simply didn't produce torque and power at high RPMs. People like to talk about engines with low end torque, but in my opinion, there's no such thing - only engines that don't have high end torque.
I'd be able to safely merge with a 1992 200E, which does 0-100 in like 18 seconds.
When I was a kid Porsche made a car that did 0-60 in ten seconds. And Suzuki I think bragged about how their hatchback could do it in 8 or 9 and compared themselves to Porsche.