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Gearing. Torque and HP multiplication drop off quickly (go to a table of your car's gear ratios) as you go to higher gears. AND aero is major importance, very significant over 50-60. I believe resistance increases to the square of speed increase.
That's the quick answer. It gets complicated fast, NPI.
Drag force is proportional to the velocity for a laminar flow and the squared velocity for a turbulent flow. Even though the ultimate cause of a drag is viscous friction, the turbulent drag is independent of viscosity.
Is air resistance the only reason a car accelerates at a greater rate from 10-20 mph than it does from 50-60 mph, or is there another reason as well?
At those speeds, wind resistance doesn't play much of a factor, it's primarily gearing. For most cars, 10-20 would be a short first gear, while at 50-60, the transmission would be in 2nd gear or possibly even in 3rd, which has longer gearing and less acceleration ability.
If you had two versions of the same car, one with auto transmission and one with manual, you would find a better acceleration at those higher speeds with the manual and a skilled driver than with the auto. Today's auto are programmed for fuel economy for the average sedan. Some autos have a manual shift mode but few work as well as a manual transmission. Even in the manual mode, some of these transmissions will shift up for you before you reach red line. Some have a hesitation before down shifting for that passing power. Read your owners manual carefully. For some cars you must press the gas pedal fully for the transmission to down shift and accelerate for passing.
All things being equal, other that axle ratios.
0-60 in my truck with a 3.42 geared axle will be faster than a stock truck with the standard 3.23 geared axles.
However, the 3.23 geared axle truck will be faster 40-70 than my truck. All due to the gearing.
Since mass increases with speed, it takes more energy to accelerate, so you experience that difference. You need to combine that with associated effects at or around 88 mph and frame-of-reference time-dilation.
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