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      11-18-2011, 12:24 PM   #28
GoingTooFast
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Drives: fat cars are still boats
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: compensating a fat car with horsepower is like giving an alcoholic cocaine to sober him up.

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Year's_End View Post
"Good handling" can be achieved multiple ways. The E30 had a lot of slack and was slow and predictable at the limit.
What the E30 achieved IS what this Subaru aims to... which is the sense of driver control:

"That the car can be very controllable during a slide. In other words, that you can be able to control precisely the weight distribution using the brake and gas, maximizing the joy out of a corner."

The differences you are assuming that will exist are only the natural consequence of twenty years of distance between now and then.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Year's_End View Post
From the looks of things, this car doesn't look like it has much "slack" and will offer superior handling through typical sportscar meat-and-potato engineering (i.e. low center of gravity, stiff controlled suspension, neutral weight balance, etc).
A boxer engine is not a typical engine... why do you think Porsche uses it in the 911 till today?! Because it lowers the height of its center of gravity which is of paramount importance when most of the car's weight is shifted to the rear, behind the rear axle. That's the reason why the 911 doesn't make any sense to me... it really looks like an 'hammer'. If it wasn't for the boxer engine, the car would be even more difficult to control in a bend than it already is despite all the gadgets that Porsche uses to make it more accessible to drive.

Also, if you think about that agressive 1M's front fat flares you'll see that they kill the vehicle's aerodynamic and that's the reason why BMW try to compensate for using the so-called 'Air Curtain System' to channel the air around the front wheels, but it only helps slightly. The 1M drag coefficient (Cd) is 0.37 and the "air curtains" drop that by about 0.01 only.

When you compare that figure to Subaru's Cd = 0.27 (a Prius is 0.25) you can clearly see how good its aerodynamic also is and without the need of any gadgets:




This car is built with very neat engineering.

Last edited by GoingTooFast; 11-18-2011 at 12:37 PM..
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