Quote:
Originally Posted by GoingTooFast
What the E30 achieved IS what this Subaru aims to... which is the sense of driver control:
The differences you are assuming that will exist are only the natural consequence of twenty years of distance between now and then.
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.
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I don't get where you're going with this; it sounds like arguing for the sake of it.
I still stand by my statement which was that this is hardly anything more of a spiritual successor to the E30 M3 than many other cars of its variety. It's very much like the cars I listed earlier. The RX-8 seats four, has limited power, and an excellent chassis with dynamics superior to a majority of cars on the road, so wouldn't that make it a spiritual successor to the E30 in your case as well?
"The differences you are assuming that will exist are only the natural consequence of twenty years of distance between now and then."
There are plenty of cars like this with easily controllable cornering behaviors that have been made over the past two decades, does that make them spiritual successors to the E30 if this is the only criteria?
I could go into why the 911 is so great, and makes so much sense to me, but that's for a day where I feel like writing a Great Wall of Text.
As for the 1M's air curtains, I believe they're largely a matter of marketing and unique design. If they wanted to decrease the Cd by a significant amount, they would've employed an aerodynamically-optimized undertray with a real diffuser, and they would've decreased the amount of intake space up front. It's pretty obvious to see that the car isn't the most aerodynamic shape in the world.