Quote:
Originally Posted by Suberman
(Post 1322330)
I've driven several Caymans as well as 911 and a Boxster. That's how I know the BRZ is a much better car for most street drivers, subject to one rather serious design deficiency which unfortunately was deliberate.
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That, of course, is entirely a matter of personal opinion. I think the Cayman is a better car, even on the street, but that's just my opinion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suberman
(Post 1322330)
Drive the PDK Cayman once and you'd be a bit loony to want a manual. Indeed, drive the latest torque converter automatics and a manual shift becomes the anachronistic choice. I bought a manual shift BRZ knowing full well that the automatic could have been a better choice had Toyota/Subaru not deliberately made it so slow.
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I've driven the latest torque converter autos, as well as a couple of double clutch gearboxes (the best one I've driven is probably the one in the S4), and I still prefer a stick. I know it isn't faster, but I enjoy driving it more. Since I bought the car to drive it, that's all that matters to me
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suberman
(Post 1322330)
My remark about PASM and a manual transmission is it is illogical to claim you prefer the manual shift for better involvement with the car and then have electronically adjustable suspension. Electronically adjustable suspension interferes with the driver's control of the car, as does "active" steering fitted to some BMW.
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Electronic suspension interferes with the driver's control of the car? How? All it does is allow you to change the damping to best suit the current conditions, and in the case of some implementations (like PASM), allow the car to do the same on the fly. This can give you both more grip on the track, and a more comfortable ride on the street. Nothing about that in any way interferes with the driver's control of the car.
(Active steering on the other hand can interfere with the control of the car, though that depends on how it is implemented)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suberman
(Post 1322330)
Weight distribution hasn't got a lot to do with grip but it does affect polar moment, roll moment and relative tire slip angles. Wider tires don't deliver higher levels of grip, a common misconception. Friction is expressed as a coefficient for a reason. Rubber grips the road, the structure of the tire affects how that grip is utilized. The structure of the tire doesn't magically generate more friction.
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Weight distribution absolutely affects grip - a rear biased weight distribution will allow a rear wheel drive car to put down more power at all times, since a larger proportion of the weight is over the driving wheels. This matters less on an all wheel drive car, but for a rear-drive car, a rear-biased weight distribution will give significantly more grip in situations where you are accelerating. The slight front bias of the BRZ on the other hand puts less weight on the driving wheels, which is probably part of the reason it is so easy to break them free, even with only 200hp (whereas I have to try pretty hard to break the rear tires free on my Cayman, despite almost a hundred more horsepower, though admittedly part of that is also the fact that I have really sticky tires on my Cayman).
As for wider tires not delivering higher levels of grip? You need to forget about the high-school physics level knowledge about friction. Rubber on pavement behaves differently than that. Interestingly, the contact patch doesn't change size between narrower and wider tires (assuming the same internal pressure), but it does change shape, with a wider tire providing a wider (but shorter) contact patch. This allows for a higher lateral force at a given slip angle, which means that a wider tire does indeed give slightly better grip. Similarly, lowering the pressure in tires will tend to give higher grip due to the increased surface area in contact with the ground. This goes against the simplistic theory you are using above, but due to the way rubber deforms under load, it has a higher coefficient of friction when under a lower vertical pressure (which can mean either less load, or a larger contact patch).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suberman
(Post 1322330)
The BRZ handles differently with better tires but it still suffers from drift mentality. Drifting is slow and akin to synchronized swimming as compared to racing. Unfortunately, the perceived demographic for buyers of this car apparently include drifters and the car suffers terribly as a result.
A car prone to oversteer is a pita to drive for a serious driver. The terrible stock tires just make it worse, much worse. Grippier tires would make the car much more pleasant to drive as would altering the camber rise in the rear suspension to give more camber rise more quickly in roll. As it is this car suffers chronically from roll oversteer which the stock tires exacerbate. I deduce from the cars behaviour that it is roll oversteer from inadequate rear camber rise but given that it also occurs in the wet it may also result from rear toe effects. The two can be hard to differentiate from behind the wheel. One odd thing is the car is totally benign on really slippery roads as on snow or ice. In fact, the BRZ is a bit of a dream car to drive in winter conditions with traction control fully off. Same on gravel. Totally controllable, a child could drive this car on ice. It is definitely a roll issue but whether it is camber rise or toe or both I dunno.
Handling is much more benign on my Sottozeros than those awful Prius tires. However, to really compete with the Cayman in corners more needs to be done than fitting better tires. The rear upper A arm needs to be shorter or perhaps some rear bushings stiffened up if toe changes are the cause of the drifting tendencies.
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I don't know enough about the BRZ's suspension geometry to know if you have any idea what you're talking about here or not. I agree that the BRZ/FR-S are a bit tail happy, but that is a design decision based on the perceived demographic for the car. It does seem a bit hyperbolic though to say that the handling of the car causes the car to suffer terribly - given the success many people are having with the car in autocross and track events, I don't think it's nearly as bad as you are implying here. However, I will admit that I haven't had the chance to drive a BRZ/FR-S on a track.
This does however seem to go against your prior statement that the base Cayman is nearly indistinguishable from a BRZ in how it drives on the street. A Cayman has a huge amount of grip at all times (although it is also really controllable when it starts to slide), which is a pretty obvious difference from the way a BRZ on stock tires (and even on sticky ones, based on your own statement here) drives.
