is it true any car of similar weight can be made to have good feedback and handling?
 

I'm just wondering... if I took a 2013 civic si with its relatively isolated driving feel and spent $5k to gave it upgraded bushings and really good dampers with much stiffer springs and spent enough time to get the right spring rates for good balance, wouldn't that give the civic a lot of chassis and steering feedback and at the same time make it into a much better handling car with quick reflexes?

The reason why I stipulate about the weight is because I'm not sure if a much heavier car can be made to feel as satisfying to drive as a twin.

I'm not saying that's what I'm considering but it certainly makes car buying a lot easier if what I'm proposing can be achieved satisfactorily.

For street driving I've found that there is some truth to this as long as the FWD car is not to heavy and set up for as neutral balance as possible with a well engineered suspension upgrade. A 3000+lb FWD forget it.

Well of course. Look at the Ford Focus ST. FWD and yet handles like a RWD. It is possible but it would be ridiculously expensive to get a Civic to the handling performance that the twins have right from the factory.

i dont think so but it has little to do with the drive wheels. theres a lot about suspension design that cant really be changes. solid axles, macstruts, double arms, caster, camber adjustments and camber curves are all kind of inherent and important to the character of the car.

As to your topic title's question, no it is not true. Chassis, steering rack, and chassis design play a HUGE part into how the car feeds back and handles.

That's one big reason I traded in my STI (the weight was the least of my worries, as that wasn't the big detractor): the STI just didn't handle or feed back to me like the BRZ/FR-S did, even if I stiffened up the chassis and improved the suspension. CoG, AWD vs RWD, steering ratio, driver position, etc all played a part into the improved handling of the STI over the BRZ.

So, no, a Civic SI can't be made to feed back and handle like an 86. For one, it's FWD vs RWD (or as I say just to PO honda fanbois, "Wrong Wheel Drive vs. Right Wheel Drive"), and for another the chassis is set up quite differently.

I guess the only way to settle this is to attempt it someday. would make a good mythbusters episode, lol...

Well 'm not saying they handle the same. But I had a 93 civic with koni suspension/wheels and it handled vey neutral. The FS handles more an old school GT, reminds me most of an E24 BMW I owned.


I think the point the OP is asking is for the street can a FWD have decent neutral handling.


As far as the Focus it has quirks that don't behave like a rwd at the limits.


Its doable to have a nice handling fwd, but IMHO not out of the box like the '86. Its the only car in 25 years I haven't needed to upgrade the stock suspension.

But has comparatively bad steering feel.

Oh of course. It's really difficult to make a car have steering feel with an electric steering rack. Toyobaru nailed the head with this somehow and made a really communicative steering wheel despite it being electric.

No.

And fwd will always handle fundamentally differently from rwd. Yes, you can make a fwd car as oversteery as you want. It doesn't alter the fact that under acceleration while cornering you will get more of a swing in balance towards understeer because you're not only unloading the front tires, you're also trading some cornering grip for drive grip.
There is no getting around this.

fwd feels very different to me, even very well set up and very fast fwd cars.

Weight isn't nearly as important as people think. Heavy cars can handle extremely well. Tires develop grip in proportion to their loading.

This is why a Ferrari weighing over 3,000 lbs can drive better than a Lotus weighing 2,000 lbs.

Now money, that makes a big difference.

Lighter weight will generally feel more engaging and immediate, though. In that sense, weight is very important. But yeah, you can have a very heavy car with enormous high-grip tires and excellent suspension design and it will put up good handling numbers.

Also it's very important where that weight is centralized. Engine hanging out over (or above) the front axle line is never ideal. No escaping that.

This is an underappreciated point because I've heard a number of times where people say that a Focus ST handles just like RWD.

There's no doubt you can create a FWD chassis that's neutral or even oversteers in steady-state cornering. FWD autocross guys do it all the time using huge rear sway bars and high rear spring rates.

But there's no getting around the fact that with FWD, acceleration always unloads the drive wheels. I'm not saying it can't be fast, and I'm not saying you can't get steady-state oversteer. But under acceleration with FWD, you always unload the drive wheels and that's a different feeling than RWD.

If the Focus ST had aggressive-enough torque vectoring where you could get power oversteer, that might change things. I imagine that could potentially feel more like RWD. The Evo X does this to a small degree already actually (limited slip angle under power via torque vectoring at the rear differential). But I have yet to see a FWD car pull this off.