I think it just depends on what you're going for. There's no magic number anywhere in car design. Some short-wheelbase cars are steady by design. Some long wheelbase cars aren't. Chassis stiffness, alignment, tire choice, suspension design, suspension materials, and a bazillion other factors matter.
I often flirted with buying a Miata many times but could never make myself do it. As an overall car, the FR-S feels superior in almost every way. It's like how I almost bought a G35 many times. It's just not quite good enough overall.
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Originally Posted by solidONE
You know, I've always considered 95"-96" wheelbase and 59"-60" track width the magical numbers for handling performance, the "golden ratio" for balance in a RWD car. Some of my favorite cars had similar numbers (ex. FD RX-7, and 911) It seems the Cayman has also went with these numbers. But, in more recent times auto engineers seem to be going with longer wheelbase in the performance cars. It seem that they have been favoring stability at the cost of loosing some nimbleness. (101" on our 86's and the Evora)
While based on hard numbers the miata might lose to a lot of these much more expensive cars, but the "feel" of how this little bar-of-soap with wheels is unmatched by any car I've driven. So direct and so nimble it's as if the car was steered by thought.
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