Litchfield BRZ in EVO's Track Car of the Year 2013

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by Tgionet

That's pretty much what I'd spec, I'd get PASM instead of the sport suspension though.

It's a tough choice, but the sport suspension is a bit cheaper, as well as being lower. I think it'd be a bit better performing too. I'd be on the fence though - I haven't driven a PASM-equipped Cayman, so I'd definitely want to do that before making a final choice. I'd also be curious to drive a PDK equipped one, but I'm 95% sure I'd end up with a stick shift, even though it is slower.

[GT86meMR2]

That BRZ is awesome no matter what the numbers say

[Suberman]

Originally Posted by chrisl

It's a tough choice, but the sport suspension is a bit cheaper, as well as being lower. I think it'd be a bit better performing too. I'd be on the fence though - I haven't driven a PASM-equipped Cayman, so I'd definitely want to do that before making a final choice. I'd also be curious to drive a PDK equipped one, but I'm 95% sure I'd end up with a stick shift, even though it is slower.

PDK is pretty slick. You might think you want a manual but think long and hard before you actually order one. Resale is likely to be adversely affected.

Once Ferrari ditched the manual in favour of DCT that basically was the end of the manual.

PASM is pretty amazing but, again, not consistent with ordering a manual. Basically, PASM allows Porsche to fit a track oriented suspension which you switch "off" using PASM, although it does have automatic characteristics. Sport mode is just too hard for North American roads.

Logic dictates buying a base Cayman without PASM if you want a manual. I'm just saying.

The differences between the base Cayman with a manual shift and the BRZ/FRS are minimal on real roads at legal speeds. Just saying.

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by Suberman

PDK is pretty slick. You might think you want a manual but think long and hard before you actually order one. Resale is likely to be adversely affected.

If I'm in the market for a new Cayman anytime soon (I won't be for at least another 2 and a half years, but regardless...), I will buy the one I want. I refuse to buy the wrong transmission just because it might affect resale value. That having been said, I'm not sure if the PDK is the wrong transmission - as I said above, I'd be curious to drive one and see, though I do think I would probably end up with a manual anyways.

Originally Posted by Suberman

Once Ferrari ditched the manual in favour of DCT that basically was the end of the manual.

Which is a real shame - I'd love to own a 430 with a stick shift (I believe that was the last model where it was even an option) sometime, but I've already resigned myself to the fact that it would be next to impossible to find (and might command a price premium over the far more common sequential F1 gearbox)

Originally Posted by Suberman

PASM is pretty amazing but, again, not consistent with ordering a manual. Basically, PASM allows Porsche to fit a track oriented suspension which you switch "off" using PASM, although it does have automatic characteristics. Sport mode is just too hard for North American roads.

I don't see the correlation - PASM allows for a more track tuned suspension some of the time, and a cushier suspension the rest of the time. Since I would definitely autocross and track the car, regardless of transmission, I would definitely want either the sport suspension or PASM, and there's no inconsistency there.

Originally Posted by Suberman

Logic dictates buying a base Cayman without PASM if you want a manual. I'm just saying.

No, logic dictates buying whatever I want and can justify to myself (which would definitely be an S, not a base). A car like this is entirely for having fun anyways - there's no real practical value in it.

Originally Posted by Suberman

The differences between the base Cayman with a manual shift and the BRZ/FRS are minimal on real roads at legal speeds. Just saying.

Have you ever driven a Cayman? The difference is pretty obvious, even on real roads at road-legal speeds. The BRZ/FR-S feels extremely nimble, but it also feels like the limits of both grip and power are fairly low. They're extremely controllable, but not terribly high (which is part of the fun of the car). The Cayman on the other hand is all about grip - the fatter tires and the engine in the back mean that even coming out of a corner, you can pretty much stand on the gas anytime you want, and the rear end won't step out until you're going a lot faster than you would have expected. Even though I have the S, I can't even chirp the tires (as long as they're warm) by dumping the clutch at 4500rpm - the car just grips and goes. There are definitely merits to each car, but I wouldn't say they're all that similar in the way they drive (aside from both being focused on the handling feel, and both being nimble). And, of course, there's the extra 75 horsepower to go with the glorious sound of having a flat 6 sitting eighteen inches behind you.

(My one caveat to that is that I haven't driven a BRZ on extremely sticky tires, so if that completely changes the feel of the car, it might better approximate a Cayman. I'd be surprised if it made it Cayman-like though, since part of the reason the Cayman grips so well is the rear-biased weight distribution)

[Suberman]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[a2cpc]

Originally Posted by Suberman

Drifting is slow and akin to synchronized swimming as compared to racing..

One of the greatest comparisons ever!!!!

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by Suberman

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Suberman

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.

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

Originally Posted by Suberman

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.

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)

Originally Posted by Suberman

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.

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).

Originally Posted by Suberman

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.

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.

[bfrank1972]

Ok forgive me, but I sense a lot of oversimplification and arm-chair racing knowledge being spouted here. And I have to say - we all love the Cayman, it's a great car. Many of your posts seem to be "Wow the FR-S/BRZ is a great car.. but my Cayman is better!". I can't speak for others, but it kinda gets annoying. I'm here to learn more about the car I own. I'm just curious, why are you here?

Originally Posted by chrisl

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.


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


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)


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).



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.

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by bfrank1972

Ok forgive me, but I sense a lot of oversimplification and arm-chair racing knowledge being spouted here. And I have to say - we all love the Cayman, it's a great car. Many of your posts seem to be "Wow the FR-S/BRZ is a great car.. but my Cayman is better!". I can't speak for others, but it kinda gets annoying. I'm here to learn more about the car I own. I'm just curious, why are you here?

A couple of reasons, really. First off, I joined before I had bought any car, and at the time, I genuinely thought I would end up with a BRZ. I only ended up with a Cayman because a really nice used example showed up in my area, and the circumstances were right for me to get it. I do think that for handling feel and driver fun, the BRZ/FR-S is about as good as it gets short of a Cayman, and I honestly wasn't expecting a used Cayman that was in my price range, in good condition, and in the spec I would want would show up. I'm also a huge subaru fan, and I love the combination of the rear drive, handling focused chassis with the high revving boxer engine. Because of this, and also because I know several people who have BRZs, I haven't seen a good reason to stop following the news on the car, even though I don't have one. I'm also a huge car enthusiast in general, so I like the sections of the forum related to that. I also have found a lot of useful advice in the autocross/track section of this forum, since I want to get more into autocrossing and DEs, and a lot of that info is not car-specific.

As for bringing my Cayman into all kinds of conversations? I try not to - I don't mean to say anything about it unless someone else brings up the subject, and most of the time, I try to keep my comments pretty much generic or BRZ/FR-S related. For example, the conversation in this thread started turning towards Porsches with the Cayman explicitly mentioned in the video, as well as by Tgionet above. That having been said, I will try to pay attention to when/how often I discuss the Cayman - I really don't want it to come across the way you say it sounds (and actually, on that note, I'll pull it from my sig too).

[DarkSunrise]

Originally Posted by chrisl

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).

Do you have a limited slip differential on your Cayman? That can affect the power oversteer characteristic of a car as well. With a LSD, both rear tires will break traction cleanly with enough power exiting a corner, whereas with an open differential, you'll get wheelspin on the inside rear wheel.

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by DarkSunrise

Do you have a limited slip differential on your Cayman? That can affect the power oversteer characteristic of a car as well. With a LSD, both rear tires will break traction cleanly with enough power exiting a corner, whereas with an open differential, you'll get wheelspin on the inside rear wheel.

Sadly, no, though I've been surprised how well it puts down power despite the lack of a LSD. As long as the road surface is clean, it tends to just hook up, right up to the point where both rear tires break loose cleanly. The only times I've had wheelspin on the inside rear wheel were when there was some kind of gravel/sand/water/etc near the curb, and so the inside rear wheel was already in a compromised situation for traction. An LSD would help in those cases, but so far it hasn't been as much of a problem as I would have expected. Having PTV would be really nice though.

[Suberman]

LSD cause understeer. Very overrated addition. The best LSD to get is the Torsen fitted to our BRZ. Otherwise fit a fully electronic LSD.

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by Suberman

LSD cause understeer. Very overrated addition. The best LSD to get is the Torsen fitted to our BRZ. Otherwise fit a fully electronic LSD.

Hence my comment that I'd really like it if I had PTV...

[Suberman]

Originally Posted by chrisl

Hence my comment that I'd really like it if I had PTV...

Porsche didn't fit an LSD to the first gen Cayman for good reason. Insufficient engine torque to warrant fitting one.

The second gen Cayman was journalist engineered in some respects. The LSD still wasn't beneficial but Porsche felt pressure to offer one.

The rear axle "grip" you seem convinced is a result of weight distribution also means an LSD is pretty useless on a Cayman.

I really enjoyed your remarks about high school physics ( er, Newton never went to high school and, as far as I know, non relativistic physics hasn't changed since then) and whether I knew what I was talking about re suspension design. I do and I can tell you what's wrong with the Cayman: insufficient power to exploit the chassis. Seem a familiar problem? The BRZ suffers from the same deficiency. Both cars are fun to drive. Connection?