I just tested the drift duo, and was quite pleasantly suprised with their characteristics.
BMW 120i M-Sport S vs. Mazdaspeed MX-5 Spirit RS
Leonidae's 120i seemed doubtful on paper. It just seemed that a modern, heavy chassis with fairly grippy N3 tyres and a mere 300hp wouldn't slide the way it should. Luckily, I was wrong. Leonidae remarked recently that the 120i is a relaxing drive, which worried me. But, somehow, this car does make drifting a relatively mellow experience. Don't be mistaken, this car doesn't fly through corners at psychotic angles with D1-esque tire smoke; it prefers a more civilized, low-angle drift reminiscent of Initial D. In low-speed turns, excessive wheelspin (in fact, nearly any wheelspin) is no problem at all, and the throttle must be modulated only for the sake of tracing the proper path. Steering responses are forgiving and precise, and little to no flailing about the steering wheel is required, even in those pesky S-turns, which I still can't drift through well with any car but this. Braking understeer is minimal, but present. But, the brakes are somehow still forward enough to cause oversteer when braking sideways through a decreasing-radius corner, and the balancing act between these two extremes is impressive and rewarding. The downforce is perfect on the car, causing no unnatural behaviour in the car's motion, and only subtly stabilizing the car as speed rises. The effect is that, if driven vigorously enough, it will drift quite well at high speed, but be just stable enough to make its way through a high-speed S-turn coherently. However, the transmission ratios are slightly too high for the mechanical ability of the car, and I don't really see the point of an essentially arbitrary sixth gear. However, I love the first gear (flooring throttle results in revs stabilizing about 1000RPM under rev limiter until wheelspin stops a fraction of a second later), so just shortening some of the higher gears would seem to do the trick. Other than the gearbox issue, though, I've really got nothing to complain about in this relaxing yet capable tail-out machine.
) an issue.. Oh well, it did lead to the creation of this little baby Bimmer. I really liked it how it came out in the end.
We keep running to that exactly same diagnosis of our cars and tuning styles everywhere again and again.. I guess it is true then.💡
but thanks for trying out the big cat! The oversteer available on throttle is indeed a pleasant thing and one of the biggest contributors in making it something other than a hopeless clunk of metal.
you could had sent him a simple PM. Shame on you.
