Imports

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There's also a reason European cars, from small hatches to luxo-barges, come with enormous wheels these days, and beyond that low profile tires and in my American opinion an abnormally taught and responsive suspension. It's to soak up all those horrid craggy roads in the UK. Or is it because it makes ya'll feel like Formula One drivers?

It's neither.

It's because the marketing departments rule the roost and won't let cars with smaller wheels and taller tyres out the door until they're equipped with wheels that destroy the ride and handling. Or if you're BMW, fitting run-flats that neither ride nor corner as well as normal tyres. And fitting enormous wheels.

But, y'know, it looks cool, doesn't it?

Anyway, my point wasn't really talking about extreme differences. Speed Junkie said "there's always room for improvement". I disagreed. There's sometimes room for improvement, but if the car has been well designed in the first place then you'll always be making one thing worse to make another better. In this case, cacking up the ride to improve the cornering. My point was that sometimes a drive can be both more fun and faster when you have a wheel/tyre/suspension combo that rides out the ripples.

Slightly off-topic though, it can be a great experience driving or riding in something that soaks up any and all bumps. Like that Buick. Sometimes if you've had a bad day or don't feel like caning it, lazy, wallowy saloons with slushboxes can be awesome.
 
Slightly off-topic on my part too, but with my Civic I found that the best way to improve its ride - drastically I might add - was by installing my one-piece, non-reclineable, tinly-padded race seat. By far the most comfortable chair I've ever sat it as it is designed to be sat in, not on like normal chairs, and was designed to the contours of a thin body like myself. Full support, and because of that support the chair hardly needs padding at all. What the ended up doing was illustrating how the car's stock seat itself adds yet another spring into the equation, making my body bounce just enough to annoy the crap out of me. The race seat removed that entirely, and I was amazed by how much more comfortable it was. On my 10 hour drive to New Jersey I didn't have the slightest cramp, never got tired, wasn't uncomfortable at all. So if you want your car to ride better get a race seat.
 
Slightly off-topic on my part too, but with my Civic I found that the best way to improve its ride - drastically I might add - was by installing my one-piece, non-reclineable, tinly-padded race seat. By far the most comfortable chair I've ever sat it as it is designed to be sat in, not on like normal chairs, and was designed to the contours of a thin body like myself. Full support, and because of that support the chair hardly needs padding at all. What the ended up doing was illustrating how the car's stock seat itself adds yet another spring into the equation, making my body bounce just enough to annoy the crap out of me. The race seat removed that entirely, and I was amazed by how much more comfortable it was. On my 10 hour drive to New Jersey I didn't have the slightest cramp, never got tired, wasn't uncomfortable at all. So if you want your car to ride better get a race seat.
+1. Racing seats with that somewhat memory-foamy material that doesn't bounce at all improves things a lot.

I pulled the Evo 8 Recaro out of my car in favor of my stock, torn 240sx seat, because it was so much less bouncy than the Evo seat.
 
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Given there's a Merc under that sheetmetal somewhere... that's actually on-topic... it's an import! :lol:
 
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Yeah that 1 is the most ridiculous looking thing I've ever seen. Maybe in other pictures, but definitely not that one.
 

A thought occured to me today as I stuck a jack under my friend's lowered mk4 Golf: how do you jack up cars like the above if they haven't got those uppy downy bag suspension things, or some sort of hydralic in-car jacks like some race cars do? How do you change a wheel if you get a puncture?
 
Roo
A thought occured to me today as I stuck a jack under my friend's lowered mk4 Golf: how do you jack up cars like the above if they haven't got those uppy downy bag suspension things, or some sort of hydralic in-car jacks like some race cars do? How do you change a wheel if you get a puncture?

Generally, poor man's way, is to roll it up on some 2x4's or such to get it high enough for a jack. That is how I handled it with my Civic and old AW11.
 
And so I was browsing Minkara...

That would be absolutely epic with properly fitting wheels...
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Spirant's JZX100
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And so I was browsing Minkara...

That would be absolutely epic with properly fitting wheels...
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On the race track maybe. It would look absolutely ridiculous on the road, a laugh would probably be my first reaction.
 
They're actually Mazdaspeed MS02's, and were available through the Mazdaspeed catalog in the early 90s. Extremely rare, they weren't exactly a popular item due to how weird they look.

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Also.

Regardless, I don't see what part of my original point doesn't still stand: that on bad roads you can go a lot quicker in a car with some suppleness. Is that not just common sense?

Quicker? No.

Allot quicker? Definitely no.

Common sense? Apparently common sense isn't so common any more.


On bad roads with plenty of bumps and holes, there will still be more road in between then there are of them. And who's to say most coilovers (such as my Ohlins) aren't valved to absorb (to a certain point) any movement faster than the typical cornering compressions?

Rally cars with their tarmac setups are far stiffer (both the tires and the suspension itself) than almost any car on the road. Have you seen the type of paved roads they drive on?

Returning to that Legacy I posted: The rally one I posted at the end was the Prodrive/Rothmans Legacy that Mcrae drove. Keep in mind, he won the British Rally Championship in both 91 and 92 which included driving in plenty of bumpy, paved, back roads, all with the setup on that photo which is far stiffer than almost anything on the road today.



Bad roads, you say?







And I like very little of that white supra. The aero kit is nothing like the JGTC one it was modeled after except for the shape of the front duct.



And does anyone have any more photos of this car? SR20-swapped supra.

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Quicker? No.

Allot quicker? Definitely no.

Common sense? Apparently common sense isn't so common any more.

On bad roads with plenty of bumps and holes, there will still be more road in between then there are of them. And who's to say most coilovers (such as my Ohlins) aren't valved to absorb (to a certain point) any movement faster than the typical cornering compressions?

Rally cars with their tarmac setups are far stiffer (both the tires and the suspension itself) than almost any car on the road. Have you seen the type of paved roads they drive on?

Returning to that Legacy I posted: The rally one I posted at the end was the Prodrive/Rothmans Legacy that Mcrae drove. Keep in mind, he won the British Rally Championship in both 91 and 92 which included driving in plenty of bumpy, paved, back roads, all with the setup on that photo which is far stiffer than almost anything on the road today.

Firstly, stop throwing rally videos at me. Especially not ones from my own country. I've been right up to these cars when they've been flying past, you've probably not been within a thousand miles of them.

Theres a massive difference between a purpose-built rally car that costs upwards of £500k to anything you can get on the street.

You'd be surprised how soft rally cars can run, mainly because they're so much lighter (the Group A Impreza you put a video up of weighed in at around 1050kg I seem to remember despite tens of meters of roll-cage and safety gear to weigh it down; a road-going WRX at the time was nearer 1200kg) so don't need to run as stiff to get the cornering capabilities they're after - it's the same principle as the Lotus Elise, which has a fantastic ride because it's light enough not to require mega-stiff suspension to make it handle.

So those setups aren't necessarily stiffer - and certainly not up to circuit standards. They're just very well set up, and often tens of thousands of dollars will have gone into making sure they work a certain way on a certain surface.

And apparently you're right about the common sense thing, because you aren't getting it - for a given wheel and tyre combination and an equal rolling radius, your ride will improve with a smaller rim diameter and taller tyre. I'm not talking about spending thousands on coilovers because I know that with a bit of tweaking you'd be able to get some good results, but I never mentioned setting up the whole car in my post.

I am simply talking about wheels and tyres. That's it.

And on that road-going Legacy, you'd be far better off batting down a country road on the standard wheels it was on rather than anything bigger, unless you're prepared to spend thousands setting it up.

Is my point clear now?
 
I wonder if we can cite this:

RenaultMeganeR26.R_04.jpg


Which has arguably fantastic handling... and thanks to its light weight, can actually use suspension that is much softer than the standard car... and does so.

I wonder if we can cite this:

RenaultMeganeR26.R_04.jpg


Which has arguably fantastic handling... and thanks to its light weight, can actually use suspension that is much softer than the standard car... and does so.

They're actually Mazdaspeed MS02's, and were available through the Mazdaspeed catalog in the early 90s. Extremely rare, they weren't exactly a popular item due to how weird they look.

P1010038.jpg

Gosh-darn-wow. To E-Bay I go. :lol:
 
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