Re: IRS, IFS, De Dions, and a bare token Alfa content

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Tim Hancock is too hard on his case when he writes that independent suspension
must be "a system where either wheel suspension can operate entirely without
any influence from another wheel." Apart from the British Leyland and Citroen
'exceptions' he cites, any force acting upon one wheel of a vehicle will have
some influence on every part of the vehicle to which it is connected; if you
jack up any wheel it will affect the wheel diagonally opposite, unless the
chassis has the torsional rigidity of a wet noodle. But shorn of his
scrupulously stretched exception-that-proves-the-rule, his definition is one
with which most engineers, historians, and other nerds would probably agree.

In further off-digest banter with the estimable Joe E. (starting with the
different rear suspensions of the 164 and the Saab 9000) I mentioned that many
FWD cars have had De Dion front ends- the Millers of the twenties, the L-29
Cord, Ruxton, the FWD Talbot GP and sports cars, and at least in the cases of
the Millers and the Cords there were later FWD cars without the connecting De
Dion, and those later cars (but not the earlier ones) were described in their
own times as having "independent front suspensions".

In the end the semanticists tell us that words mean what the user means them
to mean, although there is still a convenience factor in the parties to a
discussion using previously established shared meanings for their words.

Cheers

John H.
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