Re: FWD vs RWD

[Will Owen <nashwill912@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan said:

"Checkout this article. Very intersting and just makes me want to stick
to my RWD Alfas

"http://slate.msn.com/id/2081194/...";

Aha - another professional pundit discovers automotive engineering. One
hardly knows whether to laugh, cry or cringe; whether one agrees with
his conclusions or not, they have that embarrassing quality of a
newly-deflowered person's pontifications on sex. So sweet, so earnest,
so painfully wrong...

A good-handling FWD car is always preferable to a bad-handling RWD car,
and a good-handling RWD car etcetera etcetera. A good driver in a
lousy-handling car can whip the socks off a lousy driver in a
great-handling car, no matter where the engine is or what wheels it's
driving. As for Kaus's explanation of brake-induced oversteer, no,
that's not the only way to do it - the handier FWD cars of my
acquaintance need only a momentary lift just before the apex, an effect
which can be increased or diminished by monkeying with things like tire
choice and inflation pressure. And so forth and so on - we'd need an
essay as long-winded as Mickey's to straighten him up on everything. 

Having said all that, and acknowledging (though without having confirmed
for myself) that FWD Alfas are reputed to be remarkably free from the
somewhat stodgy initial understeer that haunts most FWD chassis, it's
still true that good-handling front-engined RWD cars are generally the
most fun, just because there are so many more ways to drive them
quickly. Your typical Alfa can slice-and-dice a road with unruffled
precision, making great time while neither frightening the passenger(s)
or annoying other traffic, or it can play the tire-smoking hooligan with
utter ease. The excellent balance of our Milano gives me a great range
of over- or understeer pretty much at will. It also means that those
characteristics are consistent no matter what surface I'm driving on,
which is not true of FWD cars, nor of rear-engined ones.

Will Owen
--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided