Hyundai Genesis Coupe 3.8 specs

@ Viking : Yeah. Some of the Ford had a disability. And some of them is very annoying.

Yep, the most important modification necessary with the Mustang GT 5.0 is to replace the head rests. Currently, I have both turned backwards. It looks silly, and gives no neck support. However, I can't drive it and no one would ride in it with the head rests in their original position. Bad design from Ford. It will cost roughly $250 to fix this Mustang flaw.

@Super8 thanks for the advice. I have used Bridgestone Potenza tires before, and they were good. My Jaguar wears Potenzas. So far I like the Pirelli PZero tires a lot. Very good predictable grip on dry pavement, so so in cool rain. Very good wear characteristics, almost 20k miles and still lots of tread left. Hopefully they last a long time yet, since money is still tight.

@ Viking : You should give a Bridgestone Potenza to your Mustang for better ride. I keep my monster that i told you before in the garage because i got a little problem with my suspension. In case of that, i borrow a my father 190E Evo II to go to school.

Yeah, I don't feel a need to modify my Mustang either. Except, I will soon replace the head rests with aftermarket adjustable ones.

No joke.. if I didnt need a 4 door I'd still have a vette. If I drive my CTSV carefully keeping it in the highest possible gear I can get pretty damn good mileage out of it but nothing like the vette.

I gave up on doing drastic car mods. Seems like throwing money away and more problems than its worth. I've thrashed 4 cars with mods.. had enough. Now days you can buy a factory car that should keep you happy. Thought about doing a pulley swap when the "new" feeling goes away with the CTS but thus far its got plenty of power to keep me happy.

monkeypop yeah, the C5 Corvette had a nice ride, and fine fuel economy. I probably shouldn't have sold it. I didn't have the Z51 suspension, so it seemed too soft for competition, but the Neon was too old/worn out by 2003, so my second Corvette went into Solo II events until I retired from competition after 2005. Perhaps foolishly, I sold the Neon in 2005 (it had 219k miles), and sold the C5 Vette in early 2007.

Viking

Ahh, yeah I imagine having more rubber on them and factory size tires would curb the wear issues and tramlining/walking. I was running 18X8.5 wheels with low profile tires.

The wider wheels with low profile tires helped quite a bit with torque steer.

My C5 rode better than my 4th gen Maxima but the Maxima had modified suspension. Take away the beefy stock tires and soft suspension and ride quality goes down hill quick.

The Neon ACR was very harsh riding because of the factory race shocks, so I purchased a Corvette convertible for street use. No one wanted to ride in the Neon more than once, so I used it for personal commuting, and brought out the Vette if I had a passenger.

@monkeypop yeah, I ran my ACR on the street. I found it amusing that two of my competitors Barry Brown and Wally Swift always trailered their Neons, but then they also competed in Road Racing. I actually watched Barry on TV a few times, back when SCCA got more coverage. I believe I had close to 2 degrees negative camber up front. SCCA rules meant stock size wheels which was 14X6 for the Neon ACR. My street tires were 195/60 HR 14s, but for competition I used 225/50-14 for the front, and 205/55-14 rear B.F. Goodrich Comp T/A R1 shaved road racing tires (DOT legal). Probably because the street tires were not low profile, I didn't have any wear problems. The Neon was a bit darty, probably because I used a little toe out in the front for quicker response, but otherwise handled fine on the street.

@Viking

I had set negative camber on my FWD but I had problems with tramlining and the expected inside edge tire wear. The tramlining was actually worse and far less predictable than the torque steer. Man that thing would walk all over the place on uneven pavement.

Did you drive your ACR on the street? I'd leave the negative camber to a track only car.. but I guess if you dont have problems with it during daily driving then its fine.

Sure, original Mini sucked back in the days (1964-67) /sarcasm

This discussion goes to nowhere. It's like arguing which style of swimming is better: butterfly or with fins.

FWD is good for underpowered cars, period. Viking explained why on prev page.

From my personal experience, RWD/AWD sucks balls on underpowered cars. Try to argue with that.

@Woody

Well, I am pretty reasonable. I've driven several very good FWD cars. That being said I come to a very different conclusion than you do. Maybe 1 or two of the absolute best FWD cars can hang with or in same cases even tie a base model cayman but that does not mean its a "tie".

To me FWD still sucks. If you buy one of the best FWD cars on the market and give it more power then the flaws of FWD will rear their ugly heads. I wouldnt consider that a tie.

If we are purely talking FWD vs other layouts then its obvious that FWD sucks by comparison.

Of course my Neon ACR had no torque steer, and could put down its 150 horsepower pretty well. It only had 133 bhp/tonne, and thus supports the theory nicely. There were two competitors in my class with RWD Nissan 240SXs, they were not competitive with the Neon ACRs. As expected the faster classes in SCCA Solo II are dominated by RWD.

Good discussion. FWD versus RWD is only competitive with lower power/weight ratio performance cars. Looking at lap times it appears the FWD cars are able to compete up to about 190 bhp/tonne, above that they cannot put down enough of their power to be competitive. Very different handling is necessary to make a FWD car competitive. For example I set up my Neon ACR race car with larger tires on the front with lots of negative camber to compensate for camber change with body roll. It was tail happy until the tires warmed up. Once the tires warmed (after the first lap), the Neon would oversteer (moderately) on corner entry, allowing for less steering to hit the apex. This made the steering input less, and gave okay exit speed even with the power understeer.

@monkeypop: you seem somewhat reasonable as opposed to some here. I never claimed nor suggested that FWD was so great let alone superior. I refuted the caims by some of the people here claiming FWD sucks and is only good for economy. The best FWD hatchbacks are good enough to lose little to even an extremly good handling mid engined rwd track tuned Cayman R on the Nordsleife even though they have inferior power to weight... there can be no other conclusion than that it can't posibly suck and must win/tie on handling...
People that haven't driven the best FWD that claim fwd sucks by definition are simply biggots. Even facts don't matter, they will stick by their prejudice. Fine, but its not a sign of intelligence to do so.
p.s. as stated before i personally own a fun RWD, because i enjoy "clowning around" with that car purely because i enjoy driving. I did drive the best fwd and a couple of well respected rwd. Sometimes fwd can be great, but most fwd cars are not, but there are tons of crap handling rwd's too... fwd or rwd doesn't make a great/crap car... the whole package does.

renault do the fwd pretty damn good, but i agree, fwd has nothing on rwd.

Pretty sure I said fwd is often overshadowed by rwd cars where fwd cars should dominate (like entry class wtcc). Didn't say always or even 9 out of 10. Yeah, I didn't...

Funny thing is, the fwd cars rarely take the top three spots in most of the entry level or low power racing series' like WTCC. You never see them in the higher class or more extreme class categores because they would get destroyed. Let me know what there's even a GT3 class fwd car...

If FWD was so great then there would be purpose built super cars with FWD. The only examples you can mention are economy cars that have been tricked out because FWD is whats used on economy cars.

My god, I never thought I'd see so much bias towards FWD.

Apathy is right.. FWD doesnt dominate anything. Saying some B.S about it being faster around some curve doesnt make it good.

FWD sucks.. now move on and stop trying to justify your original post by bringing up single instances in which a FWD lost but was faster around a single corner.

@Apathy
Americans are so americans. Check history of ETCC and WTCC

@Apathy
Maybe you should check WTCC in the last 4 years. BMW is having a lot of problems beating FWD Seat Leon or Chevrolet Cruze

FWD doesn't dominate a single category of motorsport out there.
Even in classes where it should dominate, FWD cars are often overshawdowed by BMW, Mazda, and other low powered class cars.

FWD has no place on the track.
It should be limited to its original purpose, serving as a means of good fuel economy, spacial limitations, and such.

W0o0dy, I'm sorry you made the terrible mistake of buying a fwd car.

FWD or RWD is mostly a choice based on packaging issues, not technical superiority.

When it comes to low hp I agree. FF vs FR is a different argument than FWD vs RWD though. MR has all the benefits of FF without the drawbacks, but it's usually easier to just put all the drivetrain stuff by itself up front. That is always going to cost you in moment of inertia and loading your front tires with nearly all the work though.

That Citroen example sounds odd given that the track would need to be pretty small for it to take the highest cornering speed, and that I'd think the mechanical grip on it would be low compared to everything, not because of drivetrain by just because the car doesn't seem all that sporty (I don't know much about Citroens). Not saying that it's not true, but I could imagine that things just happened to work in the Citroen's favor in that particular test.

@E: FWD or RWD is mostly a choice based on packaging issues, not technical superiority.
With a high-tech torque-vectoring differential, a FWD-car can be every bit as fast as an equal hp/tonne rwd car, since its lighter and easier to control at the limit.
Car magazine did a test with the best drivers car from different classes at a track in the UK a number of years back. A tiny Citroen Saxo VTS went up against serious sportscars (including a Lambo) and of course had no chance in getting the fastest laptime.. but the tiny thing scored the highest cornering speed in the highest speed corner of the track... That's confidence in the package for you..

@Apathy: > The only thing that fwd does better is fuel economy.

Seriously, if you're just going to re-state your prejudiced general vagueness than just stay out of the discussion all together.
FWD is cheaper, more fuel efficient more space efficiënt and easier to control in the wet, esp for non-expert drivers.
Also RWD is almost unsuitable for a small(er) car due to the transmission-tunnel, the rear differential and most rwd run a longitudinal engine (no space for that in a small car).

I think you're just right on that Viking. On lower, sub 200 bhp/ton FWD is usually faster than RWD, but any higher and FWD becomes useless.

It is always inferior. Always. What might happen is that front engine rear wheel driver may lose to front engine front wheel drive due to efficiency, but if you could magically drive your wheels with no weight or losses, rear is always better for pavement driving.

One thing I don't see mentioned here is Value for Money. I'm too lazy too look it up but I believe there are many much cheaper FWDs as fast as, even faster than, an RWD/AWD, and cheaper to run too. And for many non billionaires(including me) who has very limited budget, nothing beats value for money.

LMAO @ Tension

Thats exactly how FWD understeer makes me feel.. disgusting.

I spent big bucks on a FWD and had some good times in it but there is nothing quite as repulsive as feeling the front tires slide while your in a corner and the car starts going strait.

fwd is, in absence of better word, disguisting. makes me sick.