***>IMHO there has never been a really good looking mid-engine car. No
amount of horse power or coats of paint can make up for the poor lines
of a mid-engine body.
-- Bob Donahue
Go to http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/archive/image/lists/cars/road/italy.html
and pick out the ugly car.
How do you pronounce Ferrari? Lamborghini Coutach? Maserati Bora? The
last Fiero in GT guise? The last Toyota MR2? That weird Lancia Stratos
rally car? Ford GT40? Pantera? Diamond T COE?
***>Ooohh, what about the MGF, Porsche Boxster, Lotus Elise, Lotus
Esprit,
not to mention countless Ferraris, starting with the gorgeous Dino??
-- Philip Raby
That last one was a barely a Ferrari.
http://presentpicker.com/ppp/item/item502.html
***>I thought that superior mid-engine handling is (mostly) due to near
50/50
front/rear weight distribution. And don't MGBs have nearly that?
--hdr@jump.net
Yes, and no. They started off pretty close to that. But the Rubber
Bumper cars were really crippled because they added a 100 pounds at each
end and then they raised the ride height. That really killed the
handling that even the later addition of sway bars couldn't fix.
***>In a front-engined car, the engine weight is almost directly over
the
front axle, and therefore borne almost exclusively by those two wheels.
More weight over a wheel means it will grip better.
--Matt
That must explain the neutral handling on a wheelbarrow.
Please, please don't ever make that statement again. Tires give great
handling when they are inside their performance envelop. That envelop is
defined by weight, acceleration, and slip angle (turning) All things
being equal, it is better for each tire to share the load equally and
that is with equal weight on all wheels while half of them do the
turning and the other half do the accelerating.
***>I think it has something to do with 'moment of inertia', if I
remember my
physics correctly. It's easier to turn something that has it's weight
concentrated in middle, rather than the outer edges.
--Bob Donahue
Exactly right, along with center of gravity being below the axle height.
</SOAPBOX>
--
Bob Allen, Kansas City, '69CGT, '75TR6 (Both fun to drive, neither
handle great.)
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe
is that it has never tried to contact us." -- Calvin and Hobbes (Bill
Watterson)
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