Quote:
Originally Posted by bruce.augenstein@comcast.
I was really referring to the how willing the car is to turn in and negotiate a corner at not more than eight tenths. Take a Cayman out on your favorite set of twisties, and compare it to your M3. Because of weight and polar moments, the Cayman will feel more willing to telepathically negotiate the twisty bits, although if you were flat out (as on a track), it wouldn't be any quicker, and in fact would be trickier as you explored the "How are you going to know where the edge is, if you don't step over it from time to time?" regions.
Perhaps "tossable" is a poor word to describe a characteristic when rolling at eight-tenths on the street. "Willing" or perhaps "eager" might be better terms.
Bruce
|
Though I would generally agree with you that almost all mid-engined cars are trickier at the limit the Cayman is probably as easy as the M3 to drive extremely quickly and is probably just as forgiving when you do over step the mark. A perfect example of this is wet track times, SportAuto wet handling test 1:29.1(Cayman S) vs 1:32.4 (M3) and Autocar Wet Handling Track 1:12.10 (Cayman S) vs 1:16.9 (M3), though this also highlights the added traction of the mid-engined chassis it also highlights how easy the Cayman is to control with limited grip.
Willingness is probably the better word to describe what you are trying to convey, i.e. the willingness of the nose to instantly reaction to your steering input. Though this is in part the reduced weight it has over the likes of the M3 it's as much to do with the suspension setup that the engineers want the car to behave like. It's like understeer/oversteer, any chassis can be setup to behave to one or other of these behaviours but it's safer to have it understeer on approaching the limit as most react by lifting throttle or braking which tightens the line, if the same thing is done while oversteering the react could be very different and with a possible disastrous outcome.