Quote:
Originally Posted by swamp2
I think it is very fair to say that.
Building a medium production volume car that has to make profit and be competitive in the market is vastly different than building any sort of race car. Sure Toyota can build a car much like the IS-F that will smoke the M3 around the ring but can they do it with the level of comfort, safety and amenities that are in the current car? Clearly they can not. Most cars and most big engineering and design challenges are a series of carefully executed COMPROMISES, the M3 and IS-F are no different. The maturity of a process in dealing with a particular set of comprimises is indeed a process itself that takes a lot of time. Even understanding all of the compromises takes time and then to deliver success across a very broad range of criteria takes even more. Heck, even putting your team together and overcoming organizational challenges such as mangement structure, politics, team culture, etc. take significant time.
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Pretty much agree everywhere, but I'd like to add that an overriding "compromise", is that the car must feel and drive like a Lexus. They didn't build this car necessarily as an M3 fighter, but as a response to a burgeoning performance marketplace which saw them beginning to lose a few of the faithful to those crazy Germans, and others. Even then, in a story much like many others in the automobile business, the IS-F began as a project by a splinter group within the company, looking to address both the so-far minor problem of lost sales and an actual potential market opportunity.
But, a major and obvious goal of such a project would be that the car would need to appeal to the faithful first of all, and
then you would be considering a potential attack for market share against other vendors.
Appealing to the faithful means it must drive like a Lexus, so all those factors that the engineering types have reduced to specific numbers must be present - meaning obvious things such as steering feel, brake feel, turn-in, relationship between shock valving and spring rates, and literally dozens of other items must all be present. It's OK that the car feel as if it's the sharpest feeling Lexus ever built, but it's not as if the Lexus faithful are BMW wannabees. They actually expect and like handling characteristics that would be largely unappealing to the BMW faithful, and just laughed at by Lotus guys. So, first rule: Don't forget what got you here, and don't alienate the faithful.
I'm reminded of a time when I mistakenly thought I had matured, automotively speaking, and bought a new '82 Buick mumble-whatever very large V8 four-door sedan. It didn't take me long to realize that I had had a major judgement lapse (although the car was great for family trips), so I took The Big Hit on trade-in for something else.
Flash forward a bit, and the car rental guys at Boston airport take pity on the bedraggled way-late traveller, and give him the keys to another large four-door Buick (instead of the bottom-feeder my company normally authorized) to take home. It isn't long before I realize that this front wheel drive, transverse V6 drives
exactly like my '82 did. Same sloppy turn-in. Same all-ahead-two-thirds-right-full-rudder feel at the helm, same way-flaccid shocks over bumps. In fact, same
everything.
I think, "Boy what a wasted opportunity", but upon reflection it occurs to me that it would be a minor miracle if such massively different cars could drive exactly alike - assuming it was just a coincidence, of course.
Then it hit me; They
meant to do this! Buick buyers expect certain characteristics in their cars, so, first rule of marketing - don't piss off the faithful.
So Swamp, with everything you've said, plus the above background, it's a wonder the IS-F can compete as well as it does in the M venue. Gotta say hat's off to the Toyota guys.
Bruce