http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/the ... rison-test
Very interesting history lesson. After all the Fiero nostalgia, it sucked in this competition. Also interestingly, the Z-28 beat the Corvette, and everyone else.
I like that.
Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
That is interesting. Maybe not that surprising. On the Fiero, like the Corvair, I think it was best at the end after it underwent some adjustments.
On the Corvette, that is also interesting, because it wasn't much later where the Corvette was light years ahead of the F-body. But this was the 80s. Everyone was coming out of a funk.
On the Corvette, that is also interesting, because it wasn't much later where the Corvette was light years ahead of the F-body. But this was the 80s. Everyone was coming out of a funk.
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
We need a modern article like this. They had a bumpy skidpad!!
Rough-road adhesion is important because real-world pavement is rarely as smooth as a skidpad. To supplement our normal grip measurements (on a 300-foot-diameter smooth skidpad), we painted a separate circle on pavement littered with imperfections, ranging from washboard ripples to bumps large enough to launch the test cars momentarily into the air.
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
Wow. Seriously, this article is great.
They really did test all of the things that I consider "handling."Although our first four handling exercises were purely directional changes, we also wanted to test cornering while braking and while accelerating, so we marked a straight line that extended tangentially from our smooth skidpad to help quantify these critical aspects of handling. In one test, we drove toward the skidpad at a high speed and then braked and turned onto the circle. We timed from a point 100 feet before the car's path first touched the circle to a point 120 degrees around it. The outside of the desired J-turn was defined by cones (if any were hit, the run was discarded).
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
LOL. It was 1984 after all.
To examine simultaneous acceleration and cornering characteristics, we ran the cornering-and-braking course in the opposite direction. None of the cars had a problem putting power to the ground.
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
As for the results, the spec chart spells them out in full. The Corvette flat smoked 'em at Willow, racking up an 85.3-mph average lap speed, 1.5 mph clear of the second-place SVO and 7.9 mph ahead of the last-place Fiero. The Turn Five switchback produced a similar pecking order (except that the Fiero moved up two notches while the Camaro slid down one).
Z51-foibles aside, the Corvette was known for this apparently from C4 to present day (less with the C7).The track also afforded us a chance to unravel more of the mystery surrounding the Corvette and its optional Z51 suspension. Chevrolet development engineers recently admitted something we've suspected all along: that the Z51 setup offers no improvement in street behavior and that it was developed to maximize racetrack and autocross performance. Indeed, the Corvette felt more like a race car than any of the other contestants: you could make it do almost anything you wished, yet it was difficult to drive fast. Even the staff's seasoned racers agreed that the Corvette doesn't open up to you quickly; you'd probably still be stretching its limits and learning its secrets after a couple of days of racetrack lapping. Since it's a harder car to get to know, we suspect that the gap between its lap times and those of the four other cars might widen with practice.
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
The Fiero sounded pretty bad. But as is typical for GM, I am sure the later revision was much better. It would be like testing a 1983 Grand National and concluding that Grand Nationals are lame.
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
The Mustang is interesting. I assume the SVO had a different suspension calibration than the GT.
It sounds like it would have been a halfway decent 7/10ths cruiser (ironically, in the GT fashion).This hospitable interior was complemented by the Mustang's comfortable ride, probably the best in the test. As Lyons said, "It has a pleasant, velvety smoothness." The Mustang absorbed large bumps in a positively European fashion with long, supple, fluid suspension strokes, yet it suppressed small road imperfections with the compliance of a Detroit luxosedan. These suspension characteristics prevailed over a wide speed range, from in-town slow to back-road brisk.
Unfortunately, control deteriorated as we began to push the SVO to its limit. The front end started to bob over bumps, and the body and the chassis developed a disconnected feeling, as if the two were moving independently. Our Hungarian handling expert suggested in the logbook that "this car feels a bit floaty over bumps, comfortable but not tied down quite enough."
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
This is how you can tell it was the 80s:
The fast pace also pointed up substantial turbo lag, which was present even when the engine was kept in its irritatingly buzz), upper-rpm range. "Turbo lag is not a good deal," Sherman observed. "It changes your setup for a turn."
Re: Best American Handling Car (80s Retro)
LOL. C/D concluded the same as I had:
None of this detracts from the Mustang SVO as a legitimate high-performance GT car. Indeed, we were happy with the SVO when we drove it in that mode. But for those who like to explore a car's limits, or those who get their thrills from Sunday-morning canyon races, the Mustang SVO is well down from our first choice.