Quote:

Are you guys getting the 84 Vette over there??? The new Z06 is going head to head with Ferraris in publications here, with instrumented tests, and is in the same leage (not to mention the 1/3 cost). You can drive the thing in the winter and people can actually afford to race the things.

Kind of reminds me of how the Lotus Eclipse was legendary for being the best handleing car in the world. Until some magazines actually started hooking instrumentation upto it and found this wasn't the case at all.

Don't get handling and grip confused this is one of the reasons that the vette over here stinks and in the USA it rules.

American magazines with an obsession with figures straps a G-meter to a car and then goes round and round in circles on beautifully flat smooth piece of tarmac till it unsticks. This then gives them their G reading. The car might be understeering like a pig but it might still give a high reading.

In europe they get a car and throw it down a road and from there asses its handling.

Now in the EVO test that was mentioned earlier a small front wheel drive hatch beat a load of established supercars not because it gets better figures but because it drives better and is more fun.

Handling is not something that can be measured and quantized it can only be felt. its not how much G a car can produce its how the car feedback whether the steering lets you know what is happening, how it reacts to inputs, what happens when you lit off can it slide and is it predictable.

My caterham is brilliant in this aspect it gives huge amounts of feedback and it is completely adjustable. You want to go through a corner with understeer it will do that, you want neutral it will do that, you want to go completely sideways it will do that too. By adjustable i mean not that you can change the suspension settings but by playing with weight transfer you can adjust the attitude of the car in corners. You trail brake into a corner and you can drift the car sideways through an entire bend. I don't do this on the road as you would be going just too damn fast.

America car industry is learning about ride and handling and are starting to bring cars over to europe to get them set-up. While the uk might not have a car industry to talk of in the same way as USA does. The uk does however still live on the cutting edge of automotive technology a large amount of cars are developed in the UK.

Also don't forget the good old indy car circuit, just how many of those cars are built in the UK?