I always thought that handling was judged by slalom and skidpad. But when I quoted car and driver as saying that the mustange cobra R out handles the porsche GT2 and provided the slalom speeds and lateral G for each showing that the cobra has higher numbers in both, Stevtec said that because the GT2 beats the cobra R around a track in germany, that it handles better.

I had thought that a better track time for the GT2 might be a result of it's superior acceleration. I had thought that acceleration, and braking would have to be the same for you to judge handling by track times.

Cobra
http://www.fast-autos.net/ford/cobrarinfo.html

Porsche
http://www.fast-autos.net/porsche/gt2info.html


So which handles better, the cobra because of the higher skidpad, and lateral G numbers, or the porsche because it's faster around the track.

 

That isn't exactly what I was saying, and there's much more to it than that.

For anyone that's interested, just read the last few pages of the thread below to see where the debate is coming from.

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....hreadid=108670

 

Street:
Anybody who thinks that one or two specifically-defined tests can provide anything more than a crude approximation of where a car falls within the entire spectrum of automotive performance is incredibly naive. But let's try anyway . . .

Let's look at the skidpad. IIRC, a common radius is 100'.

(Q) What happens if you take two cars with identical magazine 100' radius test results and run them on a 50' radius circle, where the greater steering lock required introduces different amounts of geometric change in different suspension arrangements?

(A) They won't necessarily generate identical lateral g's. And increasing the radius (say, to 150') will not be predictable from either or both of the 50' and 100' tests.

(Rhetorical Q's) Which scenario best describes the universe of steady-state cornering conditions? What region on this planet has only 100' radius paved, flat corners?

Now for the slalom. Again, it a single test of fixed geometry (100' cone spacing comes to mind, though I seem to recall seeing some 60' tests).

(Q1) Same question as above. Identical magazine slalom results.

(A1) Same answer as above. Not necessarily identical any longer.

(Q2) What happens when the slalom spacing isn't uniform?

(A2) Slaloms of increasing or decreasing cone spacing introduce the concept of adding or dropping different amounts of throttle while negotiating the course (yes, I do mean the change in throttle to itself be a variable quantity; think calculus if you're mathematically inclined). The dynamics of combined unsteady lateral and longitudinal accelerations is, well, let's just say that it isn't linear nor will the overall response be the same for two different cars.

(Rhetorical Q) We are talking about two significantly different cars, right?

"Handling" is a subjective thing. True, it's generally consistent with high marks in the above two tests, the operative word being "generally". Please stop trying to define it with an objective number, as it's a waste of your time. At best, you're trying to define a 3-D surface map of unknown curvatures from two data points (no can do). Any attempt to do so is about as meaningful as saying that you can completely define the route from Boston to Washington DC merely by saying that it passes through NYC.

Norm

20AE 5-speed
’79 Malibu (too unstock for SCCA Street Mod)