PH Blog: known unknowns
Why car hacks have it wrong about ride comfort
Hanging out with Mike Cross recently was a perfect opportunity to address some of these nagging questions that loom like Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns. Like, why is it cars with passive dampers seem to feel more natural than those with multi-setting adaptive ones? Talk to the marketing guys like BMW's Ian Robertson and they'll tell you these gizmos can give you a car that can both nail perfect 'ring laps and waft like a Roller when you're around town. Which is why cars like the M5 and M6 have a million different settings for dampers, throttle and even steering weight. And yet, in my experience, I've rarely encountered an adaptive system for steering or damping I'd choose over a well-judged passive set-up. So, am I just a Luddite?
In terms of suspension, perhaps not. "A passive damper probably always responds in a way that's consistent," says Mike Cross, "and I think probably what you need to do with an adaptive damper is make it feel as if the car is a little more controlled but try and do it in a seamless way so that the driver is not aware of the system working. If it's obviously doing something, in a way, we've failed."
And yet the bloke who's just spent a few hundred quid on the optional adjustable dampers still wants to feel something when he pushes that 'sport' button, right? A polite smile in response says a lot. And takes me back to a comment from Richard Attwood on a Porsche launch. As we headed out onto the track my reflex was to hit the Sport button on the PASM. "Don't bother," he growled. "It works better in the standard mode."
What of Chris Harris and his Jag XF's dampers taking time to 'warm up' on cold days? Cross says he'd be surprised if the ambient temperatures - even in the Welsh borders - would be sufficient for that to be a factor. Harris begs to differ. I'll leave them to have that chat anon.
And consider instead the simplistic notion often bandied about that a stiffer suspension set-up automatically equates to a 'sportier' one. That's our - as in motoring hacks - fault. "Comfort and refinement is really important to customers; it's sometimes less so with you guys," says Mike, going on to explain how a 'softer' car can often be the faster car on your typical bumpy British B-road.
As ever it comes down to tuning and calibration and making sure everything is working in harmony. Which is apparently how Renaultsport can get away with ostensibly fierce spring rates on cars like our PH Fleet Megane, the Cup chassis we've opted for running springs 38 per cent stiffer than even the regular 265's. Mike points out that the ride frequency won't have changed by as significant a figure and says we can tolerate significant and rapid vertical movement so long as pitch and roll are well contained. Which translates as that 'four-square' sensation of all corners of the car working together in unison that feels so satisfying. "They seem like very well sorted cars," he says, with particular praise for an Megane R26.R he had a go with. "They've clearly gone to a lot of trouble matching the damping to the spring rates."
The only thing this really proves is that perpetuating the myth that soft can't be sporty and stiff can't be comfy is over-simplifying a complicated engineering problem. Something that perhaps needs articulating more clearly.
Dan
If I'm honest I have a mental image of Audi's marketing man beating the engineers with a large stick shouting 'NO Make it more uncomfortable ve need more sportiness you fools. I vant to feel EVERY motorway expansion joint'
If I'm honest I have a mental image of Audi's marketing man beating the engineers with a large stick shouting 'NO Make it more uncomfortable ve need more sportiness you fools. I vant to feel EVERY motorway expansion joint'
Not too far from the truth I bet.
As an aside, what happened to those performance cars of the past that had "magic carpet" rides and still handled nicely. Thinking of e.g. the XK8, GTi-6, Elise S1... Nowadays the closest you get is Lotus, and even there the quicker stuff is often pretty stiff (111R, I'm looking at you).
If I'm honest I have a mental image of Audi's marketing man beating the engineers with a large stick shouting 'NO Make it more uncomfortable ve need more sportiness you fools. I vant to feel EVERY motorway expansion joint'
Early afternoon rants, must be a good day.
I wish car come with more adjustable height/rebound/et. that would be execellent.
Early afternoon rants, must be a good day.
I bought a suspension set-up (springs / adjustable dampers) for my VX220 that have well matched springs to dampers, and the damper valving changed to suit the car, and although they use significantly stiffer springs than the standard suspension, the car is better controlled, but is really no more harsh than the standard car on an average road. In fact, it actually 'glosses over' certain road surfaces where you would look ahead and wait for the clunk or vibrations.. So it can be done, its just quite expensive and needs to specific to the car.
Early afternoon rants, must be a good day.
It's been the case on bikes for a long time.
No what they need to do is
1) Forget all these fancy pants 100 way adjustable systems which quite often break in a very expensive manner anyway and get back to a decent passive system, set up by a good engineer whose job it is to do this properly.
2) Make it work in a wide range of conditions, not just to be half a second quicker round a racetrack than it's rivals\competitors. In fact I'd prefer it if most cars never went anywhere near the ring\racetrack unless it's a dedicated track car.
3) Ignore any and all pointers\suggestions from the marketing department while you are at it.
4) Alternatively just get Lotus in to do it for you.
Oh and I agree with Mike Cross, motoring journo's are massively to blame for the current obsession with track times and too stiffly sprung suspension. Reading about how great it was that they were able to fling the latest M-Sport\AMG\S line round a track is obviously great fun but a journo's job should be about more than that. They are often in the enviable position (for most petrolheads anyway) of having the chance to drive many cars and indeed influence manufacturers on what is and isn't considered good\bad\important on a car so I wish they would use that power in a more responsible way sometimes.
Anyway hat's off to Mr Trent for championing the cause to bring back decent ride quality. Perhaps if we bang this drum long and loud enough, SOMEONE in the motoring industry will actually listen.
I wish car come with more adjustable height/rebound/et. that would be execellent.
Last year I swapped a Granturismo S for the facelift Granturismo Sport. There are various (mainly modest) changes ("improvements" I believe the manufacturer likes to call them). The most significant change in terms of the car as a driving proposition is to the suspension. The old car tended to float a bit, which is clearly not great from a handling perspective, but that wasn't necessarily equating to a good ride either. The new car is definitely stiffer, and the handling has been improved markedly - yet, if anything, the ride quality has improved too.
The cynics out there will say that this suggests the original car's suspension wasn't very good - and they would have a point. But that doesn't detract from the fact that this time around the engineers have managed to improve both ride and handling. I can see that there must be a point where there has to be some trade off between the two, but I suspect that occurs at a point outside the realistic requirements of 99.9% of us (i.e. there is a lot of bullst out there about how a car handles that has more to do with image than the requirements or talents of the driver..)
[p.s. I also concede that there are a fair number of PHers (Harris included) who really do recognise, and benefit from, a car that handles well at the edge of the performance envelope - but I imagine that there are many more who think they are in that category than who actually are in it]
[p.p.s. I don't consider myself as in the category!]
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