RE: 2015 Honda Civic Type R: the engineers talk
Discussion
Kong said:
I think you have been listening too much to James May. Having driven the 'ring many times I don't see a problem, it's not that smooth or straight - you couldn't take a standard F1 car around it for example. Seems a perfectly good place to test the limits of a performance road car.
As true as that may be, the best place to optimise a road car for UK A and B roads (which are accessible to all of us who enjoy driving) would be the UK roads. As much as 'ring times grab headlines, and help in pub bragging the fact that a Focus ST or Golf GTI is a more common sight than the Megane RS that goes round the ring quickly tells me that the majority of the market for hot hatches don't care about the fastest lap time.
Kong said:
kambites said:
Kong said:
Well the fastest road-legal car around the ring is the Radical SR8, so by your logic that would a boring car to drive..
Where did I use the word "boring"? kambites said:
Kong said:
kambites said:
Kong said:
Well the fastest road-legal car around the ring is the Radical SR8, so by your logic that would a boring car to drive..
Where did I use the word "boring"? 
Kong said:
I'm not talking about crashing cars I'm talking about driving them
What's that got to do with whether "boring" is the opposite of "fun"?I've driven plenty of cars which are neither boring nor fun. I think this will end up being another one if they tune it for the best ring time they can get.
Kong said:
Well the fastest road-legal car around the ring is the Radical SR8, so by your logic that would a boring car to drive..
Day to day on broken, greasy, mud covered and moron strewn roads it would be annoying before it reached the point of boring. On the right road or circuit it would be amazing, but it isn't my idea of a fun road car.
If the UK is the main market, I can save them an absolute shedload of cash right now and get them to concentrate their R&D on getting the best time on the Top Gear track which is what most people "know".
In my view, though hardened "enthusiasts" may know the 'Ring time, most know it is a total irrelevance and they don't base their buying decision on it but rather what deal they can get. Cutting down the costs and passing it on in the selling price is far more important than an arbitrary 'Ring time.
I wasn't really aware of the Megane 'Ring time and now I know, it still makes no difference as I don't like the styling and there's an end of it. I doubt the Focus ST/RS sales will suffer for not having the best 'Ring time.
In my view, though hardened "enthusiasts" may know the 'Ring time, most know it is a total irrelevance and they don't base their buying decision on it but rather what deal they can get. Cutting down the costs and passing it on in the selling price is far more important than an arbitrary 'Ring time.
I wasn't really aware of the Megane 'Ring time and now I know, it still makes no difference as I don't like the styling and there's an end of it. I doubt the Focus ST/RS sales will suffer for not having the best 'Ring time.
kambites said:
Kong said:
I'm not talking about crashing cars I'm talking about driving them
What's that got to do with whether "boring" is the opposite of "fun"?I've driven plenty of cars which are neither boring nor fun. I think this will end up being another one.
Unfortunately I don't think Honda are going to be bring out a classic Elan for you any time soon. I like going fast, a 300bhp civic is the sort of car I would like (I would also like a classic Elan), obviously Honda think there are enough people who think like me (and have more money than me) to build and sell it.
doogz said:
kambites said:
Because by the sounds of it they're sticking with what it known to be a rubbish rear suspension configuration?
It worked alright on the Golf, 205, 309, 106, 306, 911, 924, 944 and 968, which are pretty much all accepted as being great cars.Seems to work on those fancy F1 cars too.
Kong said:
Lets just cut to the chase, if there was no mention of nurburgring times you would you would criticise this car. Because it has a turbo, electric streering (probably), servoed brakes, wheels are too big, DSG style box, doesn't run on carbs etc etc etc etc.
Unfortunately I don't think Honda are going to be bring out a classic Elan for you any time soon. I like going fast, a 300bhp civic is the sort of car I would like (I would also like a classic Elan), obviously Honda think there are enough people who think like me (and have more money than me) to build and sell it.
I don't like any modern hot hatches but I appreciate that they are very good at what other people buy them to do. They never had a chance of producing a good car by my metrics; but I do not believe, from the interview referenced above, that Honda are setting out on a path that will produce a good car by anyone's metric. Unfortunately I don't think Honda are going to be bring out a classic Elan for you any time soon. I like going fast, a 300bhp civic is the sort of car I would like (I would also like a classic Elan), obviously Honda think there are enough people who think like me (and have more money than me) to build and sell it.
I hope I'm wrong, I certainly have no wish to see the car fail.
doogz said:
The 205 and 106 GTis are widely regarded as 2 of the best handling FWD cars ever built. Whilst ride comfort is important, it's possibly not the number one priority for the suspension team when designing the Type R version. It's probably down the list, after handling performance, cost, and weight.
The bit I'm questioning is the "handling" bit. A car cannot handle well on a given road without riding well on that given road, in my experience. Older hot hatches were so much fun because they were actually set up quite soft; this will not be if their primary aim is chasing 'ring times (and probably wouldn't be anyway, to be honest).
It wasn't so much the specific type of suspension that I was commenting on anyway. It was the fact that when asked, the engineer said they were keeping this particular design because it doesn't matter on the 'ring. That is, IMO, not the way to go about designing a road car.
Edited by kambites on Tuesday 11th December 11:45
doogz said:
And handling and ride are 2 very different things. I think you know that though. I've driven a few race cars, and you wouldn't say they rode particularly well, but they certainly handled well. And yes, I've driven a couple of these race cars on the road.
Of course they aren't the same thing, but they are closely related. I've driven a few racing cars both on the road and on the track and they've handled well where the road/track is smooth enough that they ride well, and poorly when it isn't. Most of the really poor handling modern "sporty" cars that I've driven, a large part of their poor handling came from the fact that they were simply too stiffly sprung. I'd say the best decade for cars was the 90's, before that manufacturers didn't really know or care enough about a cars dynamics so what we ended up with was very comfortable but wallowy boats, in the 90's with the ever increasing popularity of motorsport they started to apply some of the that knowledge to cars to make then handle better but they still kept the compliance that made them good on the road. Then about 10 years ago, for some reason manufacturers became obsessed with lap times and to be honest I think the motoring media had a massive part to play in this with their constant track comparisons which made for exciting reading but has pretty much zero real world relevance. This was fun for a while but it has now gotten to a point where manufacturers feel that any car with slightly sporting pretensions HAS to put in a decent laptime and feel like it's running on concrete tyres for it to be taken seriously as a proper "sports car".
So we seem to have arrived at a strange dichotomy where these cars become neither beast nor foul. On the one hand engines are being dummed down, made more accessible and easier to drive with huge dollops of torque at low revs so people don't have to work too hard, we get automatic gearboxes, a million acronyms for safety systems, 25 airbags and bigger heavier cars all in the name of making a car easier, safer and more user friendly and then all of a sudden manufacturers decide actually we are going to forget all that and make this car rock hard so that it can go really fast round some arbitrary piece of tarmac.
So we seem to have arrived at a strange dichotomy where these cars become neither beast nor foul. On the one hand engines are being dummed down, made more accessible and easier to drive with huge dollops of torque at low revs so people don't have to work too hard, we get automatic gearboxes, a million acronyms for safety systems, 25 airbags and bigger heavier cars all in the name of making a car easier, safer and more user friendly and then all of a sudden manufacturers decide actually we are going to forget all that and make this car rock hard so that it can go really fast round some arbitrary piece of tarmac.
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