Hot Hatches or RWD Saloon?

[anonymous-user]

SidewaysSi said:

The BMW is a fun car but not as obviously exciting as a proper hardcore hatch. My E36 328 for instance is just nowhere near as exciting as my old Honda Integra R was.

I love a good FWD french hatch - 205, R26R, Clio Trophy etc.

The DC2 is great but so is the 130. LSD and some suspension snd they are every bit as exciting. The std M/Sport suspension is quite frankly, poor. Great chassis underneath and a hugely enjoyable engine.

[SidewaysSi]

yonex said:

SidewaysSi said:

The BMW is a fun car but not as obviously exciting as a proper hardcore hatch. My E36 328 for instance is just nowhere near as exciting as my old Honda Integra R was.

I love a good FWD french hatch - 205, R26R, Clio Trophy etc.

The DC2 is great but so is the 130. LSD and some suspension snd they are every bit as exciting. The std M/Sport suspension is quite frankly, poor. Great chassis underneath and a hugely enjoyable engine.

I have no doubt they are great cars once 'uncorked' but the best hot hatches are great out of the box. I do think the weight penalty you get with a BMW over a light hatch will naturally harm it

[anonymous-user]

SidewaysSi said:

I have no doubt they are great cars once 'uncorked' but the best hot hatches are great out of the box. I do think the weight penalty you get with a BMW over a light hatch will naturally harm it

Maybe, but with every generation of hot hatch the steering feel has gone to hell. £3K isn't way out the park and let's face it, if you buy a Trophy the dampers will need a refresh

Besides the N52 is marvellous, different league to a buzzy 4 pot. If BMW didn't have to protect the M brand the 130 would have been awesome. As it is, just takes a little upgrade

[blearyeyedboy]

otolith said:

blearyeyedboy said:

I think the RX8 was a really good idea, hampered by using the wrong engine for these CO2 conscious times. (I'm not saying the rotary engine isn't any good, just that it was commercial suicide when CO2 emissions became important.)

They did sell an awful lot of them for all that, far more than Nissan sold of the 350/370Z for example.

Yes, but that fell off a cliff once the top CO2 tax rates became applicable across Europe. Sales evaporated quicker than you could say "Ratners".

[E92Dan]

Fastdruid said:

I don't think an E92 owner can comment on what is a Coupé... If you want to play by those rules the E92 is a 2 door saloon, it's even longer than the E90 saloon ffs!

I never said a E92 was a coupe

[PapaJohns]

I had a lot of fun in my old fn2 type r on the twistys, I can only imagine how good the FD2 is as that's the car with the rave reviews.
Don't think the 130i is quite up there with driver experience despite its sonorous sound track......

No saloon though,to big to heavy

FD2 is a good shout, hmm the Renault to ,the older version or the newer

The new breed seem to be moving the game on a bit though, that new Leon cupra is getting good press

Iv never driven one but I'd grab the keys to the mk2 focus RS, 5pots sound good

[Glade]

Hmmmm I've had a Clio 182, 500 Abarth and now an E92 325 (3 litre straight six) with an auto box.

Can't belive that people say the 3 series doesn't feel RWD. Stability to DTC and box in manual, second gear you can easily make it feel RWD!

Compared to my A4 the handling is far superior.

The Clio, my hatch reference, was fun in it's own way. Lift off oversteer. The Abarth good because of the turbo, but ride too crash really. But even with the auto box the RWD and I6 are far more interesting. And for comfort it's leagues ahead.

Edited by Glade on Sunday 26th July 00:15

[neil-935ql]

I had a mk2 escort with a 2 litre Zetec on throttle bodies about 190bhp not massive power , but on reflection this car gave the perfect balance of the feel of a hot hatch , light and agile maybe 900kg ? loads of fun but also rwd , so just maybe this is the perfect mix ?? I guess the gt86 is trying the same formula but some how for me has missed the point needs a tad more power , wish I never sold it now ........ Any ex mk2 escort owners out there ?

[ZX10R NIN]

My uncle has a MK2 he finished it about two years ago between him & his have around 8 mk1/mk2's oh & a Dolomite Sprint. He rebuilt it from the ground up so it now has a Five Link Rear end Borg Warner 5 speed from a Cossie Spax all round Willwood Four Pots(with ABS) filling the 7x15 revolution RFX's Quick ratio steering rack a 2.4 naturally aspirated Cosworth lump running 50mm throttle bodies central mounted tank & battery in the rear 239.8bhp at the wheels 921.2kgs fully fueled.

It is insane, the induction & exhaust note & it's ability to get down the road is amazing this of course is helped by it's size (or it's lack of size) good vision (no huge A pillars) & obviously a good turn of speed.

In the modern world for a full on B road blast I'd have to pick the(if we're talking completely standard as you drive it out of the dealers 15 plate car) Megane (a standard cup model) over a RWD alternative.

[Debaser]

I'd take the RWD saloon. I find all FWD hatchbacks, even hot ones, very boring.

[T0MMY]

DoubleSix said:

Well, you have to properly disengage the safety nets to really induce a grin but yes, RWD + short wheelbase + 265bhp + manual box = Fun

I've no doubt you can induce power oversteer in them but do they have a lively handling balance? I was thinking about the easiest way to summarise that and decided that it's basically simply a question of whether you can range from understeer to neutral to oversteer just by varying the weight distribution. Any car that has so much understeer dialled in that it won't do that I find a bit dull to drive and I don't feel I have full control of it!

The reason I ask all this is that on paper they could be a great car for me but I just find it hard to believe BMW would make a car that feels as neutral as an old school hot hatch. I've never had a BMW that would do lift of oversteer.

Debaser said:

I'd take the RWD saloon. I find all FWD hatchbacks, even hot ones, very boring.

I'm not at all convinced you would have found my 328i more fun than my Xsara round corners, have you driven a good hot hatch?

[Fastdruid]

T0MMY said:

Debaser said:

I'd take the RWD saloon. I find all FWD hatchbacks, even hot ones, very boring.

I'm not at all convinced you would have found my 328i more fun than my Xsara round corners, have you driven a good hot hatch?

You are forgetting that to some RWD is better than FWD no matter how poor the RWD and how good the FWD is.

Some people would rather a 114d than a Focus RS or Megane R26 purely because of the driven wheels. Personally I'll take each on the implementation and if given the choice between two cars in a "here are the keys, pick one" I'd be going for the one I perceived as being more interesting, regardless of the driven wheels.

[ORD]

T0MMY said:

I'm not at all convinced you would have found my 328i more fun than my Xsara round corners, have you driven a good hot hatch?

Why should a FE-RWD car have lift-off oversteer? Of course it won't - it is far more likely to have power oversteer.

Lift-off oversteer is usually seen as a negative handling trait - more dangerous and more 'all or nothing' than power oversteer or the lovely pendulum effect in a 911

[kiseca]

ORD said:

Why should a FE-RWD car have lift-off oversteer? Of course it won't - it is far more likely to have power oversteer.

Lift-off oversteer is usually seen as a negative handling trait - more dangerous and more 'all or nothing' than power oversteer or the lovely pendulum effect in a 911

Why wouldn't a front engined RWD have lift off oversteer? I've certainly driven a few, from different manufacturers, that had it.

[xRIEx]

ORD said:

Why should a FE-RWD car have lift-off oversteer? Of course it won't - it is far more likely to have power oversteer.

Lift-off oversteer is usually seen as a negative handling trait - more dangerous and more 'all or nothing' than power oversteer or the lovely pendulum effect in a 911

Of course it will. It was one of the skills taught in a drifting day I went on, using MX-5s.

[kambites]

I've never driven any car which wont lift-off over-steer if you're brutal enough with it. Suitably powerful RWD (or rear biased 4WD) cars will generally do both.

I certainly wouldn't say lift-off over-steer was any more "negative" than power over-steer. A well balanced RWD car will do both with similar ease with a nice zone of under-steer in the middle. Indeed the easiest way to provoke power over-steer in a relatively low powered car is to break rear-end grip by coming suddenly off the throttle then catching and balancing it on the throttle.

Edited by kambites on Sunday 26th July 11:58

[T0MMY]

ORD said:

Why should a FE-RWD car have lift-off oversteer? Of course it won't - it is far more likely to have power oversteer.

Lift-off oversteer is usually seen as a negative handling trait - more dangerous and more 'all or nothing' than power oversteer or the lovely pendulum effect in a 911

It should have both...anything RWD can do power oversteer, only what I would call sporty RWDs have a neutral enough balance to oversteer off the power without violently upsetting it. Lift off oversteer is seen as a negative handling trait only from the perspective of making road cars safe enough for any idiot to drive them cackhandedly without crashing, not from the perspective of making a car fun or indeed quick.

If the car isn't neutral enough to go from understeer to oversteer then it just isn't sporty to drive at all. You need to have enough control of the car to open or tighten the line in a corner by shifting the weight front to back.

[T0MMY]

kambites said:

I've never driven any car which wont lift-off over-steer if you're brutal enough with it.

That's a different thing though, obviously flicking almost anything into a corner and violently lifting off or braking can upset it. I'm talking more about gentle weight transitions that change the attitude of the car. My MX5 did it, my MNR does it, none of my BMWs would do it.

[kambites]

T0MMY said:

kambites said:

I've never driven any car which wont lift-off over-steer if you're brutal enough with it.

That's a different thing though, obviously flicking almost anything into a corner and violently lifting off or braking can upset it. I'm talking more about gentle weight transitions that change the attitude of the car. My MX5 did it, my MNR does it, none of my BMWs would do it.

Have you tried turning off the ESP?

Older BMWs (everything up to the E46 era) will certainly do it. I can't say I've tried in an E90 onwards car but I'm surprised if they wont? Even if they've programmed to ECU to force the car to under-steer at the limit off throttle (which they may have done as a result of chasing economy figures) some gentle trail braking should bring the back gracefully out.

To my mind a car which wont lift-off over-steer reasonably progressively is extremely poorly balanced. Even my parents little Picanto will do it in the wet.

Edited by kambites on Sunday 26th July 12:05

[ORD]

I really dislike lift-off oversteer: coming off the throttle just seems so crude to me, and it is associated far more with slightly skittish FWD cars.