RE: Light IS Right: PH Blog
Discussion
I think this is awfully simplistic. A light car can achieve better fuel consumption and run with a smaller engine, but I don't think there's much between 1300kgs vs 1600kgs in terms of feel, I really don't. Obviously it all depends on where the weight is - if it's between the wheels, and down low, I think at road speeds you just won't notice. I'd much prefer to see people review and test drive cars without the knowledge of weight, because most of what we think we feel and enjoy is what we've read, and therefore what our mind thinks we should feel.
We're just blinkered into thinking 1300kgs is a lightish sports car, and we assume it's kind of the correct weight. Who made up that rule? It's a nonsense.
We're just blinkered into thinking 1300kgs is a lightish sports car, and we assume it's kind of the correct weight. Who made up that rule? It's a nonsense.
PunterCam said:
We're just blinkered into thinking 1300kgs is a lightish sports car, and we assume it's kind of the correct weight. Who made up that rule? It's a nonsense.
Physics made up that rule! Personally I think 1300kgs is pretty lardy, as it's only due to lazy ways of achieving crash test performance and putting in loads of stuff I just don't want or need. Electric bloody seats in a sports car? p
s off. With the same quality of engineering, every 100kg drop in weight is very noticeable, and increasingly so as you move down the scale as it's a bigger percentage of the whole.
Reductions in unsprung weight is even more noticeable, but harder to achieve so rarer than deleting a bit of sound deadening and speccing slightly thinner plastics...
PunterCam said:
I don't think there's much between 1300kgs vs 1600kgs in terms of feel
We're just blinkered into thinking 1300kgs is a lightish sports car, and we assume it's kind of the correct weight. Who made up that rule? It's a nonsense.
Possibly because 1300kg isn't that light - try 1100kg v 1500kg (off the top of my head MX5 V 350z) if you can't feel 36% increase there's something wrong with you.We're just blinkered into thinking 1300kgs is a lightish sports car, and we assume it's kind of the correct weight. Who made up that rule? It's a nonsense.
My RX7 at 1250kg is a delight my Supra at 1500kg wasn't - weight isn't the only variable but it's an easy one to measure.
I have yet to find a sportscar feel (rather than GT) in anything over 1250kg and I've driven a lot of cars - albeit mostly older ones as I'm not a fan of modern cars.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
As was I. Classics aren't st to drive because you don't like them any more than modern cars are st because I don't like them. It's just a matter of personal taste. 
ETA: Same with weight really. Lighter cars aren't really objectively better to drive; they just drive differently. Personally I'd far rather drive a Caterham than a Nissan GTR but I can quite see why someone else wouldn't.
Edited by kambites on Sunday 1st May 17:05
anonymous said:
[redacted]
It's a significant compromise because it severely limits the caster angle you can run. Especially in a heavyish car. It also tends to necessitate a long rack and a big steering wheel unless the car has a very light nose. Edited by kambites on Sunday 1st May 17:23
andy_s said:
I much prefer non-servoed brakes and unassisted steering, they're probably not 'better' to most though.
The ability to actually stop without requiring a brake servo is another reason I like lighter cars. Sadly these days it's impossible to get type approval without ABS, which in practice means a servo, even on light things. 
For what it's worth I have recently bought and will soon be taking delivery of a new Evora. I did not get the 410, I got a 400, but have to say whatever Lotus are doing is extremely good.
At 1395Kg it might seem heavier than you'd think for a Lotus, but a Ferrari 360 is heavier and doesn't have half the creature comforts. The 400 comes as standard with relatively heavy metal seats (including heating!), sat nav, a decent stereo, reversing camera, etc etc...
The Lotus' aluminium tub is similar in principle to the McLaren (ie. you can cut the roof out and it won't affect the rigidity), but the material is not as exotic of course. This adds weight but the rigidity is worth it. The suspension is also double wishbone front and rear, much heavier than a MacPherson strut - but again worth it, at least in Lotus' opinion.
Where the Lotus scored extremely highly for me was in connection to the road - the feel of the car is excellent and it certainly feels light.
The weight of the cars I compared was quite interesting. It is very difficult to compare cars given the crazy number of standards - dry weight, wet weight, EC or DIN... and then if you want to be fair you can't compare a car with an 80L fuel tank against a 40L fuel tank, because they might be counting 40L of fuel in the weight
At 1395Kg it might seem heavier than you'd think for a Lotus, but a Ferrari 360 is heavier and doesn't have half the creature comforts. The 400 comes as standard with relatively heavy metal seats (including heating!), sat nav, a decent stereo, reversing camera, etc etc...
The Lotus' aluminium tub is similar in principle to the McLaren (ie. you can cut the roof out and it won't affect the rigidity), but the material is not as exotic of course. This adds weight but the rigidity is worth it. The suspension is also double wishbone front and rear, much heavier than a MacPherson strut - but again worth it, at least in Lotus' opinion.
Where the Lotus scored extremely highly for me was in connection to the road - the feel of the car is excellent and it certainly feels light.
The weight of the cars I compared was quite interesting. It is very difficult to compare cars given the crazy number of standards - dry weight, wet weight, EC or DIN... and then if you want to be fair you can't compare a car with an 80L fuel tank against a 40L fuel tank, because they might be counting 40L of fuel in the weight
jayemm89 said:
The suspension is also double wishbone front and rear, much heavier than a MacPherson strut - but again worth it, at least in Lotus' opinion.
Not much heavier. I currently have my double wishbone suspension in pieces all over the garage floor; I think the entire assembly on the Elise (which admittedly probably isn't as strong as the Evora's) including the upper wishbone hard-points, probably weighs 10kg a corner - that's including wishbones, bushes, ball-joints, uprights, toe-links, etc. A McPherson Strut setup would be at least half of that so you're talking about maybe 20kg difference over the whole car, probably more like 10kg.The Evora feels lighter than it is, but it still feels like a barge compared to just about anything under a tonne. I'm still a bit baffled as to how Lotus managed to make the Evora quite so heavy.
I did rather amusingly find recently that the entirely unsprung mass of one corner of the Elise is less than the weight of just the wheel and tyre of our Octavia. Heavy wheels are the spawn of the devil.
Edited by kambites on Sunday 1st May 17:46
kambites said:
The Evora feels lighter than it is, but it still feels like a barge compared to just about anything under a tonne.
I have no doubt, but for me the other models in the Lotus range were not what I wanted in a car. I wanted something with a few luxuries like storage space, sat nav, etc... it's also easy to get in and out.I am interested that people are comparing the Lotus and McLaren sill. I sat in a 650S recently, I thought it was a pain to get in and out of. Granted, easier than an Elise but I think that was largely due to the doors taking some of the roof with them. It certainly wasn't a straightforward affair.
Lotus are certainly going the correct way, the new 400 was about 40KG lighter than the outgoing S, but that includes about 20KG they ADDED with the chargecooling system etc...
Not bad really for a car which is already aluminium and fibreglass. It's quite popular now just to lump a composite panel onto an existing car, but the Evora wasn't a car that seemed to have any obvious excess weight.
There's certainly an element of that. Making things light costs money and to be fair to both Porsche and Lotus, it's more of a question of the 911 being remarkably light compared to other 2+2s of that ilk than the Evora being particularly heavy.
ETA: Driving a 991 and Evora together is an eye-opening demonstration of why weight on paper doesn't really matter though. From the way they respond and feed back information to the driver you'd swear the Evora is a quarter of a tonne lighter than the 911 rather than marginally heavier.
ETA: Driving a 991 and Evora together is an eye-opening demonstration of why weight on paper doesn't really matter though. From the way they respond and feed back information to the driver you'd swear the Evora is a quarter of a tonne lighter than the 911 rather than marginally heavier.
Edited by kambites on Sunday 1st May 17:51
jayemm89 said:
I am interested that people are comparing the Lotus and McLaren sill. I sat in a 650S recently, I thought it was a pain to get in and out of.
...which is why they modified it for the 540 and 570. Very different shape and much more user-friendly. Again, McLaren had a couple of 650s and a couple of 570s at Goodwood this morning. I'm not in the market for a £125k car but a 540 would be top of my list (although preferably not in orange....). It's essentially the McLaren Esprit! Wikipedia says, "McLaren focused on delivering "day-to-day usability and driveability" against the most sporting model options in its range with increased luggage space, greater interior storage and leather upholstery options." Just right for Boxster-pussies!
The other way to look at it could be that the Lotus Evora 400 matches the Kerb weight of a Ferrari 458 SPECIALE "with options". Yes, the Ferrari is up on power by a fair bit, but it's a totally bespoke car, with bespoke engine and interior bits, and costs about three times as much. I'd say that's not bad for a low-volume manufacturer with a fraction of the budget
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