RE: Nissan GT-R MY14: Review
Discussion
SuperVM said:
RoverP6B said:
It may be that familiarity does help. I'm not seeking adulation by any means. I'm sure any driver with my level of familiarity with both the car and the road would be able to be at least as quick. Considering my 535i is down only 34hp on the Evo and has a superior chassis, it is entirely unsurprising to me that it should be able to keep pace. As for Evo vs M5 - 276bhp Evo vs 400bhp M5 - plus the superior E39 chassis... forget it! The Evo won't see which way the M5 went. You'd need an Evo X FQ400 to keep up at all.
Perhaps I'm not a brilliant driver, but I've had both an E39 M5 and a 310 bhp Evo IV and the Evo was significantly easier for me to drive quickly over a bumpy b-road, particularly a damp one. The roads near me are particularly poor and I admit to being impressed with how well the M5 handled such surfaces, but ultimately it was far easier to get the power down in the Evo. Once you factor in weight (the difference between the two is substantial) and the size of the M5, there for me wasn't much contest. Rover you seem to be forgetting that your old BM is at least 400kgs heavier than a Evo 6 and a stock one will make about 300hp even today .
http://www.lancerregister.com/showpic.php?pic=mlr_...
http://www.lancerregister.com/showpic.php?pic=mlr_...
OldBob said:
interior stuff
It's vastly improved in the MY14, using mostly infiniti bits I think.Whilst I don't have a problem with any of it myself and don't mind it at all, I can see why some would compare it less favourably to some more exotic marques. I don't get a lot of Italian cars but I can certainly say an SLS looks just as nice and feels much better quality and if more modern Merc interiors are anything to go by then the GT will be even nicer. Same with R8s and higher end RS models in my own experience but again, it's only a minor complaint and everything is still easy to use and in the right place.
Don't get me wrong, the GT-R is incredible and too much is made of the interior quality(it's a car that some people seem desperate to discredit in any way possible which kind of speaks for itself) but it is a bit 'Japanese'.
It's also not a pretty car but it's imposingly masculine, it certainly gets noticed.
Edited by simo1863 on Wednesday 5th November 13:48
The main advantage of the GTR is its downside to a lot of people, i.e. it is comparatively cheap next to anything that gets anywhere near and it has the Nissan badge on it.
from my point of view, I am fairly sure I will never afford a Ferrari 458, newish 911 turbo, McLaren 650S etc but a second hand GTR is in the realms of possibility which is a pretty good prospect.
I reckon that if you spend say, 45 grand on one now, keep it a couple of years, dont break it, dont go mad modifying it and look after it, for the performance available it could be fairly "cheap" to own, £500 road tax I am used to 20 ish mpg on SUL I am used to so a few less wont kill me, servicing seems ok, tyres are expensive, wonder how much different it would be compared to leasing something like a Golf R/BMW 135i for the mileage I do, say 3 -4 k.
Man Maths, got to love it
from my point of view, I am fairly sure I will never afford a Ferrari 458, newish 911 turbo, McLaren 650S etc but a second hand GTR is in the realms of possibility which is a pretty good prospect.
I reckon that if you spend say, 45 grand on one now, keep it a couple of years, dont break it, dont go mad modifying it and look after it, for the performance available it could be fairly "cheap" to own, £500 road tax I am used to 20 ish mpg on SUL I am used to so a few less wont kill me, servicing seems ok, tyres are expensive, wonder how much different it would be compared to leasing something like a Golf R/BMW 135i for the mileage I do, say 3 -4 k.
Man Maths, got to love it
J4CKO said:
The main advantage of the GTR is its downside to a lot of people, i.e. it is comparatively cheap next to anything that gets anywhere near and it has the Nissan badge on it.
from my point of view, I am fairly sure I will never afford a Ferrari 458, newish 911 turbo, McLaren 650S etc but a second hand GTR is in the realms of possibility which is a pretty good prospect.
I reckon that if you spend say, 45 grand on one now, keep it a couple of years, dont break it, dont go mad modifying it and look after it, for the performance available it could be fairly "cheap" to own, £500 road tax I am used to 20 ish mpg on SUL I am used to so a few less wont kill me, servicing seems ok, tyres are expensive, wonder how much different it would be compared to leasing something like a Golf R/BMW 135i for the mileage I do, say 3 -4 k.
Man Maths, got to love it
I get what you are saying but I also recall GT-R dashboards needing replaced at a large amount of £, also the bonnets if in a small ding needing a lot of money due to crash protection for pedo's. If the transmission goes on too many standing starts. from my point of view, I am fairly sure I will never afford a Ferrari 458, newish 911 turbo, McLaren 650S etc but a second hand GTR is in the realms of possibility which is a pretty good prospect.
I reckon that if you spend say, 45 grand on one now, keep it a couple of years, dont break it, dont go mad modifying it and look after it, for the performance available it could be fairly "cheap" to own, £500 road tax I am used to 20 ish mpg on SUL I am used to so a few less wont kill me, servicing seems ok, tyres are expensive, wonder how much different it would be compared to leasing something like a Golf R/BMW 135i for the mileage I do, say 3 -4 k.
Man Maths, got to love it
Not saying the GTR is likely to get those but for all these high tech cars you do have to hope for a bit of luck or else it will not be cheap as chips.
RoverP6B said:
Dagnut said:
if it's a poorly managed road local knowledge is about 99% of the pace you can maintain.
I think he's waiting for us to say" you must be an amazing driver"..because no one with any experience of any model of EVO would claim a 535i is a quicker car..anywhere! On a b road even a E39 M5 would be left for dead.
It may be that familiarity does help. I'm not seeking adulation by any means. I'm sure any driver with my level of familiarity with both the car and the road would be able to be at least as quick. Considering my 535i is down only 34hp on the Evo and has a superior chassis, it is entirely unsurprising to me that it should be able to keep pace. As for Evo vs M5 - 276bhp Evo vs 400bhp M5 - plus the superior E39 chassis... forget it! The Evo won't see which way the M5 went. You'd need an Evo X FQ400 to keep up at all.I think he's waiting for us to say" you must be an amazing driver"..because no one with any experience of any model of EVO would claim a 535i is a quicker car..anywhere! On a b road even a E39 M5 would be left for dead.
Dagnut said:
You may have been in a coma for the entire 90's and early 00's where AWD turbo charged cars where dominating WRC on every surface imaginable?..in case you missed all that, just so you know ,no one was using an 1800kg executive saloon
1700kg, to be correct. Rallying ≠ real world day-to-day driving on rutted, potholed tarmac roads, as opposed to muddy forest stages.E65Ross said:
Your 535i isn't traction limited, unless you've got s
t tyres on it.
And to the person who said cars lose 4bhp per year is talking absolute st. I know a fair few people who have had cars dyno tested and they're often MORE powerful than standard after years of service. Very rarely are they significantly lower than standard.
Nexens. Did OK in a huge downpour all the way from Exeter to Winchester, at a fairly constant 70-80mph up the A30/B3049, but they're not great for launching on slippery autumn roads. I've got a good set of Avons on the 520i and will swap those round at some point, then, if the wallet can stomach it, back on Pirelli P7s as fitted by a previous owner (got bills to prove it). I certainly agree that the 535i feels stronger than stock, particularly now it's done half as many miles in the last two and a half weeks as in the previous year... t tyres on it. And to the person who said cars lose 4bhp per year is talking absolute s
t. I know a fair few people who have had cars dyno tested and they're often MORE powerful than standard after years of service. Very rarely are they significantly lower than standard. SuperVM said:
Perhaps I'm not a brilliant driver, but I've had both an E39 M5 and a 310 bhp Evo IV and the Evo was significantly easier for me to drive quickly over a bumpy b-road, particularly a damp one. The roads near me are particularly poor and I admit to being impressed with how well the M5 handled such surfaces, but ultimately it was far easier to get the power down in the Evo. Once you factor in weight (the difference between the two is substantial) and the size of the M5, there for me wasn't much contest.
Sure, the Evo is smaller and lighter, but the E39's superior weight distribution, the supple long travel suspension and the long wheelbase mean it's much more capable in terms of remaining settled on bumpy roads. Evos look very twitchy by comparison. I suspect it's a matter of individual preference and driving style.SuperVM said:
E65Ross said:
Why do you instantly assume the E39 had a better chassis for B roads when compared to an EVO!?
God knows, given one was designed to be a comfortable long range family/exec car and the other for driving quickly down B-roads. NomduJour said:
You're very lucky - just happening to be there at the exact moment to latch onto the tails of all these wrung-out Evos and GTRs on your chosen local road. When their humiliation has worn off, I bet they can't wait to trade them in for an old BMW when you fly past with a quick wave of your string-backs.
I suspect that you'd soil yourself jumping from an old 5 Series into a GT-R and trying to drive it as hard - there is a massive difference in performance, whatever road.
I'm sure they weren't being wrung out simply because the roads don't allow it. A good A-road, as I've said dozens of times, will allow them to leave me for dust. I very much doubt the GT-R would intimidate me. God knows, the systems are sufficient to keep even that twallock at Bedford out of trouble. However, you just can't get near maxxing out a GT-R on your average Surrey B-road!I suspect that you'd soil yourself jumping from an old 5 Series into a GT-R and trying to drive it as hard - there is a massive difference in performance, whatever road.
Regarding the GT-R's interior, it just looks cheap and ugly to me. Porsche and Corvette get it right, IMO.
R1Mark said:
I may be missing the point of Rovers argument............
If I had my pride and joy.....for the sake of the argument a GTR………. would I seriously think of pushing on hard down a road that is obviously uneven, has odd cambers, is full of pot holes, hedge lined with limited visibility and to top it off is damp and maybe covered in mud from the tractors that regularly use them?
Not a chance. It’s just asking for an accident or at the very least a blown tyre, a broken wheel or broken suspension.
So when Mr Rover is hooning along hanging on to the tail-lights of my GTR thinking is the Stig because he can keep up, please consider that I maybe just tootling along in an effort to avoid hedge surfing in my pride and joy.
Course you wouldn't, but that's because the GT-R's chassis simply won't allow it, because there isn't enough suspension travel and the whole setup is too damn hard. A really well-set-up rear-drive sports saloon, on the other hand, can be pushed far harder, simply because its suppleness allows it to put more power down more of the time. It's nothing to do with trying to be the Stig and everything to do with simply making decent progress and enjoying it - and, in the 535, I'm absolutely nowhere near flat out. If I tried flat out, I'd probably be sideways everywhere or halfway up a tree.If I had my pride and joy.....for the sake of the argument a GTR………. would I seriously think of pushing on hard down a road that is obviously uneven, has odd cambers, is full of pot holes, hedge lined with limited visibility and to top it off is damp and maybe covered in mud from the tractors that regularly use them?
Not a chance. It’s just asking for an accident or at the very least a blown tyre, a broken wheel or broken suspension.
So when Mr Rover is hooning along hanging on to the tail-lights of my GTR thinking is the Stig because he can keep up, please consider that I maybe just tootling along in an effort to avoid hedge surfing in my pride and joy.
J4CKO said:
E39 "Much More capable" than a 350Z ? driven both and the E39 is very good for a large saloon, but it isn't night and day more capable than a 350Z, certainly the cooking models arent, never had the pleasure of an M5, suppose it depends what you mean by capable ?
I think you really need a go in an Evo, driven by someone who knows what they are doing with one, down a country road, I have seen grown men reduced to shaking wrecks, my colleague with one used to specialise in terrifying American visitors not used to Evos, narrow roads, corners, roundabouts etc.
Other stuff has caught up now in terms of straight line speed, and a Golf R is probably a match for it in cross country pace, maybe even faster but make no mistake, they are still massively capable, I am not sure how a 1700 kilo car with 240 ish bhp would get near something with two extra driven wheels, another 60 bhp, Active Yaw Control, half a tonne less weight and a vastly more sporting bias.
Again, comes down to well set up long travel suspension and a long wheelbase. The Z has neither. It looks sharp and goes OK, but it's just not all that in the handling stakes. Plenty of oversteer, I dare say, but poise, suppleness, refinement and all the rest that encourages one to push on? No... A Golf R (oh God, we've done this one to death already!) is still just a Golf, with all the weight on the nose, plus a Haldex AWD system which operates in FWD mode most of the time. It also, yet again, comes down to length of suspension travel, length of wheelbase and the general suppleness - the E39 is set up, like Jags of old, with fairly soft springs but very firm damping. VW Group products tend to be the opposite - under-damped and with way too much spring rate chucked in to make it stiff and "sporty". Active Yaw Control - you mean it brakes the inside front wheel as you turn? Another pointless gimmick. It's also nowhere near half a ton lighter than the E39. Quarter of a ton at most - and with a higher, further forward CofG. "More sporting bias" my arse - no VW is blooded on the racetrack in the way BMW saloons are/were. You can feel it in the way the thing drives - Golfs, however capable, handle with all the poise and elegance of a gun-carriage, whereas the BMW just feels like it's had a racing team set it up for something like the N24 (now, of course I know nobody's raced an automatic SE E39 with leather interior in the N24, but stripped-out M5s on stock suspension have been...)I think you really need a go in an Evo, driven by someone who knows what they are doing with one, down a country road, I have seen grown men reduced to shaking wrecks, my colleague with one used to specialise in terrifying American visitors not used to Evos, narrow roads, corners, roundabouts etc.
Other stuff has caught up now in terms of straight line speed, and a Golf R is probably a match for it in cross country pace, maybe even faster but make no mistake, they are still massively capable, I am not sure how a 1700 kilo car with 240 ish bhp would get near something with two extra driven wheels, another 60 bhp, Active Yaw Control, half a tonne less weight and a vastly more sporting bias.
The Evo at least has a proper 4WD system, but it's also based on a front-drive shopping trolley and doesn't have a great deal of suspension travel in stock form, there's too much weight over the nose and that 4-banger engine sits quite high - the V8 E39s are almost front-mid-engined, the V8 sits low and mostly behind the front axle, which gives a really positive, sharp turn-in and keeps body roll to a minimum.
Dagnut said:
It doesn't matter that you've owned both cars and have real world experience, that counts for nothing..What you need to do is change your user name and continue to write opinion based nonsense over multiple paragraphs and pass it off as fact.
Change my username? That I have not done. I've been Rover P6B all along. Some people seem to mistake me for a chap called 300bhp/ton, but I am not he, I have never had a car with such a high PW ratio, I don't live in the same part of the country as he and I have no interest in 1990s Ford Mustangs (or whatever that dreadful piece of jelly-mould nonsense he had was). He was very much active here long after I arrived.liner33 said:
Rover you seem to be forgetting that your old BM is at least 400kgs heavier than a Evo 6 and a stock one will make about 300hp even today.
335kg difference, actually (still quite substantial!) - and the Evo makes 276bhp, a mere 34 more than my old BMW, and also only 15 more ftlbs, rather higher in the rev range than in the 535i. However, as I said before, power-to-weight only tells part of the story. You've got to be able to put that power down. A front-drive-based platform, a 4-banger mounted high up right in the nose and a narrow track and short wheelbase do not make a good recipe for putting power down on a bumpy, twisty road. There's not a massive difference between the Evo (4WD apart) and most fast hot hatches of today - and keeping pace with them is laughably easy. Evos aren't too hard to keep up with either, while enjoying much greater comfort, ride quality etc.Once I get some decent tyres, it'll be interesting to see how much harder the 535i can be pushed (within the limits of the road, of course - I've scared myself silly in much slower machinery around Headley...). Already looking forward to taking it back down the A30 to its old stamping grounds in Somerset and Devon come next summer - considering how bloody good (and quick) it was in that filthy October storm, on cheap crap tyres, it's promising to be quite something. Probably much slower than a GT-R down the same road, but I've a feeling I'll be enjoying it more in the BMW than I would in a GT-R... and, to be honest, considering that I can get from NSL to license loss/up a tree at the flex of a toe, I don't feel the need for a lot more performance. If I was 27 rather than 57, I might think differently, but when I think that the GT-R makes more power than a North American T-6 Texan/Harvard's Pratt & Whitney radial, I just think that such power belongs in the air rather than on public roads. Maybe it's just me, but I do not equate power with driving enjoyment. Various people have highlighted that the GT-R is pretty tail-happy despite its 4WD, just trying to put power down can get the tail slewing out sideways - so you end up either backing off or leaning on the systems to save your neck.
It's come to something that a forum set up by TVR owners/fans now lauds a huge two-ton 4WD dual-clutch-autobox Japanese turbo monster as the greatest sports car of our time, and anything moderately quick and interesting is always shot down with "But a Golf R will do all that and more"... nah, I'm sorry, but I struggle to name any new car of today at any price point that I'd want. I would not appreciate being given a GT-R for free, except that I'd then sell it immediately and pocket seventy grand (which, when all's said and done, is a heck of a lot of dosh for a big Datsun!). Modern cars are rubbish! Involvement has gone out the window, controls have been numbed, sounds have been muted (turbos) and faked (Renault, BMW, I'm looking at you!), there's far too much focus on numbers and nothing like enough on pure sensation. Sod the lateral G, to hell with Nordschleife lap times and run-flat tyres, discard the DCT 2-digit-millisecond shift times as the meaningless garbage they are and 0-60 can bugger off too - 30-70 is far more telling - and let's hear more about suspension travel, rebound damping and steering/pedal feel. Oh, and sack the designers who insist on using 19 or 20 inch wheels, like Ian Callum. My E39s wouldn't be half the cars they are if I swapped the 16-inch turbines for 19-inchers.
Will the young generations of today look back on the GT-R as one of the defining performance cars of all time? I'm not convinced. In an unrepresentative, unscientific straw poll (sample size: two, my sons, aged 23 and nearly 16), the unanimous response was that the Jaguar E-type and Ferrari 250/275 series remain the greatest production sports cars since the Second World War, and that the GT-R wasn't fit to be even discussed in the same context. Jaguar may have made one of the cleverest moves it's made in a very long time by making the F-type look so E-type-like - every time I see one parked or being refuelled, it's absolutely mobbed with admirers. I've not seen any Japanese performance car do that since the Honda NSX was new. The Nissan Zs may be broadly comparable to the 6cyl F-type, if cheaper, but nobody seems to take any notice of them, despite their overly flamboyant trying-too-hard styling. The F-type is very pretty - but it really needs a manual gearbox and smaller wheels with bigger sidewalls...
Lengthy rant over!
Edited by RoverP6B on Wednesday 5th November 17:34
Gandahar said:
J4CKO said:
The main advantage of the GTR is its downside to a lot of people, i.e. it is comparatively cheap next to anything that gets anywhere near and it has the Nissan badge on it.
from my point of view, I am fairly sure I will never afford a Ferrari 458, newish 911 turbo, McLaren 650S etc but a second hand GTR is in the realms of possibility which is a pretty good prospect.
I reckon that if you spend say, 45 grand on one now, keep it a couple of years, dont break it, dont go mad modifying it and look after it, for the performance available it could be fairly "cheap" to own, £500 road tax I am used to 20 ish mpg on SUL I am used to so a few less wont kill me, servicing seems ok, tyres are expensive, wonder how much different it would be compared to leasing something like a Golf R/BMW 135i for the mileage I do, say 3 -4 k.
Man Maths, got to love it
I get what you are saying but I also recall GT-R dashboards needing replaced at a large amount of £, also the bonnets if in a small ding needing a lot of money due to crash protection for pedo's. If the transmission goes on too many standing starts. from my point of view, I am fairly sure I will never afford a Ferrari 458, newish 911 turbo, McLaren 650S etc but a second hand GTR is in the realms of possibility which is a pretty good prospect.
I reckon that if you spend say, 45 grand on one now, keep it a couple of years, dont break it, dont go mad modifying it and look after it, for the performance available it could be fairly "cheap" to own, £500 road tax I am used to 20 ish mpg on SUL I am used to so a few less wont kill me, servicing seems ok, tyres are expensive, wonder how much different it would be compared to leasing something like a Golf R/BMW 135i for the mileage I do, say 3 -4 k.
Man Maths, got to love it
Not saying the GTR is likely to get those but for all these high tech cars you do have to hope for a bit of luck or else it will not be cheap as chips.
Also, didnt the V8 E39's have the iffy recirc ball steering ?
Dagnut said:
SuperVM said:
RoverP6B said:
It may be that familiarity does help. I'm not seeking adulation by any means. I'm sure any driver with my level of familiarity with both the car and the road would be able to be at least as quick. Considering my 535i is down only 34hp on the Evo and has a superior chassis, it is entirely unsurprising to me that it should be able to keep pace. As for Evo vs M5 - 276bhp Evo vs 400bhp M5 - plus the superior E39 chassis... forget it! The Evo won't see which way the M5 went. You'd need an Evo X FQ400 to keep up at all.
Perhaps I'm not a brilliant driver, but I've had both an E39 M5 and a 310 bhp Evo IV and the Evo was significantly easier for me to drive quickly over a bumpy b-road, particularly a damp one. The roads near me are particularly poor and I admit to being impressed with how well the M5 handled such surfaces, but ultimately it was far easier to get the power down in the Evo. Once you factor in weight (the difference between the two is substantial) and the size of the M5, there for me wasn't much contest. markcoznottz said:
Dagnut said:
SuperVM said:
RoverP6B said:
It may be that familiarity does help. I'm not seeking adulation by any means. I'm sure any driver with my level of familiarity with both the car and the road would be able to be at least as quick. Considering my 535i is down only 34hp on the Evo and has a superior chassis, it is entirely unsurprising to me that it should be able to keep pace. As for Evo vs M5 - 276bhp Evo vs 400bhp M5 - plus the superior E39 chassis... forget it! The Evo won't see which way the M5 went. You'd need an Evo X FQ400 to keep up at all.
Perhaps I'm not a brilliant driver, but I've had both an E39 M5 and a 310 bhp Evo IV and the Evo was significantly easier for me to drive quickly over a bumpy b-road, particularly a damp one. The roads near me are particularly poor and I admit to being impressed with how well the M5 handled such surfaces, but ultimately it was far easier to get the power down in the Evo. Once you factor in weight (the difference between the two is substantial) and the size of the M5, there for me wasn't much contest. The above is of course subjective,, but the road was bumpy and lightly potholed. Both cars coped well and m6 was a hoot spending a lot of the time on opposite lock trying to keep up, while the turbo just felt like a missile regardless of the slippy conditions.
J4CKO said:
Also, didnt the V8 E39's have the iffy recirc ball steering ?
Recirculating ball, yes. Iffy, most certainly not. It is both more precise and more feelsome than the rack'n'pinion in my six-cylinder ever did. I also prefer the way the V8 weights up at speed and with more lock applied - the six's R&P never really loaded up much at all, except for being quite heavy when parking and doing three point turns.HoagieLomax said:
Tbh as good as the E39 was when new the usual case today would be an old car with shot suspension and a wheezy auto box and not much torque. It isn't going to compete with any EVO on those sorts of roads where the short gearing and turbo torque fire you from one corner to the next.
As I've said, mine is not far short of an Evo power or torque wise - to be honest, it feels stronger than the book figures. It's also had a fortune spent on it in recent months and years on the bottom end - it feels taut and composed, just nicely run in and no more. Short gearing is only any use when you can find traction - which, with the state of our B-roads today, isn't all that often. As for turbos - as far as I am concerned, they are the invention of Beelzebub himself!TJLees, a Turbo S vs an E63 isn't really fair - the E63 is heavier, down on power and vastly down on torque by comparison. If you'd used the current F-whatever yawnmobile turbo thing vs the 911, I suspect the contest would have been a tad more even. Any crossplane crank V8 will be torquier than an F1-derived V10. For what it's worth, I've never noticed 911s struggling to find traction or composure in the way I have with Evos and GT-Rs. They still seem to have comparatively long suspension travel, which must help to some degree. The arse-engined weight distribution might also help, I suppose.
Speaking of 911s, I saw a white 991 GT3, registration "911 GB" (Porsche UK press fleet), in the car park of Tesco, Leatherhead a bit over an hour ago. Anyone know who's got it at the moment?
RoverP6B said:
samvia said:
There's our answer.
Watching a car's behaviour from behind can tell one rather more than the extremely numb controls of most modern performance cars...RoverP6B said:
samvia said:
You're not of this planet, are you? You are aware that E46 M3s come with traction control, ABS and, God forbid, a Sport button? Not to mention a huge chunk of them having paddles from the factory...
Wasn't aware of the Sport button. SMG only came on the CSL as far as I'm aware - I've never seen it on an ordinary M3. I'm aware they have TC and ABS. Thankfully, BMW's traction control of that era is pretty dim-witted and easily disabled. ABS I can live with, I just miss doing my own cadence braking. Didn't see a Sport button in the E46 M3 I got the odd lift from my local BMW dealership in some years ago. However, if I had the cash, I'd walk straight past the E46 to a 3.0 CS of the early 1970s... that first generation of the Neue Klasse BMWs remains, for me, BMW design at its purest, boldest and most imaginative. Bangle, Van Hooydonk, eat yer heart out."Again, comes down to well set up long travel suspension and a long wheelbase. The Z has neither. It looks sharp and goes OK, but it's just not all that in the handling stakes. Plenty of oversteer, I dare say, but poise, suppleness, refinement and all the rest that encourages one to push on? No... A Golf R (oh God, we've done this one to death already!) is still just a Golf, with all the weight on the nose, plus a Haldex AWD system which operates in FWD mode most of the time. It also, yet again, comes down to length of suspension travel, length of wheelbase and the general suppleness - the E39 is set up, like Jags of old, with fairly soft springs but very firm damping. VW Group products tend to be the opposite - under-damped and with way too much spring rate chucked in to make it stiff and "sporty". Active Yaw Control - you mean it brakes the inside front wheel as you turn? Another pointless gimmick. It's also nowhere near half a ton lighter than the E39. Quarter of a ton at most - and with a higher, further forward CofG. "More sporting bias" my arse - no VW is blooded on the racetrack in the way BMW saloons are/were. You can feel it in the way the thing drives - Golfs, however capable, handle with all the poise and elegance of a gun-carriage, whereas the BMW just feels like it's had a racing team set it up for something like the N24 (now, of course I know nobody's raced an automatic SE E39 with leather interior in the N24, but stripped-out M5s on stock suspension have been...)
The Evo at least has a proper 4WD system, but it's also based on a front-drive shopping trolley and doesn't have a great deal of suspension travel in stock form, there's too much weight over the nose and that 4-banger engine sits quite high - the V8 E39s are almost front-mid-engined, the V8 sits low and mostly behind the front axle, which gives a really positive, sharp turn-in and keeps body roll to a minimum."
The E39 has a seven inch longer wheelbase than a 350Z, dont think that is going to make a vast difference ? don't know about the suspension travel.
Have you actually driven a 350Z, if you had you would find that they arent some lairy RWD thing, they will do that, which is a function of 300 bhp, a limited slip diff and 300 bhp.
It is the Evo that has AYC, not the Golf R, it isnt generally regarded as a gimmick, it does magic stuff distributing torque to where it can be used, it isnt an ESP system there to save you, it is there to make the thing go round corners faster and does not apply brakes, read up on it.
And indeed the Golf R isnt half a tonne lighter, I meant the evo but didnt make that clear, an Evo has a more sporting Bias, as in it is an out and out performance model, rather than an executive saloon with a biggish engine.
You mentioned the Saab earlier, again, have you driven one ? it is based on the Epsilon platform, which is similar to the Vectra, but the Saab was smaller and used many different components, not an inherently bad platform, a very rigid shell, passive rear wheel steer etc, very effective and capable, but not very enjoyable, it was too hard which made it slower in certain circumstances )ones where you dont want to piss blood) so I sort of get what you are saying, sometimes softer suspension, built in capability, higher profile tyres and no "sporting" pretensions can be quicker but an Evo is in a different league in terms of point to point speed.
Would love to put a few cars on a track, with a few bumps included and see what transpired.
The Evo at least has a proper 4WD system, but it's also based on a front-drive shopping trolley and doesn't have a great deal of suspension travel in stock form, there's too much weight over the nose and that 4-banger engine sits quite high - the V8 E39s are almost front-mid-engined, the V8 sits low and mostly behind the front axle, which gives a really positive, sharp turn-in and keeps body roll to a minimum."
The E39 has a seven inch longer wheelbase than a 350Z, dont think that is going to make a vast difference ? don't know about the suspension travel.
Have you actually driven a 350Z, if you had you would find that they arent some lairy RWD thing, they will do that, which is a function of 300 bhp, a limited slip diff and 300 bhp.
It is the Evo that has AYC, not the Golf R, it isnt generally regarded as a gimmick, it does magic stuff distributing torque to where it can be used, it isnt an ESP system there to save you, it is there to make the thing go round corners faster and does not apply brakes, read up on it.
And indeed the Golf R isnt half a tonne lighter, I meant the evo but didnt make that clear, an Evo has a more sporting Bias, as in it is an out and out performance model, rather than an executive saloon with a biggish engine.
You mentioned the Saab earlier, again, have you driven one ? it is based on the Epsilon platform, which is similar to the Vectra, but the Saab was smaller and used many different components, not an inherently bad platform, a very rigid shell, passive rear wheel steer etc, very effective and capable, but not very enjoyable, it was too hard which made it slower in certain circumstances )ones where you dont want to piss blood) so I sort of get what you are saying, sometimes softer suspension, built in capability, higher profile tyres and no "sporting" pretensions can be quicker but an Evo is in a different league in terms of point to point speed.
Would love to put a few cars on a track, with a few bumps included and see what transpired.
RoverP6B said:
TJLees, a Turbo S vs an E63 isn't really fair - the E63 is heavier, down on power and vastly down on torque by comparison. If you'd used the current F-whatever yawnmobile turbo thing vs the 911, I suspect the contest would have been a tad more even. Any crossplane crank V8 will be torquier than an F1-derived V10. For what it's worth, I've never noticed 911s struggling to find traction or composure in the way I have with Evos and GT-Rs. They still seem to have comparatively long suspension travel, which must help to some degree. The arse-engined weight distribution might also help, I suppose.
Nope. 435i would still really struggle. Turbo s is 1:09.6 round the dry handling circuit at autocar, and 435i is 1:18.2 where as even the new m5 is only 1:14.9. Again the lateral g for the turbo is 1.1g and the 435i is 0.97g. The GTR figures are similar to the turbo s. Any modern m sport BMW would be left behind by the GTR/turbo s in the first few corners that require grip and performance - drivers being equal and measured under test conditions.
samvia said:
RoverP6B said:
samvia said:
There's our answer.
Watching a car's behaviour from behind can tell one rather more than the extremely numb controls of most modern performance cars...samvia said:
The Vanilla flavour 2002 E46 M3 sitting outside my window came with paddles and a sport button from the factory.
I stand corrected. Every non-CSL M3 I've seen has been manual. That said, I haven't devoted time to perusing the classifieds.NomduJour said:
RoverP6B said:
I've never noticed 911s struggling to find traction or composure in the way I have with Evos and GT-Rs
Stop digging, it's painful.J4CKO said:
The E39 has a seven inch longer wheelbase than a 350Z, dont think that is going to make a vast difference ?
That's a huge difference!J4CKO said:
Have you actually driven a 350Z, if you had you would find that they arent some lairy RWD thing, they will do that, which is a function of 300 bhp and a limited slip diff.
Not personally but known some people who have had them. Of course any powerful, torquey rear-driver will do oversteer. Even my 520i Touring could be persuaded to pull lurid smoky slides, although more power and an LSD would have been a big help.J4CKO said:
It is the Evo that has AYC, not the Golf R, it isnt generally regarded as a gimmick, it does magic stuff distributing torque to where it can be used, it isnt an ESP system there to save you, it is there to make the thing go round corners faster and does not apply brakes, read up on it.
Understood, will do. Proper torque redistribution sounds more interesting, though not my cup of tea...J4CKO said:
an Evo has a more sporting Bias, as in it is an out and out performance model, rather than an executive saloon with a biggish engine.
No, it's not merely a big-engined exec saloon. It's a biggish turbo-engined C-segment shopping trolley saloon with 4WD. It's still the same shell, floorpan and basic chassis as a dull-as-ditchwater Lancer...J4CKO said:
You mentioned the Saab earlier, again, have you driven one ? it is based on the Epsilon platform, which is similar to the Vectra, but the Saab was smaller and used many different components, not an inherently bad platform, a very rigid shell, passive rear wheel steer etc, very effective and capable, but not very enjoyable, it was too hard which made it slower in certain circumstances (ones where you dont want to piss blood) so I sort of get what you are saying, sometimes softer suspension, built in capability, higher profile tyres and no "sporting" pretensions can be quicker but an Evo is in a different league in terms of point to point speed.
I did test a 9-5 back when I was looking to replace my wife's Peugeot 205, back in 2002 (ended up in an E46 318i Touring - boy do I regret that). I just really wasn't too taken with it. It seemed nicely made in many respects, definitely better built than the E46, but I couldn't buy a car with torque steer, and there were odd bits that just screamed "cheap GM parts bin raid". I also prefer the rear axle to stay firmly located with the wheels parallel and perpendicular to the axle itself... if I want the rear end to move around, that's what the throttle and RWD are for. It always struck me that Saab spent a lot of money trying to sort out GM-imposed problems. Had they been given the freedom to develop their own rear-drive chassis, I'm sure it could have been spectacular. Unfortunately, the experiences of two friends with 9-5s rather put me off them - neither was reliable. No worse than my last two BMWs, though... and tonight the 535i dumped the contents of a washer bottle right onto the hot back end of the engine, resulting in a cloud of washer fluid vapour, including glycol... investigation revealed it's a simple hose joint leak, a 2-minute job to fix, just bloody annoying... touch wood it's been reliable otherwise so far... but the last two really have made me think that German reliability is a mythical oxymoron! I digress...Probably the quickest thing I've encountered cross-country recently was a Jaguar XJR (X350 generation), belting up through Somerset - lots of suspension travel, firmly damped, ultra smooth and tons of power. I left him behind somewhere in the vicinity of Yeovil as he pulled off to refuel, but, not ten minutes later, he was right back on my tail and passed easily. For all that I was doing a fairly constant 80mph, he just roared off into the distance and I soon lost sight of his tail-lights altogether. With both Jaguar 4WD models and Ian Callum's retirement imminent, I do wonder if perhaps a new generation of Jaguar 4WD performance cars could be forthcoming, giving both traditional Jaguar poise/compliance and the A-road pace of the GT-R...
tjlees said:
Nope. 435i would still really struggle. Turbo s is 1:09.6 round the dry handling circuit at autocar, and 435i is 1:18.2 where as even the new m5 is only 1:14.9. Again the lateral g for the turbo is 1.1g and the 435i is 0.97g. The GTR figures are similar to the turbo s.
Any modern m sport BMW would be left behind by the GTR/turbo s in the first few corners that require grip and performance - drivers being equal and measured under test conditions.
I never said 435i. I was talking about swapping one M6 for another.Any modern m sport BMW would be left behind by the GTR/turbo s in the first few corners that require grip and performance - drivers being equal and measured under test conditions.
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