Thinking of a Maserati Gran Turismo.....

[jakesmith]

Murph7355 said:

Yes.

The GT is 10cm wider than the Audi and getting on for 30cm longer! It's also around 150kg heavier. On the B and minor A roads I use these are key factors despite my Sport GT being around during 40bhp more powerful.

The Audi also has an exceptional 4WD system which inspires a lot of confidence.

These are the main differences, but they add up significantly point to point (straight lines, motorways etc will be a different story and they'd be quite evenly matched).

This is no shame on the GT as IME the RS4 is an incredibly quick point to point car that many cars would struggle keeping up with on smaller roads. And "GT" cars are better suited to sweeping A roads and motorways.

In its replacement Maserati really need to focus on weight. Paring down the width and length would be handy too, but not such that it cannot house 4 people.

You're spot on on the weight comment, its weight lets it down dynamically and is the cause of the expensive poor wear on the wishbone ball joints & bushings. Quite a lot of body roll in corners especially compared to my 997 before. I am not inspired cornering in in apart from on large dual carriageway roundabouts. As an aside there is an upgrade from a company called Formula Dynamics in USA for $1k US they do uprated sway bars that are supposed to dramatically decrease roll and reduce under steer, looks interesting although expensive & quite a lot of labor to fit apparantly

[Murph7355]

Speak English man - anti-roll bars

There is no such thing as a universal solution with suspension (and many other things). Just different compromises.

The GT works really well as....a GT I have no issue chucking it around to an extent, but that's not really what it's designed to do.

IMO designers are being lazy with weight. Current regs add complication to the design process, but I'm pretty sure if weight were a major objective that you could strip a couple of hundred kilos out of the GT with no real impact to the user. Except possibly a bit of extra cost.

I'll bet, however, that the new version isn't far off the current weight wise.

External dimensions are another bug bear. Sitting in the GT I have a good couple of inches spare to my right, and probably the same to my left. And I'm a larger athlete. Just 10cm (4in) makes a huge difference to the way a car can be peddled. So why not be more inventive?

Ironically Ferrari seem good at this and the penny seems to have dropped with them. The F12 is a little shorter and narrower and a lot lighter than what went before. Hopefully this will continue and some of it will rub off on its cousin