Visibility matters more than horsepower: TMIW
You can have all the power in the world but if you can't see what you're doing with it...
All of the above are useful. But totally wasted without good visibility.
Drive an older car, be it an 80s hot hatch or performance saloon or perhaps a 90s sports car or rally rep and it's likely the first thing that will strike you is not how supposedly outdated they feel. But how well you can see out of them. Many are smaller too, of course. But size, ultimately, isn't the issue with modern vehicles. It's being able to see out of them.
This was brought home to me the other day, albeit at more modest speeds. The car park closest to PH Towers is a typical town centre multi-storey, clearly designed before cars piled on the pounds, adopted kerb-hungry alloys, tall beltlines, thick pillars and all the other things that make everyday manoeuvres such a stress. Navigating this car park in even a modestly sized hot hatch - recent PH Fleet examples like the Civic Type R and Focus RS spring to mind - demands Jedi-like spatial awareness. Or blind trust in the bleepers.
Then last week I was down to the office in my Forester and breezed in, through and out of the same car park without even a hint of the clammy palms I've had in the above. The Forester isn't a small car by any stretch. But I could see out of it. Zen-like calm prevailed.
Now apply the same logic to a B-road, at what we'll describe as 'fast road' pace. I had a taster session of police-style driving training a while back and the main thing I took away from it was reading the road and planning ahead. Maximising your line of sight through subtle alterations to road position can have huge benefits for this, improving both safety and enjoyment. Win-win.
But naff-all use if you're trying to peer around a massive A-pillar, only to find the front quarter of the side window filled with an equally enormous mirror. This, combined with quick steering and a very stiff chassis, is one of the reasons I moaned about the Focus RS last week. Even with that lofty seating position everyone moans about it's not an easy car to see out of or place accurately, robbing you of the subtle ability to position the car and exploit its unique dynamic abilities through the turns. And leaving little but point-and-squirt bursts of acceleration between them.
Same has happened with 911s. Drive a 3.2, a 964 or a 993 and you'll be amazed at how accurately you can place the car thanks to the upright screen, narrow pillars and the very obvious extremities afforded by the upright front lights. A 991 is a bigger car - especially in widebodied C4 or Turbo form - but it's the loss of visual connection with the surroundings that robs you of more confidence than the car's physical size. Same goes for 'my' F-Type Coupe - its (considerable) size and weight are less limiting factors when it comes to enjoying an inspiring stretch of road than inability to place it accurately.
There are two main reasons for this of course, the primary one being safety legislation that requires rollover protection to rival a fully-caged rally car. And I'd never begrudge that. It works both ways though; encouraging a sense of invulnerability (or, perhaps, blind confidence) isn't always a good thing. And when you look at those spindly pillars in older cars you can't escape the sense you really, really wouldn't want to rely on their protection.
Fashion is also to blame, the raked windscreens and chopped window profiles applied to even regular hatchbacks and crossovers meaning you can't drive them without a full suite of electronic bleepers to warn you of the things you can no longer see.
There are some noble exceptions to the rule though. Colour me predictable but the fourth-generation MX-5 is one of them. Those peaks on the wings look weird in profile but, from the driver's seat, are actually aligned with an imagined line drawn from the kingpins around which the front wheels pivot. Meaning when you look through the corner and turn the wheel your line of sight is subconsciously linked with the action of steering and where you're placing the car. The standard MX-5 might not have much horsepower on paper. But on the road that kind of thing is worth much more.
At the other end of the scale McLaren seems to understand the value of good visibility too. Drive a 570S or a 650S along a B-road and you'd swear they were little bigger than an Elise or Exige. When in fact both are over two metres wide, making this measurement of on-road footprint near-as-dammit the same as a Range Rover Sport SVR. Weirdly that ability to appreciate your surroundings also extends to enjoying the cars at a speed (relatively) sympathetic to the public highway too. Credit due also to the new Honda NSX in this regard, skinny but strong '3DQ' steel tubes used to reinforce the pillars to meet safety tests while keeping them slim for visibility. Smart design and clever engineering can, it seems, satisfy all the requirements when required.
I'd like to see more of the clever folk involved in building modern cars get to use their skills to this end. Or maybe I'm wrong and should just learn to love the parking bleepers, blind spot assistance systems, reversing cameras and all the rest of the gizmos we now seem duty bound to rely on in lieu of actually being able to see out of our cars.
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I had a MK.I MX5 for ages and the pop-up headlights were actually really great aids when placing the car. Couple that with tiny A-pillars and it was fantastic - ignoring the fact it is an easy car to drive, you felt drawn to lining things up properly.
Same with the current RX8 I have, the wheel arches come up to a point which can be seen left and right from the driver's seat which again causes you to subconsciously line things up - that said, the A-pillars in the '8 could be a little smaller IMHO...
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