front wheel drive car beats M3 shocker

[ylee coyote]

Top gear tonight ..
stiggy boy took the sooped up alfa round quicker than the M3...could not stop laughing....

when are they (motoring pundits ) going to learn that rwd is not the answer...

[Bussman]

I saw that, jeremy was shocked
how about letting the "STIG" go around in your car Ylee!!
the Alfa only had 350bhp-ish IIRC

Paul

[TheFox]

Maybe we should hypnotise Jeremy into doing a Saab themed show.....

BTW Ylee- did you ever get Dyno results for your car?

[mark e]

What about those brakes on the McLaren Merc?

[markcanderson]

You mean these brakes??? .. he never caught me.

[jeremyfrost]

Which Alfa was it? I missed TG due to BBQ!

[mpen]

Loved that Merc, that was a beast

[TheFox]

Originally posted by JezF:
[qb]Which Alfa was it? I missed TG due to BBQ! [/qb][/b]

Autodelta modified 147GTA, approx 330bhp i think they said. V6 bored out to 3.7 litres from 3.2.

[jeremyfrost]

That's a fairly quick car, then! Though, I still think that lots of power through FWD is inferior to lots of power through RWD.

[IanD]

ylee,

I'm interested in your views about FWD compared with RWD. Can you explain a bit more as I must admit to being biased by many years of motorsport.

[mark e]

I think the point is that instead of adopting the line of "you can only make a powerful, well handling car if it's RWD" it would be nice to hear them acknowledge that you can get the balance right with FWD and that this car will be a lot easier/safer to driver for most folk...

As an example... mine is on the point of oversteer now in corners under power, so I guess we'll call that pretty neutral for a FWD

[ylee coyote]

the view is that you need rear wheel drive fortraction as on acceleration the weight is transfered backwards on rwd it helps traction on fwd it hinders
Now..
I watched a top gear /fifth gear/driven (cannot remember which ) where they raced a hond s2000 against a civic type r
same kind of weight and power

the result ..civic type r was the faster (by not much)

the point being ...for traction in steering braking in the real world fwd is better

My view is that rwd you get the leery tail slide when too much power is applied ..very spectacular
on fwd you smoke your tyres and go straight on ..not spectacular at all

but you have inherently better grip

there are techniques to get the best out of a fwd car but the pundits have not taken the time to learn them therefore they are biased towards rwd

[chris baillies]

My pet hates.. Pointless low powered RWD cars that can barely break traction, y'know, that compact thing people get for the badge The RWD 'advantages' are wasted in a car with so little power. (not that the old compact was any great shakes, handling wise...)

[TheFox]

FWD is safest for most people, but can also be fun in a sorted chassis.

The first 2 rear wheel drive cars scared me silly before i mastered a degree of control
( albeit one was a 160bhp Westfield , the other a 6.9 litre Mercedes 450 ).

I just could not believe how the Westfield would just understeer around corners unless you learnt to control the throttle, before, during and after the apex. In a front wheel drive car its more a case of not going in too fast etc. Very simplified terms, but hey, i have had enough fun on the public roads in FWD cars to put a grin on my face, and cant say that i miss opposite locking at every roundabout.

[potto]

Aye, when I was a youth we had a rotten old BMW 3.0 Si in the field with all our old 99s & v4s and now & again, on quiet nights we'd take it for a ride. Made a fun change to the Saabs but you wouldn't want to drive it all the time, it had a nasty habit of going into a bend with understeer, understeer, then suddenly massive oversteer. This coupled with over-light steering .

Mind you, I did eventually learn to drive it all the way round the field on opposite lock without it completely swapping ends