-hh
Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC wrote:

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
On 2/20/14, 18:14, -hh wrote:

-hh
Lloyd Parsons wrote:

Lloyd E Parsons
Like a wife and kids and the 'vacation' trip. I can tell you if they are in the car on a long trip, a performance car isn't going to impress them at all!

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
My girlfriend routinely throws up no matter if I'm in A4 wearing sport suspenders on in my beater. The wife is considerably more resistant than that.

-hh
Maybe its you ;-)

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
Me thinks 'performance' mimention is completely orthogonal to the 'family' dimension ...

-hh
Not at all: what's happening is that you're making certain assumptions about what "performance" means. For some, it could be all about 0-60mph and handling, but for others, it could be about cargo carrying capacity (including people as 'cargo'). There's no right/wrong answer because there is no one single unified definition.

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
...as bmw have prooven with their (fun to drive) X5 and X6 macrovans.

-hh
YMMV on what constitutes "fun": I've unfortunately seen too many flaming assholes driving X5's in a highly unsafe fashion. The most recent gross example was last summer on I-95 North in Philadelphia: the X5 was trying to "beat" a Panamera in congested traffic and taking recklessly stupid risks...and that's even before considering how much body roll the chassis was undergoing at 80+mph velocities. Seems that the worst of the worst choose Russian Black as their color, too.

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
A4 have relatively soft suspensers (soft enough to make me swear nearly evry time I taxi as my apartment complex taxiways over the lying cops and hit the cops with the undercarriage). But it retains composure taking turns. I dunno if it got swaybars worthy of a teenage hardon or what, but it's not your average buick boat rolling into every turn no matter how mildly taken. And it does not squat on starts. And it does not dive during braking. Go figure out how zee Germans managed those feats.

-hh
The A4 does some, as will any vehicle that doesn't have a dynamically controlled active suspension technology. In any event, your option on Buicks as being sloppy old boats is a dated one; in fact, the model that Lloyd bought _has_ a German designed suspension system courtesy of Opal which isn't shabby. True, might not be as sharply turned as others, but the old high seas "Boat" paradigm is dead.

Well, even the 'Family Car' can have some degree of "performance" fun ... I can recall riding in the back seat of a '69 Ford Falcon station wagon as Dad drove us on a hot lap around Daytona ... yeah, this was just a few decades ago, back when the general Public was still allowed to drive up, pay $2 [IIRC] and take their own car out on the track, no questions asked.

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
Whatever happened to those $2 track rides in the states, laweyrs? Or it just got considereably more expensive with "track days"?

-hh
No idea.

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
I wonder how affordable it's for zee Germans at the Nurburngring(sp?)

-hh
I believe that the Nürburgring is still open to the public for DIYs...per their website, its now EURO 27 per lap.

Around we go..."Honey, I've had it floored the whole time since we left the Pits; we're doing ~110mph".

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
That's not far off what you can pull in an normally aspirated (jap) four banger these days.

-hh
Its a completely different age. I'm sure that the aerodynamics on that old beast weren't much better than a brick wall, and 110 was about the limit it could do, even though it had a small block V8 (302, which today is 5L).

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
...Typically top speeds...in my A4 1.8T redline and drag (miraculously or by design?) converge somewhere in the neighbourhood of 130mph (something to be said about germans here as well). Need a better autobahn to figure out if I can eke it much past that.

-hh
An A4 with the 1.8T would have been an older one. In any event, it probably would have had a speed limiter on it for the USA market of 132mph, which is just about what it is capable of too (yes, nicely matched). I had a Passat Touring w/1.8T in Germany a few years ago and the highest that I got it on a 'Bahn was an indicated 137mph (after conversion) while going downhill. On the flats, it dropped back to around the same 130 and uphill it was lower still.

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
So all I'm saying is that germans and americans have been building cars for about the same car but somehow the former managed to produce benchmark to strive for the latter have managed to produce fuck knows what. At least below $50k.

-hh
There's actually quite large differences in the markets that they sell in, and what's quite common is that the USA doesn't see the "Cheap" part of the German Automakers' product lines.

For example, VW Polo, Audi A2, A1, Mercedes B Class, A Class.

Brake Dive, Acceleration Squat, Body Roll Works LLC
Must've been their own way to say "fuck you poor people" on that side of the pond. Well, there is no shortage of piss poor folk saying "well, fuck you too big three in detrua I'm getting a fucking civic for 'performance' ".

And so the detroit went into the great abyss...

-hh
Another different market forces issue. Detroit has consistently gotten burned by their reliance on big vehicles for the cheap fuel of the USA market...but they also rode this wave too, such as through SUVs: the original Ford Eddie Bauer Edition of the Explorer returned IIRC $15K/unit profits to the OEM, which was roughly 20x more than what they were clearing on their sedans. Naturally, marketing followed to where they were making higher profit margins, so the message became that the consumer really should aspire to own nothing less than a big honking SUV. There was also magnification of this marketing in subtexts of "little cars = dangerous" and "4WD for Winter" to also prompt people to spend more due to what was essentially a fear campaign. And as you can see, there's still some who believe every part of that marketing message, hook line and sinker.