I was thinking tonight, if I had to choose between a great-handling gutless car and a hugely powerful crap-handling car, I'd pick great-handling-gutless almost every day of the week.

The End.

-Mirror

 

IB you just described an Acura comment followed by a rambling retort from SSFTSX

 

I agree to an extent. I enjoy the hp/torque of a car much more than going around a turn at 10 mph faster. I just love accelerating to speed as quickly as possible, but I do enjoy the twisties which is why I said "to an extent".

 

I would take a Challenger 392 over a Miata

 

Agreed.

 

+1

Most of my cars are tire smokers, but for pure enjoyment I love a sweet handling car.




Terry

 

+2.

 

You may go 10mph faster, but it feels so much faster. Getting pulled to the side by lateral G's is more fun to me than getting pushed back in your seat.

It provides more of an adrenaline rush, but then I've never been in a car that really pushed me back in my seat. Still I'll take a great chassis over hp.

 

look at the boxster, it has less horsepower but sticks to the road like miz to a female

 

The Cockster gets a drink poured over it, slapped on the bumper and gets kicked in the tire?

Followed by a restraining order to keep it away from said road.

 

+2 even more true for motorcycles. I have a little 500 Honda that weights ~430 lb all fueled up. Only has 68HP but is alot more fun to run in twisty roads than a 500+ lb bike.

Although today there are some liter sport bikes that weigh the same and have 160-170HP so in bikes you can have it all

 

I have to agree, which is ironic because I have an F-Body. My next car would ideally be an S2000, but I don't have a garage to put it in. Slim chance in hell that I'm going to leave it outside....

 

Lotus Elise > GT500 or Super Snake.

 

Whoa, whoa whoa..... when you're talking about the GT500 it's a totally different story. I will take my cake and eat it too, thank you. What other car from the factory can outrun a V10 R8 around a road course for $50k?

Certainly not an Elise, and probably not an Exige either for that matter. As much as I love both of those cars, that is like taking an Integra Type-R over an E46 M3 when you're talking performance.

 

you got that right.

 

I live by this philosophy...

 

Dunno, I never been in a really good handeling car, but I love it when a car just up and goes and goes and goes. I guess if I had to choose it would be Power over handeling, but if I had money, I'd just buy both.

 

I agree. Great handling cars are just fun to drive (period). I believe the success of cars like the 3 Series Bimmer hinge upon this very fact. Love or hate BMW, you have to admit they are fun to drive.

 

I didn't think the feeling of punching the shawd coming out of a turn could get much better.
Punching the Nova from a stand still wins.

The overall feeling is better in the TL, but it's a higher high in the Chevy.

 

To each their own. My comment was purley a different way of expression that I'd take a handling car over a power car. If you'd prefer I'll say Ariel Atom Supercharged > Veyron. I also personally don't care for cars whom use an inferior suspension design found in horse buggies from 100 years ago. With that said, different strokes for different fokes. I was told I caught about a foot of air the other day on an old access road we use "touge" on. That alone should give you an idea of how hard I drive my cars lol. Oh and btw, I doubt this is accurate but at Willow Springs just for the record a 3G TL-S driven by Tsuchiya out lapped a GT500 >.< lol wtf is up with that?!

 

i prefer HP over handling...simply because the majority of us will never get to experience the thrill of a racing track; taking a ramp faster than normal or cutting thru traffic doesn't count bec. almost any car can do that! besides, the majority of drivers out there push it to the metal every time from a red light or stop sign. heck, i get burned by priuses all day, every day!

 

 

and

While the CTS-V handles really well for a 4255-lb pig and would beat my S2000 on the drag strip, my S2000 handles....well, not quite like a go-cart, but as close to one as you can get in a 2800-lb little car. I don't care that I go 0-60 in *only* 5.2 seconds in the S, as it's so tossable.

You could also say the same thing about electronic nannies, of which the S2000 has few--the only ones on the S are ABS and power assisted steering.

(Note: All the nannies can be turned off on the V as well, but that is REALLY dangerous in the wrong hands.)

 

My wife's last car was a '96 328i which we bought in 1999. Soon there after, I bought a 2000 Ford SVT Contour. I can tell you flat out that the SVT Contour won every time for the sheer thrill of driving a sweet handling machine.

 

Yeah buddy.

And that baby looks great. Not nearly as quick as the 2011 Mustang GT, but still a very serious street machine.

 

My 318i was more fun than my 325i convertible.

Much less weight, the little 4 banger was super fun!

 

I miss my 88 Civic

 

The topic of this thread is one reason I love my Integra.

 

I dunno, it's a close one.

For a weekend warrior, it's hands down handling. I'd rather take a new Miata over say, a Mustang GT for a tight road course or a nice mountain road.

BUT, I live in a populated metro area, as many of you do. And metro areas don't have hairpin sweeps, or mountain roads. The roads here take the shape of a Viagra-induced boner. That's long and straight. Lots of 'em.

I'd love to say I'd appreciate a well-handling car, and I do. But count the number of times you go WOT, and compare it to the number of times you meet or exceed your car's handling limits. Even if my car had 500 horsepower, I bet the numbers would be greatly skewed in favor of using power more often.

The only places that there are turns of any significance around here are at intersections. Not the safest place to enjoy your car's chassis. Sure, occasionally we'll take a turn quickly, or need to avoid some debris on the road, and in times like that, a good-handling car would be nice to have.

Much more often though, we'll be trying to make that yellow light, have some fun on on-ramps, or pass a slow turd in the right lane. I do it every single day.

Sure, there are some aspects of a good chassis that you might be able to appreciate without taking a corner quickly. Lack of chassis flex, for example. But a very small amount of consumers (myself included) would notice this on a daily basis.

For a fun car, or track racer, superior chassis over horsepower for sure. For a DD, power is the name of the game.

 

I would try to get the best of both worlds...like a M3...that would have a little bit of everything.

 

Including the ownership costs!


(out of warranty)

 

Well said. There aren't a lot of canyons to carve around here.

But since you mentioned it...a Mustang GT could be a pretty good blend of power and handling.

 

The thing I really like about cars that handle well is they are usually pretty light. Therefore, you dont need alot of power for it to still be somewhat exciting in a straight line.

Case in point:



This one just happens to have this under the hood

 

That's funny because his favorite car of all time, the '86 Corolla uses the same "horse buggy" suspension design as the GT500. And I've seen that episode, that happened to be the older, iron-block GT500... again, the new aluminum-block GT500 is even faster than a V10 R8 despite the horse buggy suspension design. I'm not surprised by the 3G TL-S's performance though, I don't remember what track it was on but it was found to outlap an M3 also, though at the same time Best Motoring, along with Tsuchiya himself have shown a ton of bias for Japanese cars.

I personally would choose a supercharged Atom over a Veyron also, but then again I've never really liked the Veyron at all. To each his own indeed. But just know that the 2011+ GT500 is no slouch, regardless of any 'ancient' technology it uses.

 

For some reason, I knew a vtec Mini would come up in this thread.

 

+3 (Or whatever the count is)

Although I do not have any performance vehicles, I enjoy the RSX much much more than the nose heavy, torque steering useless power of the Max. The TSX is a nice combination but way underpowered by todays standards.

 

I'll take a mixture of both.

 

The only good Ford is the GT...or anything that came from Ford UK. GT500 might be fast, and I know they went to a lighter aluminum block now in 2010 but its still not my cup of tea. If I want to go fast straight I'll take a 900whp MKIV Supra since its practically what they were built for unintentionally.

Fwiw, I don't know if you follow the Castrol Top Car Challenge, but they recently had an event at Willow Springs. The 5.0 Mustang GT500, believe it was an iron block one, and a convert. with a bunch of bolt ons making something like 650hp ran a 2:06. S2000 with suspension, intake and exhaust ran a 2:00. Whats even more impressive is that a supercharged 500hp widebody E46 M3, 650whp MKIV Supra and bolt on GT-R all ran 1:56-1:59's. Way too many twisty roads around here to pass up a nice handling machine and I drive on them way too much to pass it up. That and imo over 300whp in a 2wd car is a waste on the street

 

anyone can go fast in a straight line, it's the corners that count

 

I think it's a little misleading also when you compare just chassis and horsepower. Chassis and powertrain is more like it.... I can't stand it when a car has an engine with no balls that sounds like a weed whacker and has a rough notchy, yet loose shifter. They're both equally as important, otherwise many of us would be driving Miatas or another similar car, and even then the Miata has an amazing shifter.

I think very few of us would be happy with the engines in our cars hypothetically having 2 fewer cylinders, no matter how good they handle.

lol, Supras. Power is one thing, racing mainly from a roll is another thing. Add aftermarket modifications and what I assume are amateur drivers and that's a bunch of variables that are hard to account for. I'd like to see how well the 2011+ GT500 hardtop would do, but that's another story... I just remembered, the 2011 GT500 went around VIR a full 8 seconds faster than the 2010 GT500 did, to be exact, despite only getting an increase of 10 horsepower.

and I can't dispel any biases you have so we'll just have to agree to disagree.