anyone else see this article
in the august '04 issue of motortrend?
i have to say,
i'm a bit disappointed
that the RS8 kit doesn't do more
to distinguish the car
from the RS, the ST170 and the SVT.
if i'm going to spend $100k on a car,
i sure wouldn't want people to mistake it
for a $20k car.
the thing that shocked me the most,
was that even with the transition
from front drive to rear drive,
and the HP increase from 170 to (wait for it) 450(!),
the engineers didn't see a need
to increase the rear wing size
from the original RS dimensions
(only fractionally larger than the SVT wing).
____________________ it is smarter to be lucky
than
it is lucky to be smart.
My guess is that the wing size doesn't mean much. On most cars, wings don't come into play until really high speeds 80-90 mph +. I don't know how much driving you do at those speeds, but for me, truthfully, it's probably less than 1%. If you are doing it just for appearances, well...
I liked the RS8 just as it was. It's the ultimate sleeper. Keep the noise down, and wait for some jerk-off in a Camaro to pull along side you at a light, point at you, and laugh.
____________________ If you can't read this, you're illiterate.
Mr. Versatile wrote: My guess is that the wing size doesn't mean much. On most cars, wings don't come into play until really high speeds 80-90 mph +. I don't know how much driving you do at those speeds, but for me, truthfully, it's probably less than 1%. If you are doing it just for appearances, well...
I liked the RS8 just as it was. It's the ultimate sleeper. Keep the noise down, and wait for some jerk-off in a Camaro to pull along side you at a light, point at you, and laugh.
i'd rather not say
how much time i spend
driving at those kinds of speeds,
and i haven't even -seen- a camaro
since i left nj in the late 80's.
;>
i don't know if i'd go so far
as to call the RS8 a sleeper
with those rims, brake calipers etc.
its pretty clearly a tuner car of some sort,
even if you don't know just how powerful it is.
the main reason i bring all this up at all,
though,
is the never-ending debate
about whether or not
large wings on cars
are a performance mod or an aesthetic mod.
i think the fact
that Ford's engineers have produced
a rear-drive car with a massive power plant
that only requires 5 or 6 inches of wing
(whether for heavy cornering at speed
or for 100+mph straights)
pretty well puts the nail in the coffin
on the idea
that you need a 13 inch wing
on anything slower than an F3000 car.
____________________ it is smarter to be lucky
than
it is lucky to be smart.
For what it's worth, the numbers that Motor Trend showed were a bit incorrect. They had a throttle cable problem with the Gallardo, which supressed quite a few of the numbers on that. I've seen consistent skidpad numbers on the gallardo that put it above 1g on the skidpad, where as the gallardo did poorly by Motor Trend. So I'm thinking that Motor Trends had a bug. But yes, there wasn't a need to increase the wing, because it wouldn't have functionally made a difference. And from SVT engineer data, the SVT wing is part of the appearance package on the SVT and not performance. So that should dispel the myth that bigger wing on car necessarily means better.
thank you,
sorry,
i should have made that more clear,
i guess.
it was intended as a follow up
to some discussion from a week or so ago
about large wings.
But yes, there wasn't a need to increase the wing, because it wouldn't have functionally made a difference. And from SVT engineer data, the SVT wing is part of the appearance package on the SVT and not performance. So that should dispel the myth that bigger wing on car necessarily means better.
on the SVT this doesn't surprise me.
i'd love to see some data
on why the rear-drive version doesn't need any wing
for performance reasons,
especially for cornering.
i wonder if its not light enough
to have manual grip concerns in the corners.
____________________ it is smarter to be lucky
than
it is lucky to be smart.
