Bikes, trains, cars etc

[johnm]

The ugliest car in the history of motoring is the current Rolls Royce. he only stipulation in y will about the funeral is that the hearse isn't one of those. I'd rather go in a skip lorry

[Rob P]

It's actually 'bloated' quite a bit less than a certain krautmobile that has its engine in a very odd place.

Assuming your coy little 'certain krautmobile' refers to the 911 variants can I query why you feel it is relevant to drag this into the conversation since:

1) It is possibly one of the ugliest cars on the market and makes no claim to effete prettiness?

2) It never pretended to be a lightweight sportscar and still doesn't.

Rob P

[Vince C]

Assuming your coy little 'certain krautmobile' refers to the 911 variants can I query why you feel it is relevant to drag this into the conversation?

Irelevant? That was you, Rob (bloating ref.). Do keep up! Watch your '6' and you'll see the carp you leave.

[Pete S]

Vince/Rob:

That's more like it:

More please

[Rob P]

My pleasure Peter.

To help it along Vince might like to outline how, when he and his chums are discussing the appearance of what he would doubtless call "a certain Japanese sportscar", it is irrelevant to mention that with each succeeding model it has got both bigger and less aesthetically appealing?

Anyway I must get on. Need to go and teach a group of car salesmen about the presentation of "a certain Japanese C-segment model that doesn't have an engine at all"

Rob P

[Sir Morley Steven]

[Vince C]

Better teach them that if they do put an engine in it, somewhere behind the back wheels is not a good position. They should go look at an MX5 - 50/50 weight distributiuon, you know (or should by now!).

[Keef]

Are we sure 50/50 is the correct weight distribution? When Rod was doing the 4WD Sierra Cosworth and setting up the LSDs etc, he did a load of testing on that and came up with some precise stuff - and it wasn't 50/50. Maybe the engineering and physics changed in the meantime, but it's probably still "classified" commercial information.

[Vince C]

I don't see why it shouldn't be, Keef. With a 2-seater you can arrange it so the driver and pax sit on the cg so don't affect the fore-to-aft weight distribution. You can see when a designer is serious about mass distribution and polar moments - the brake calipers, for instance, will all be inboard (ie the front ones will be on the back of the disc, the back ones on the fronts of the disc). It amuses me to see some 'performance' cars with red-painted calipers (so drawing attention to them) which are not mounted inboard!

Of course, if you then bolt the engine on the very back of the car, none of this matters!

[Rob P]

Because, at the end of the day, the 50/50 little car will still be a diminishing dot in the rear-view mirror.

There's no real substitute for horses

Rob P

[Vince C]

Nope!

[Colonel Panic]

There's no real substitute for horses Rob P

If that was the case then we'd all be driving around in TVR Cerberas

[Foie Gras]

It's actually 'bloated' quite a bit less than a certain krautmobile that has its engine in a very odd place.

Here's the Telegraph's take on top 20 ugly cars. The PT is in there.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/275 ... -20-1.html

I don't agree with them all, but there are some real munters in there. Hardly surprised to see teh Fiat Multipla there at #2, but happy to see the Aztec as #1.

In 2004 we did a 3 week driving photography holiday from Las Vegas to San Francisco. We were given one of these as the rental vehicle and we dubbed it 'Ugly Truck'. After 3 weeks of driving, I can report that it has no redeeming features: ugly, gutless, uncomfortable, handles like an Allegro and useless off road in the desert. As we were driving through Napa, I started waving (ironically) at other Ugly Truck drivers....and they waved back, beaming with pride in the shared ownership of this piece of carp. In hindsight, I wonder if they were just waving in a kindred spirit of shared
misfortune.



FG

[Yankee-K]

There's no real substitute for horses Rob P

If that was the case then we'd all be driving around in TVR Cerberas

Yes please

[Keef]

I don't see why it shouldn't be, Keef. With a 2-seater you can arrange it so the driver and pax sit on the cg so don't affect the fore-to-aft weight distribution.

I wouldn't know: I'm not a vehicle engineer, but Rod is, and he did the research to find the best weight and power distribution. It wasn't 50/50. He's not around to explain it now, but he gave me a briefing before the programme went for approval, and I remember words like "transfer under acceleration" and "... under braking". I drove the test cars with different setups, and the handling was certainly interesting with some of them. 3 LSDs (front, rear, split) made for some spirited handling at full chat.

There may be a vehicle engineer around (I know there's at least one on the forum) who can explain it properly.

There was discussion about inboard versus outboard brakes, too. As I recall, the problem with inboard ones was associated with CV joints.