People looking to get performance oriented sports cars are usually bombarded with figures. Of course, the common statistical figures would be Horse Power, Torque, acceleration, top speed, engine type and engine layout.
Most usually consider HP, acceleration rate, and top speed to determmine which car is "good". It is something like a "power centric" basis for judging.
But then again, power is only one part of the performance equation. For a sports car to be really 'good', it needs to handle well. An ill-handling car prohibits the driver from being able to utilize all the power that a car can give.
For a car to handle well, it has to be balanced and stable. When it comes to stability, weight distribution is important.
Hence, the weight distribution from the front and the back of the car has to be as close as possible. Too much weight in the front, the car would have a tendency to understeer. To much weight at the back, then you could suffer the 'pendulum effect' wherein the rear end wants to shoot forward in the middle of a corner.
When it comes to weight distribution, a mid-engine layout usually provides the ideal result. This is because the engine is easily makes up a huge chunk of the over all weight of the car. Having the engine mounted more towards the middle of the car makes it easier to 'centralize' the weight.
The ideal weight distribution of a car would be a 50/50 percent weight distribution. The mid-engined Audi R8 provides a 44/56 percent weight distribution. The result is that it handles really well.
Of course, a low center of gravity also adds to the stability. This is the reason why performance oriented sports cars are designed to be closer to the ground then the average car. A low center of gravity decreases the possibility of a roll during quick cornering.
A boxer/flat engine aids to the pursuit of having a lower center of gravity. This is because a boxer engine has horizontally opposed cylinders: hence it was termed as 'flat'. Again, because the engine makes a huge portion of the car's overall weight, a shorter engine (because of the flat layout) naturally leads to a lower center of gravity.
In addition of a lower center of gravity, a boxer engine also provides a better balance. Since the cylinders are opposed horizontally, the movement of the pistons counterbalance each other during the combustion cycle.
One of the notable sports cars that utilizes a flat engine would be the Porsche 911.
Other sports cars use both a mid-engine layout as well as a flat engine configuration such as the Porsche Boxster and the Porsche Cayman S.
No comments:
Post a Comment