Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

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AmericanChopper

It’s only a bad idea for street cars because it makes them harder to drive. For performance, it’s an excellent idea. It gives you better rear wheel traction, and allows you to connect the engine directly to the rear differential. It also allows you to have a flat floor, which makes the cabin nicer, which I’m sure is something they care about.

They fact that they go very fast, and require more skill to drive at fast speeds means they end up killing more people. Porsche used to make incredible, no-compromise, road-legal track cars, with manual gearboxes and very little driver assist. But they’ve toned that down recently, and you’ll never see it from them again. The Porsche Carrera GT was probably the absolute pinnacle of supercar design. But it was very hard to drive, and got a reputation as one of the most dangerous production cars ever made. Killing quite a few people, including Paul Walker. Nobody will ever make anything like that ever again. A novice could take a Veyron around a track, but they’d probably struggle to drive a Carrera GT out of a car park.

The benefits are primarily from the better weight distribution and engine location in relation to the rear diff. The myth of fwd having superior driveability due to better traction is only real when comparing front engine to front engine, like a civic vs a mustang. With the weight in the rear, it’s the same thing in reverse. Oversteer is far more easy to correct but rwd is uncommon so the average joe may be unfamiliar.

WRT Porsche toning things down, a modern 911 turbo S is WAY faster than the Carrera GT was, and the GT3 / GT3-RS models are literally street legal road cars with minimal assists.

It’s not about how fast they are, it’s about how easy the car is to drive. A GT3 is a road car made with road car parts and road car features (even if you buy the ‘track’ add ons, or whatever they call them). It has ‘Porsche Stability Management’, a powerful driver assist, which among other things, is especially good at controlling oversteer. The Carrera GT doesn’t have that, so controlling oversteer is completely up to the driver. It also had the first production ceramic clutch, which was notoriously difficult to use. The tires and breaks of a Carrera GT also really needed to be at proper temperature to work properly.

I’ve driven both, on the street and around a track. I’m not exaggerating to say the average stick driver would struggle to start a Carrera GT and driver it a hundred feet without making the clutch scream. If you try drive fast in one, whether you drive into a tree or not is completely up to you. In a GR3 however, it’s gonna do a significant amount of that work for you.

FYI the Veyron is NOT rear engined like the 911. It's mid engined, like most super cars.[1]

That's what makes the 911 a weird and unusual car.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron

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