AORoads

-vet

When it comes to the new ME Corvette think about how Porsche does it with their marketing. Corvette will be more like Porsche in the sense that you can build a car with many more option choices. There will be at least 4 (four) body styles. The price will start off at a comfortable number for many and will climb with the body and options chosen so that many will be able to afford the new generation Corvette. There will also be some special models in the series that will challenge your spending power! Maybe even Luxor Blue will make a return.

rgregory

If Alfa Romeo can sell the 4C for $55k with a carbon fiber tub I don’t see any reason GM cannot keep the price inline with the current cars.

Dominic Sorresso

rgregory

Both would be good choice but I can imagine the Cayman would be more reliable in the long run. My only hangup with the cayman is the use of struts for the front suspension, 911s do too, not that they don’t work I just find struts to be a cheap suspension setup.

Dominic Sorresso

Jaye Bass

Hard to argue with the way a Cayman handles. Here is the suspension. Those castings do not look cheap nor does it look like a standard econobox set up.

rgregory

I said in my mind. I designed suspensions in college for FSAE racing which we did and back then we were the team to beat. Struts are an easy design that cannot do camber rejection, so cheap isn’t just about cost of parts but engineering effort to me. But it is the same design as the average econobox with just more beefy components.

But for the Boxter/911s it might also help for foot leg room since struts take up less room inward into the chassis.

Jaye Bass

There are other considerations than pure elegance to a successful design.

1. The simplest, cheapest design that fulfills the requirements is an "optimal" solution.

2. All of those cars, particularly the 911 have extreme packaging problems. There is crap everywhere in the body of a 911. Same for the Cayman/Boxster twins.

3. Caymans are among the best handling cars in the world, so hard to argue with the design.

4. Who knows, maybe the bean counters got involved.

5. The rear tires on a 911, carry way more load than the fronts so maybe struts are ok. Driving my 911's (I've owned a 964 and a 997), reminded me of my old sprint kart, where the feeling of grip came through the rear tires. Also no engine in the front.

6. Some combination of 1 - 5.

rgregory

I clearly said I just don’t like them, not that they don’t work. The car I race has struts in the front and after lots of development and testing different setups the car owner has that car handling amazing and I love racing it, but it also only weighs 2100 pounds.

Things that can be an issue with strut design/making it handle good is you Have to put in more negative camber for static since there is no camber rejection. This can lead to faster tire wear. I have been in Camans and didn’t even have to drive it to know I could tell the way the front end moved it would be a fun to drive car being an engineer just certain things can bother me about a design, no different than someone not liking the looks of a car.

Jaye Bass

Understand. I'm a Software Engineer so I get picky about other stuff.

BTW, I bet working on a good Formula SAE team musta been fun. Kid of a friend of mine went that route and eventually ended up working for Manor F1...have since lost track of him.

rgregory

It was fun but with basically 5 of of that did most of the work on the car I spent more time designing/building the car than I did on my engineering classes and it was for zero credit. We had the best handling car at the competition both years I went, even though down on power we set the fastest autocross Times.