Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Weight of Modern Sports Cars

[E M (pokiebaron]

Talking about weight, what's amazing, ok, really amazing, is I read most F1
cars are built several HUNDRED pounds "under" minimum weight, which allows
the engineers to add weight and make adjustments to handling where needed,
and bringing the car up to min weight requirements.

See, when Porsche was sticking bricks of lead in the front bumpers of ill
handling old 911s, what they were really doing was tuning the chassis with
then cutting edge F1 engineering. hee hee.

Ed
911SC

2008/11/30 Charles Perry <charles [at] carolina-sound.com>

> I was just reading Car and Driver's article on the new Nissan 370Z. They
> made the car considerably shorter and added all sorts of lightweight
> materials, and the result was a car nearly identical in weight to the
> outgoing 350Z.
>
> "Nissan's proud of holding the line, claiming that revised crash standards
> alone piled on about 100 pounds."
>
> That's amazing when you think about the fact that it's 100 pounds over all
> the crash standards that were already there - side impact beams, 5 mph
> bumpers, airbags in every direction, required tire pressure sensors,
> European pedestrian impact standards, etc.
>
> It would be an interesting design exercise to get someone like Gordon
> Murray to figure out what the lightest a car of certain dimensions could
> possibly be if you did nothing but get a driveable chassis with all the
> required safety equipment (no leather, radio, a/c, nav, power seats, power
> windows, etc). It would be an interesting figure to show Congress when
> they're playing with CAFÉ and other goofy legislation to show them just how
> much weight they and other regulatory agencies have added to the car and
> what impact that has on fuel consumption and emissions.
>
> -- charles
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