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I don't believe the whole frame flex story on the C8 either. In 2018, engineers have every available tool at their disposal and are heavily focused on high frame stiffness in any car they build. It's absolutely not even slightly hard to design a frame that resists flex. If they were really that incompetent, then we can go ahead and consider the C8 stillborn, because it will take at least 2-3 years to redesign it and by then the market will be dried up.
Also, it doesn't matter one bit how much power is being sent through it. The thing that twists a frame is torque, not power (yes, I said that). The amount of actual torque that a drivetrain can put through the frame is limited by traction, not power. A stock C4 can spin the tires in first gear, so that's the amount of twisting force that must be resisted by the frame. You can add more power and create that same traction-limited force at a higher speed, but you still can't exceed the twisting force that the tires can harness.
So to recap, the C8 will still be traction-limited in lower gears just like any other car, and there's no way that engineers created a frame that's less stiff than even a C4's frame. This is all just marketing BS leaked by GM to gin up interest in a 1000hp C8. And give them credit: it's working.
I think it's similar to the ZR-1 rumors of overheating during it's development. Someone heard something, misunderstood it and published it as "frames cracking".
BTW, the new car frame could be stiffer than the C4 and still crack if it's not strong enough. But the biggest problem with the rumor is that the powertrain isn't going to exert twisting forces on the frame, in a meaningful way.
Originally Posted by MRPVette
If I wanted a rear engine car a Corvette would not be the car I would buy.
No worries there....Chevy isn't making a rear engine'd car.
I was really hoping the C7 would look like a Jaguar E type when it was in the design stage. IMO, one of the best looking cars ever made. It's the reason I bought a C4, has the long nose and clamshell hood. The C8 will look like every other ME car on the market, and a bit more under-engineered than the others.
I have always loved those cars since I was a little boy. I even have a Hotwheel of one on my desk. A timeless classic. I remember when you could find them in fair shape cheap but not any more. Those days are long gone sadly.
Agree the E Type is gorgeous, but every British car I've owned or come up against has been an electrical nightmare over time/ If someone came up with a totally new wiring system for them that actually worked, I'd consider them. Until then - nope and have had a couple of chances over the years.
Painless wiring custom makes harnesses for those cars. They are easy to install and seem to fix the electrical issues those cars have.
There is a columnist in our local paper that writes about lots of issues in the area. He has really had has claws into the local TV preacher (the one that Robin Williams modeled his routine after).
Sunday's column was on scope creep and how engineer's are building technology into cars, not because they should, but because they could. He cited an example of the car that turns the wheel back if you are moving left or right and don't have the blinkers on. He had it happen to him and then the lead on was what about dodging the moon craters that are appearing on Ohio roads or other hazzards you have to dodge and the car then steers you right back into the obstruction. He wrote about distracted driving, due to all the gizmos, heads up displays taking away your focus, etc.
The more complex that GM (and the others) work at making these cars, the more chance there is for setbacks and f-ups to occur.
In the IT world, projects always fought against scope creep. In fact, as you are reading this, you have evidence of scope creep in front of you. If you read all (or almost all) the posts here in the C4 forum area, you will see mentions of hidden key combinations that will erase all you have typed. We had issues where "associated threads/zombie threads" were inadvertantly being brought back to life and posted in. That is scope creep. Someone "thought" it would be a good idea.
How many of you have turned that "good idea" off in your control panel ?
I guess I'm the odd man out here. In today's supercar market, mid-engine is the norm for many reasons and GM is doing there best to do what they've always done and that's stay in the game with the Corvette. After all, what was the great news about the C4 when it came out? It beat the Ferrari.
I'll be excited to see it launch. Could very well be another "World take notice" event.
There is a columnist in our local paper that writes about lots of issues in the area. He has really had has claws into the local TV preacher (the one that Robin Williams modeled his routine after).
Sunday's column was on scope creep and how engineer's are building technology into cars, not because they should, but because they could. He cited an example of the car that turns the wheel back if you are moving left or right and don't have the blinkers on. He had it happen to him and then the lead on was what about dodging the moon craters that are appearing on Ohio roads or other hazzards you have to dodge and the car then steers you right back into the obstruction. He wrote about distracted driving, due to all the gizmos, heads up displays taking away your focus, etc.
The more complex that GM (and the others) work at making these cars, the more chance there is for setbacks and f-ups to occur.
In the IT world, projects always fought against scope creep. In fact, as you are reading this, you have evidence of scope creep in front of you. If you read all (or almost all) the posts here in the C4 forum area, you will see mentions of hidden key combinations that will erase all you have typed. We had issues where "associated threads/zombie threads" were inadvertantly being brought back to life and posted in. That is scope creep. Someone "thought" it would be a good idea.
How many of you have turned that "good idea" off in your control panel ?
Good points. Auto makers are putting way too much into new cars, they seem to be driving (no pun intended) toward everyone being asleep at the wheel.
The see the downside to this take a look at the Boeing 737 MAX. It should be against the law to override driver inputs!
Most (not all, but most) of the 28 years that I spent in IT was chasing other people's mistakes in the software that they wrote. I made a decent living at it the last few years that I worked. Other people make a FANTASTIC living just looking for security flaws in software, very FANTASTIC. (I capitalised it on purpose to signify high 6 if not into the 7 or 8 position numbers before the decimal point type of annual living). Had I had a college degree to say I was smart would have change a good living into something else.
But the point is, people write software and it is buggy. Sometimes it takes just the right set of conditions to set up an irrecoverable error. I once spent 3 months chasing a bug to only change 1 line of code that had the capacity to cost a well-known but unnamed bank millions.
Once I fixed it and explained the issue to the programmers of the company that owned the software (it was Fidelity Investments) (the bank leased it) they told me that they "Never thought of that condition". I also was sent to class by the bank to study what the new enhancements that was planned for the software. Sitting in class I realized that they got off on a tact that did not take into account how IBM was configuring mainframes in the real world. I reported back to management and to them what they were doing wouldn't work. Shortly after that, the division of Fidelity shut down the project and went out of business. They were too far down the line to recover.
If you take buggy engineering software and people that have never got dirt under their nails that can realize what they are seeing is "real world" wrong, debacles happen and people get killed.
And yet our safety records for both vehicles and commercial aviation are leaps and bounds better now than they were in past decades. As imperfect as automation can be, it almost always outperforms humans. I recall some of these same conversations being had when ABS first came out.
Also, to those who have issues with the C8 being a mid-engined car...I don't get it at all. The Corvette concept never had "front engine" or "front-mid-engine" baked into it. In fact, it's well documented that the father of the Corvette, Duntov, wanted it to be mid-engined from the get-go. You could easily make the case that the C8 will be the first true Corvette, since it's the first one that actually fulfills the vison of the Corvette's originator! As far as I can tell, from an architecture standpoint we've been on the cusp of this since the C5 came out, with its transaxle and awkward rear-heavy proportions. Other than the engine, the C5-7 doesn't seem to share much with the rest of the GM product line anymore. So why would anyone object if GM finally moves the engine where it ideally should be. The Corvette is likely taking yet another major leap forward! Be happy.
And yet our safety records for both vehicles and commercial aviation are leaps and bounds better now than they were in past decades. As imperfect as automation can be, it almost always outperforms humans. I recall some of these same conversations being had when ABS first came out.
Also, to those who have issues with the C8 being a mid-engined car...I don't get it at all. The Corvette concept never had "front engine" or "front-mid-engine" baked into it. In fact, it's well documented that the father of the Corvette, Duntov, wanted it to be mid-engined from the get-go. You could easily make the case that the C8 will be the first true Corvette, since it's the first one that actually fulfills the vison of the Corvette's originator! As far as I can tell, from an architecture standpoint we've been on the cusp of this since the C5 came out, with its transaxle and awkward rear-heavy proportions. Other than the engine, the C5-7 doesn't seem to share much with the rest of the GM product line anymore. So why would anyone object if GM finally moves the engine where it ideally should be. The Corvette is likely taking yet another major leap forward! Be happy.
I still vote for not taking control from the driver.
Example: Driver sees something at his right and makes a sharp turn left. The code sees that the left turn will spin the vehicle and counteracts the driver's input. Bad idea.
Real world: I live on a busy street and have a dirt driveway. During rush hour I hit the gas on my 93 C4 to get out in traffic. If I don't do it just right and the wheels spin, the throttle overrides my foot setting and goes to idle, this is close to the time the car has lurched into the traffic lanes (I keep forgetting to turn TC off), luckily the throttle blip doesn't last too long. Not a good condition to have.
Or a chunk of debris in the road, or, like what happened to me years ago, a child came out of the dark on his bicycle into the road.
He was riding in a ball field, the parents were having a party outside, drinking, carrying on, not watching the kid (I turned around to come look). It took me all the way to the other side of the road to keep from killing him.
Today's nanny cars that jerk you back would have killed that little boy.
The aren't a vast enough array of sensors, or fast enough acting systems to properly manage "all situations"....and so when the car don't know what to do....it flops. And the driver is not in control.
Try driving almost any late model in snow w/ poor tires to illustrate what I'm talking about. With poor tires in snow, you CAN manipulate an older/manual car to do what you want it to do. A modern car w/controls intervening? NFW. Won't do it...and there's nothing you can do about it.
And yet our safety records for both vehicles and commercial aviation are leaps and bounds better now than they were in past decades. As imperfect as automation can be, it almost always outperforms humans. I recall some of these same conversations being had when ABS first came out.
Also, to those who have issues with the C8 being a mid-engined car...I don't get it at all. The Corvette concept never had "front engine" or "front-mid-engine" baked into it. In fact, it's well documented that the father of the Corvette, Duntov, wanted it to be mid-engined from the get-go. You could easily make the case that the C8 will be the first true Corvette, since it's the first one that actually fulfills the vison of the Corvette's originator! As far as I can tell, from an architecture standpoint we've been on the cusp of this since the C5 came out, with its transaxle and awkward rear-heavy proportions. Other than the engine, the C5-7 doesn't seem to share much with the rest of the GM product line anymore. So why would anyone object if GM finally moves the engine where it ideally should be. The Corvette is likely taking yet another major leap forward! Be happy.
A few points. Duntov was NOT the father of the Corvette. He has turned into a lot more of a mythical figure than he was in reality. He did some good things, but let's not overstate his importance. There are countless people who have better claims to that title, and did more for corvette.
I can ALREADY buy a mid engine car if I want to. Audi, Alfa, Porsche, and other exotics will all sell me a car like that, and I'm only limited by my wallet. And if my wallet allows it, a Corvette isnt where my money will land if I can afford something with more prestige
Corvette is one of the few remaining successful cars like it. The closest thing to a vette on the market would be the aston vantage? Not many other 2 seat red coupes left.others left. I guess I could step down to a pony car, but why would I do that?
GM makes a LOT of money selling traditional Corvettes. People havent stopped buying them, not has Corvette stopped pushing the performance envelope. The C7 ZR1 is probably the 2nd fastest semi normal production car in the world, bested only by a 2wd 300k Porsche GT2 RS.
There is no business case to switch to ME. Maybe to offer a special edition, but not a replacement. ME cars are often dismal sales flops, look at NSX, or the new Porsche 718s, or a host of exotics. The packaging of these cars is just not practical for people to use.
We should all hope, both for Corvette, GM, and Bowling Green's sake that whatever mod engine car is a special edition car that will be sold alongside the normal Corvette, not a replacement.
Let's be really careful how we generalize about these driver nannies. They don't override the driver's intent - they only override the loss of control the driver would induce on his own.
Originally Posted by colo63sw
Example: Driver sees something at his right and makes a sharp turn left. The code sees that the left turn will spin the vehicle and counteracts the driver's input. Bad idea.
This is a good example. If the left turn spins the vehicle, then the vehicle isn't going to make the turn being requested by the driver anyway. It's going to hit the object on the right no matter what. But nanny isn't going to override the driver and make the car go straight. It's going to override control inputs that will spin the car, but it will still make the sharpest left-turn possible.
Real world: I live on a busy street and have a dirt driveway. During rush hour I hit the gas on my 93 C4 to get out in traffic. If I don't do it just right and the wheels spin, the throttle overrides my foot setting and goes to idle, this is close to the time the car has lurched into the traffic lanes (I keep forgetting to turn TC off), luckily the throttle blip doesn't last too long. Not a good condition to have.
Luckily, modern traction control systems don't work like the kludgey systems on our C4s. They reduce throttle enough to arrest tire spin, but they will let you continue accelerating just fine. So the scenario you exemplify above certainly happened in 1983, but not now! Much safer!
Originally Posted by drcook
a child came out of the dark on his bicycle into the road.
He was riding in a ball field, the parents were having a party outside, drinking, carrying on, not watching the kid (I turned around to come look). It took me all the way to the other side of the road to keep from killing him. Today's nanny cars that jerk you back would have killed that little boy.
Again, that's not how any of this works! If you make an intentional, urgent move with the steering wheel for an emergency change of direction, the stability systems will not prevent you from doing that! This isn't HAL we're talking about ("I'm sorry drcook, I can't let you do that"). What they will do is help you keep directional control of the car while you pull the most lateral Gs possible, in hopes of avoiding the obstacle. You don't really think modern cars prevent you from emergency accident avoidance, do you?Let's put the brakes on the paranoia. The fact is that nobody's getting run over because cars won't let drivers avoid obstacles. If that were happening, we'd never hear the end of it. OTOH, as a country we now drive more miles than ever, at higher speeds than ever, and with less attention paid to the process than ever...and yet fewer people are dying in accidents. And when autonomous vehicles become the norm, the accident stats are going to take a massive nosedive.
Originally Posted by dizwiz
I wish it was 1983 !!!!
better times vs now to be living IMHO
You must not be old enough to remember how shitty cars were back then. Have you ever actually driven a 1983 Camaro or Mustang, or a 1984 Corvette that was even close to stock? I mean, goddam they sucked *** compared to current cars. The late 70s and early 80s represent the only era during which production cars got slower than the preceding era! My work vehicle - a Hyundai Sonata Eco - is probably faster than any of them in a straight line or a curve (yes some of that is due to tires, but tires sucked *** back then too!). Think about that. You go drive a stock example of one of those cars and then drive a 2019 model of same and tell me we aren't in a golden age of cars right now. The hagiography on display here is really amazing.
ETA: Oh and by the way, to bring this thread back full-circle, cars actually did bend frames from too much grip back then. A friend of mine autocrossed an IROC with whatever the sticky tires were at the time (probably Yokohama A008Rs) and wrinkled his roof due to cornering forces! And Mustangs ripped their rear control arm mounts ("torque boxes") out and bent floor pans fairly regularly.
Last edited by MatthewMiller; 03-27-2019 at 09:52 PM.
A few points. Duntov was NOT the father of the Corvette. He has turned into a lot more of a mythical figure than he was in reality. He did some good things, but let's not overstate his importance. There are countless people who have better claims to that title, and did more for corvette.
I can ALREADY buy a mid engine car if I want to. Audi, Alfa, Porsche, and other exotics will all sell me a car like that, and I'm only limited by my wallet. And if my wallet allows it, a Corvette isnt where my money will land if I can afford something with more prestige
What does mid-engine architecture have to do with that, though? If the C8 is still vastly cheaper compared to one of those other cars for equivalent performance, then the value calculation hasn't changed. Chevy isn't about to double the price of the C8 over the C7! You can also buy other front/mid-engined sports cars with more prestige, and not just the Vantage. There is the Jag, several BMWs, the new Supra (really a badge-engineered BMW), a Nissan 350Z, I think there is still a Maserati option, several Ferrari options, etc. So if you are shopping for the prestige that comes with paying way more much less performance, there are plenty of front-engine options too. The location of the engine isn't what makes a Corvette unique. It's the fact that it is, once again, America's only true sports car; and that it represents incredible performance for the dollar. I'm sure the C8 will continue that.
Let's be really careful how we generalize about these driver nannies. They don't override the driver's intent - they only override the loss of control the driver would induce on his own.
This is a good example. If the left turn spins the vehicle, then the vehicle isn't going to make the turn being requested by the driver anyway. It's going to hit the object on the right no matter what. But nanny isn't going to override the driver and make the car go straight. It's going to override control inputs that will spin the car, but it will still make the sharpest left-turn possible.
Luckily, modern traction control systems don't work like the kludgey systems on our C4s. They reduce throttle enough to arrest tire spin, but they will let you continue accelerating just fine. So the scenario you exemplify above certainly happened in 1983, but not now! Much safer!
Again, that's not how any of this works! If you make an intentional, urgent move with the steering wheel for an emergency change of direction, the stability systems will not prevent you from doing that! This isn't HAL we're talking about ("I'm sorry drcook, I can't let you do that"). What they will do is help you keep directional control of the car while you pull the most lateral Gs possible, in hopes of avoiding the obstacle. You don't really think modern cars prevent you from emergency accident avoidance, do you?Let's put the brakes on the paranoia. The fact is that nobody's getting run over because cars won't let drivers avoid obstacles. If that were happening, we'd never hear the end of it. OTOH, as a country we now drive more miles than ever, at higher speeds than ever, and with less attention paid to the process than ever...and yet fewer people are dying in accidents. And when autonomous vehicles become the norm, the accident stats are going to take a massive nosedive.You must not be old enough to remember how shitty cars were back then. Have you ever actually driven a 1983 Camaro or Mustang, or a 1984 Corvette that was even close to stock? I mean, goddam they sucked *** compared to current cars. The late 70s and early 80s represent the only era during which production cars got slower than the preceding era! My work vehicle - a Hyundai Sonata Eco - is probably faster than any of them in a straight line or a curve (yes some of that is due to tires, but tires sucked *** back then too!). Think about that. You go drive a stock example of one of those cars and then drive a 2019 model of same and tell me we aren't in a golden age of cars right now. The hagiography on display here is really amazing.
ETA: Oh and by the way, to bring this thread back full-circle, cars actually did bend frames from too much grip back then. A friend of mine autocrossed an IROC with whatever the sticky tires were at the time (probably Yokohama A008Rs) and wrinkled his roof due to cornering forces! And Mustangs ripped their rear control arm mounts ("torque boxes") out and bent floor pans fairly regularly.
I remember better movies, better tv, better music and saturday morning cartoons.
sure the cars were worse - but if you had a fast one , you were ‘cooler’ than you are now when everyones mom has a camry than runs 0-60 in 6.0 seconds.
I remember Reagan, the military build up vs the USSR (we were actually building nukes instead of dismantling them), we were launching space shuttles which we cant do.
The economy had just started to pull out of the dumps.
america was getting over being defeated by a 3rd world country (vietnam) and was reclaiming its place as #1 in the world
Fools didnt find themselves offended by everything.
03-21-2019, 12:12 PM
