formulaWA

When GM released it's 1st mid engine car they sold 137,000 of them during the 1st year to people who for the most part had never driven a mid engine car. While the car had it's well publicized issues as GM used customers as beta testers one issue that did not seem to attract a lot of headlines at the time was the unexpected handling. The car had a 40% frnt/60% rear weight bias so when owners drove the car close to the limit as a sports car and they felt they were in over their head with no previous experience driving a mid engine car they would suddenly lift off the throttle. This would cause the car to rotate around the mid engine/transmission and the back end of the car would pass the front. In later years GM redesigned the suspension and put bigger wheels and tires on the back to compensate for this. Some of the more astute dealers would tell the customers to find a big parking lot and practice tight corners while lifting the throttle so the customer would know how to react. While I am sure today's stability control will make this issue easier to manage I am thinking that folks with no mid engine experience who drive their new mid engine Corvettes hard for the 1st time may, like the mid engine owners of 30 years ago find themselves in situations where they do not have the skills to manage a mid engine car close to the limit and will end up spinning their shiny new mid engine corvette in the middle of a public road. I wonder if GM and it's dealers will include mid engine driving tips/course with the new mid engine Corvette?

Thoughts?

Dominic Sorresso

You could practice w/a C4. The rear end will come out on those in a snap rotation if u don't know what you are doing.

JerriVette

The fiery never had anything other than understeer. Today's active handling keeps rear mid engine cars like the mcLaren 570, 650 and new 720 under complete control.


Let's add in Ferrari, Lamborghini, alfa, Porsche, and lotus all manage to have competent rear mid engine sports car.

I can't imagine what makes you think the handling pros at GM would not do even better.

GM literally offers the best handling most capable sports cars in the marketplace ..I have complete confidence that the next gen corvette rear mid engine corvette will be the best handling highest performance sports car in the marketplace.

MitchAlsup

There is/was an old saying about Porsche: once you dial the steering in, your foot cannot come up off the gas pedal--but this was before the Weissach suspension geometry.

But modern electronics will fundamentally alter that situation.

sunsalem

You can't compare ancient cars to today's vehicles.
Things have advanced so much, there is no rational point of comparison.
And, yes, I have driven modern MEs...only a very shitty FE driver would find them difficult to handle.

63Corvette

You are mistaken!
The C2 (midyear) Corvettes ALL had a rear center of gravity (48/52).
ALL MODERN mid-engined cars handle very neutrally: Ferrari 458/488, Porsche 911RSR, Cayman, Boxter, McLaren, Lotus, etc

JerriVette

Rear weight bias has its merits...

Can't wait for the rear mid engine corvette

sunsalem

Huh?

63Corvette

juanvaldez

What mid-engine did GM make other than the Fireyo?

DickieDoo

Corvair

sunsalem

Oh, OK...I misunderstood.

Yup!

zhopper05

I thought the Corvair had a rear-mounted engine

sunsalem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Corvair

rgregory

If you are in a corner at the limit and you lift off the gas in any car the back end will come out (unless it has massive underteer). It is no different than the geniuses that let off the gas going over icy bridges. Suspension can be tuned for any weight distribution.

Mid engine is the best place for the engine, can use smaller front tires and eliminate the car wandering on the highway grooves. GM could easily have a front and rear trunk.

tobaccokid

Too many commenting on a subject they know very little about.
Interesting to read the confusion between mid-engine and rear-engine.
Which cars are "rear mid-engine" ?

Easiest ways to describe engine location configurations:
- front engine(along with modern rear front positioning) - modern
Corvettes
- rear engine(behind rear axle) - early generation Porsches (refer to
crashed Turbos)
- mid-engine (engine in front of rear axle) - Ferrari 488, Lamborghini, and
many more

The Corvair's difficulties had a lot to do to do with suspension design.

Larry/car

A lot of the handling issues the Corvair had were caused by improperly serviced tire pressures. (15 PSI front and 28 PSI rear)

63Corvette

I believe that any engine location between the front and rear axles can be described as "MID engined". For instance, the Infiniti G series chassis is described by Infiniti as "Front Mid-engine". The C2 Corvette has a REAR weight bias (see above road test), because the entire engine is located behind the centerline of the front axle, but still in front of the driver. Most of us think of Mid-engined as the engine being behind the driver, but that makes little difference in weight distribution, as both can be located to provide any distribution required. NOTE: The new Porsche 911 RSR (RACE car) is MID engined, and therefore has NO rear seats. I will also mention the notorious Bill Thomas Cheetah race car where the driver sits almost ON the rear axle, and the rear weight bias plus the short wheelbase makes the car a real challenge to drive. Rear weight bias allows the rear brakes to make more contribution to the stopping effort. Current engineering practices seem to trend that sports/racing cars are getting longer wheelbases (C5 is longer than C2, and C7 is longer than C5 etc), which contribute to more stability under braking. Oh............and Mid-engined cars seem to conform MORE to what our current idea of "cool" is.

Bill Dearborn

Mostly it was the design of the rear suspension which they corrected in the 65 model year.

Bill

Bill Dearborn

I have instructed novices in two different mid engine cars since June. One was an Audi R8 V10 running the North Course at VIR in June and the other was a Ferrari 458 running VIR's Full Course yesterday. The Audi driver had the typical novice problems but I was really surprised how well the car reacted when he made some sudden steering correction that should have been avoided. The Ferrari owner also brought along his daughter who had never driven the car and had never been near a track before. Both drivers put the car in some positions that a Corvette would not have recovered from no matter how well the stability control worked. The most impressive incident occurred in the UpHill Esses. Instead of late apexing Turn 7 the owner went to the right side of the turn and entered them on the wrong line and came over the hump at T8 looking at grass instead of pavement. On that line I would have just gone straight over the grass and back onto the pavement at Turn 9 but he snapped the steering to the right and the car went right with the left rear wheel hitting the rumble strips on the left then he turned the steering to the left and got around the apex of Turn 9. No idea how we got through that. I wouldn't have wanted to try that with a Corvette.

Bill