formulaWA

There has been a lot of talk about how the current front engine rear wheel drive has to go to mid engine to improve overall performance. It will be interesting to see how successful GM will be in making that happening given the competency of the current platform.

R&T's 2019 performance car of the year competition included a very competent Ferrari and Maclaren mid engine supercar.and yet the current C7 design won the competition. Road and track PCOTY

Kinda wondering just how much better the can the C8 be...

Zora.Info

The C8 should have great performance. I'm thinking 458 performance from the base Stingray. Both have DCT, aluminum chassis (not carbon tub), N/A V8, etc.

Z_Rocks

From the recent spy videos, the C8 barely has any body roll and the engine quickly recovers it's RPM from tight corners.
Then engine sounds like a flat plane high revving TT engine.
With great suspension and powerful engine, it should be better than C7.

lt4obsesses

So long and they keep doing what they have been doing, they're going to keep getting what they've been getting. Change the format, but don't change the formula.

Vernon

Shaka

Rear engine won't brake the best. The Z06 and ZR1 out brake any car in a st line. Physics is physics.

ArmchairArchitect

What are all the other 2020 sports cars being released? New Porsche 911 (nothing drastic changing), Supra (yawn), what else?

I think the C8 is in a great position to get the spotlight in the year it's released.

NORTY

Corvette always gets the spotlight, during a debut. Ad money is ad money, ya know....

SouthernSon

You bring up an interesting point but I have my doubts of the validity. With more weight bias toward the rear one can trailbrake deeper into a turn. There are those that can take advantage of this.

tcinla

Sin City

No offense but I never trust magazines or websites for "the best". Follow the money.

Rkreigh

current zr1 will have a let up initially if just the lt1 will 5xx hp is released

zr1 can go pretty ez to 780+ with light mods I hope the c8 is lighter

mre1974

Without knowing ANY real stats on the ME car and only speculation isn't just a bit premature to assume that the vehicle will have 'stiff competition' for performance car of the year for 2020 or 2021? And let's face it...depending on how much money GM pays for ads with each magazine will have something to do with the rankings whether you want to admit it or not.

vndkshn

Not sure the question is "validity", but more a case of oversimplification (same could be said with the trail braking example). Weight is going to transfer forward under braking, loading the front of the vehicle (increasing front grip) and unloading the rear (decreasing rear grip, which helps rotate the car). Anything to keep the rear of the car loaded (to improve rear grip) should have a positive impact on braking, but could have a negative impact on trail braking (possibly eliminating it completely or causing snap spins due to the weight).

And those are oversimplifications as well and there are many more possibilities.

I suspect the ZR1 out braked the others due to either tire compound or tire size.

Foosh

I think the point was that all things being equal, rear and mid-engine cars will brake better than FE designs. That means when putting the same braking system on all 3 cars, the ME and RE will have a distinct advantage.

Obviously that can be overcome with very large and powerful braking systems like we see in the Z06 and ZR1, which both produce incredibly short braking distances. Put those same systems on an ME car, weighing about the same, it will more than likely best those distances.

Physics is physics, and in order to make an FE performance car stop really fast, you need to put really big brakes on the front to handle the added front weight transfer on an FE vehicle during heavy braking.

vndkshn

And those "really big brakes" mean more weight.

Alot of things factor into braking performance. As you mentioned, different systems on the different cars is definitely part of the story. There are likely pad compound differences between the different cars which has a massive difference. I have two different pads for one of my cars, one is a low dust ceramic for the street, another a very aggressive race compound for the track. The braking feel and braking distances between the two are enormous.

Vehicle weight (probably similar between the cars mentioned) combined with pad compound, combined with tire compound, combined with tire size... all of that can easily explain the difference in straight line braking distances in a magazine test.

jcp911s

The devil is always in the details... every configuration has benefits and weaknesses... great engineering can make any configuration work... poor engineering can make any one awful.

Rear-engine was designed to build cheap cars for post-war Europe (VW and ICONIC Renault Dauphine), but I've raced a 911 for 20 years, and can tell you, when properly set-up, it is amazingly quick.

FE-rear drive is used because it is cheap, and allows you to build huge road-locomotives... ever drive a 50s-60s full sized Chevy/Ford/Chrysler... mom, dad and three screaming rug-rats, and handle miserably... but NASCAR has been building incredibly fast cars for decades.

ME is best on paper, but offers terrible packaging for a street car. Plus, if not done right, the CG is right in the center... like a top.. which means they naturally want to spin... Right Now!... Hello Wall!

The C7 is a Front/ME design with the engine behind the front wheels and a roughly 50/50 weight distribution. Works.

vndkshn

Interesting points. I've always read that the reason front engine/rear-drive is/was so prevalent was the size of everything in the early days (engine/trans/etc) because they couldn't build it, much less build it with any durability any smaller, so it had to stretch out. Combined with the historical aspect of horse drawn carriages. And somehow the design stuck until the 70s when we got the first mass producted FWD vehicles.