What is good handling?

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///M-Spec

///M-Spec

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What does it mean when you say a car "handles well"? What does "good handling" mean to you? What's the best handling car you've ever driven? Why?

Discuss.


M
 
Probably its response rate is the biggest thing to me. A good low center of gravity, and steering that you dont have to turn the wheel 2 full rev's to make a 20 degree turn are always nice.

Best handling car I've driven? Hmm, such a short list of cars I've driven, so its a no brainer for me when I say my friends WRX. I actually had to stop the car, get out, and give the wheel back to friend because the car was begging me to take turns faster. I told my buddy that I was probably going to kill someone or wreck the car if I drove it any longer.
 
Good handling IMO would be flat cornering, very little suspension travel to avoid sloppiness whilst cornering, but enough travel to avoid kidney failier due to POUNDING. Also cannot suffer from understeer ( worst thing in the world in my books ) and oversteer must be controllable

As for best handling car ( again my opinion )...I would say either a 1972-3 porsche 914-6 with slight suspension mods ( god that was fun ) or 2002 BMW 330 Ci ( I wish I could afford that baby )
 
I want to be able to be on the throttle 100% for 100% of the time and not have any understeer. No comprimises.

No, seriously, that's a hard question to answer. Of course being able to have a Mustang GT corner like a Formula 1 car isn't going to happen. Defining reasonable handling is rather difficult and always relative. You have to compare to the vehicles you're racing against.
 
Something that is on a door. Nice and smooth and fits my hand. I'd perfer something with a lock, for security reasons.

I'm dumb.

I think a good handling car has nice and quick turn in, no body roll, something where you can invoke the back end coming out but is easy to control, stops well, engine is smooth and if you hammer it the back end jolt and slide... I can't think of anything else.

Seeing as how I've never really had a performance car before the WRX... I'd say the WRX. Of course, thats after the handling modifications I've done to it.
 
It depends on the venue. Street handling is obviously going to differ from tack or autocross. Having just done almost 2 months of shopping for cars, I've got recent (though short) impressions of a lot of semi-sporty (definitely not 'sports', though) cars.

A good handling street car is reponsive but predictable. Excessive response makes the car twitchy - I like crisp turn-in, but I'll give up a little in order to have confidence in the car's repeatability. Some hotshoes like a lot of toe out in front because the car turns in instantly, but it may zig too much or too little. I try to mimic the Jackie Stewart "tennis ball" driving technique, so I prefer good linear response rather than ragged-edge jumpiness.

It's not exactly handling, per se, but I like responsive brakes. The WRX we drove had good brakes - they stopped the car every time, with confidence - but they felt like they had excessive pedal travel, which provoked a little subconcious "yikes!" every time you approached a turn at speed.

Damping is critical, and again, I will give up a touch of twitchiness in order to buy a little composure. So far the TSX seems to be very well damped - it never hops over irregularities, but it manages to stay fairly flat when cornering.

Obviously I pefer mild oversteer, but I'll deal with moderate understeer so long as it responds to throttle/brake. My ACR power understeers, but a quick lift tucks it right in, and you can provoke oversteer on demand. It's pretty balanced for an FWD car.

Probably the best-handling car I've ever driven is a Lamborghini Espada or a Maserati Bora. The Lambo's controls felt like a truck at moderate speed, but wailing down the two-lane blacktop upwards of 120, it was perfectly weighted. It had great road feeling, too.

[edit]

Actually, scratch that. The best-handling car I've driven is a Porsche 928. Within the limits of my driving skill, it handled every bit as well as the Espada, but it was much easier to drive at all speeds.
 
My definition of a car that handles well is as follows:
-responsiveness
-pedals arent spongey or loose
-semi-hard suspension, something that can take corners confidently
-low centre of gravity (ie Porsche/WRX/Ferrari)
-grippy tires. cant have any sliding around, unless drifting
-proper camber and toe adjustment settings

For Sport:
-rear-wheel or 4WD, no understeer
-Rock hard suspension
-proper camber and toe adjustment settings
-prefferably Pirelli or Yokohama tires
-low centre of gravity
-rigid chassis
-properly supportive racing seats (cant corner sitting on a can)

For Safety, public driving
-FWD, for the inexperienced driver; winter.
-ABS
-responsive brakes, no drums
-rigid chassis
-great weight:torque ratio

As far as I'm concerned, for the moment anyway, I woudl hope for a car with new or good tires with FWD, as i am not driving like a maniac because ill never get my license if i do. I chose FWD because understeer is quite unliekely in public roads and i dont have to worry nearly as much about drifting or spinning out should i hit black ice or snow/rain. I wouldnt mind racing seats for either tho, i find them comfortable. Also, i find brakes to be a very important issue for handling, as if you can not stop, you can not drive.

For sport/recreational driving however, i would want to have hard suspension for optimal cornering, preferrable RWD or AWD/4WD, and nice tight & responsive steering. Also an LSD.
-G
 
I think the most important thing in a car's handling in my opinion is the selction of the tires. I like to be able to provoke a little slide on demand so they should not be so wide that the engine/weight of the car cannot overcome their grip, but they should still be wide enough to provide grip in slippery situations.

Also important is the tire sidewall height and stiffness. Narrow sidewalls are important to cornering charcteristics, but a car with very narrow stiff sidewalls give you very little "slip angle" warning before they roll oover onto the sidewally. This is very disconcerting when it happens, and really messes up the balance of the car.

Oddly enough (dont hate me Goomba) but the worst handling car I have ever driven was my parent's Impreza 2.5TS. It had a terrible amount of plow into a corner, and I had to scrub off far too much speed before the front end would tuck nicely. Plow is not a good handling charcteristic. Damn fun in the snow, though.
 
best handling car i have driven.
in anger a bmw at a track. cant remember the model. musta been 328i or thereabouts. great balance, communication. and still good bump absorption.
generally, my mercedes.

what makes good hadling.

good bump absorption
quiet bump absorption
good feedback from brakes, suspension and steering
suspension and steering must "load up" as forces get applied. this makes it easier to determine if you are reaching the point of no return
mild understeer for the unwashed masses, neutral steer for the wannabes
good strong brakes with positive communicative pedal action
same for clutch and accelerator
slight roll in corners aids human perception of balance (vestibular aparatus in ears, eyes, and muscles)
good transitions (see mild understeer/ neutral steer) in back and forth motions
and others. its too late and im too tired to psot more.
 
"good handling" means to me: Little dive under braking, a crisp, acurate turn-in, neutral balance through the corner, followed by a little overstear under power out of the corner. The most important element has to be good communication through the wheel and 'seat-of-your-pants' of the road surface. BMW's have good communication, where as Audis tend to have pretty good grip and poise, but a dull feedback from the wheel.

Best handling car i've driven on the road: mk1 Golf GTi on original alloys or S2 Elise 135R
 
As long as we're talking of street use, good (and enjoyable) handling for me has to do with weight distribution, steering ratio and feedback, stiff (but not punishing) suspension with good dampening, and grippy tires. Preferrably with mild oversteer in the summer or mild understeer during the winter.

Subjectively speaking, I like a car that is predictable, has neutral balance and makes me feel confident at the wheel, connected to the road. I agree with TheCracker on Audis, I drove an A6 4.2 last week and while it had very impressive grip and power levels, it didn't feel as good as I expected to (the weight of the V8 also didn't help). Given its size, I was more impressed driving an S500 than the smaller Audi.

Best handling car driven so far is the same that the thread starter owns. Me wants one. :grumpy: At more affordable levels, I like VWs handling a lot. Even an underpowered base golf is very fun to drive hard in the twisties.
 
Lots of good responses so far. It seems most of us agree on what a good handling car is.

Personally, steering is key for me. Understeer you can fix. Mechanical grip you can enhance. Body control you can augment. But it is very hard to improve the steering if the factory didn't do a good job to begin with.

I've driven some cars with monster levels of mechanical grip, near neutral balance and very benign attitude at the limit, but the steering just didn't offer any information about what the front tires were doing whatsoever. It hurt my enjoyment of an otherwise terrific car. (C5 Corvette Z51, in case you were wondering)

The most detailed steering racks I've ever felt was a Porsche 993 and a Mitsu Evo. Natural. Communicative. Direct. Linear. Really great racks. They are also best handling cars I've ever driven overall, with my old M3 coming third.

I also agree with shock dampening being really key for good handling. I really don't like crashy suspensions that bump steer all over the place. I drove a C36 AMG Mercedes that had terrible body control. Apparently, AMG thought simply firming up the spring/shock rates automatically equalled a better handling car.

I've gotta say my new 330 ZHP is a hell of a suspension package. Its got M3 levels of stick without the ride harshness. Only drawback being it takes longer to take a set because it is initially several ticks softer... so the mighty M will still out-transition it.

My next mission is to find an Elise that is still in the showroom and hasn't been spoken for.

Oh, and Duke, the 928 was the first "semi-exotic" car I ever drove. It was an amazing experience for me as well. It was a Guard's Red '87 928S 5-speed that I considered buying until I was scared away from 928 upkeep costs.


M
 
"Good handling" doesn't have to be expensive, too.

For me, an example of good handling on modern FF cars can be experienced on a simple Peugeot 106 or on a Ford Focus.


Best handling car I've driven was a Mazda MX-5. Perfect!
 
Personally ive only ever driven 4 cars in my life, one of them being sum old yellow dodge pickup, a toyota tercel, a ford mercury something-or-other (forget the model) and go karts :lol: The go karts came first, :lol: with the tercel followed closesly behind. The pickup came last as i found it was quite blatent and slopy with the corners and suffered from a little understeer. horrible brakes too. absolutelly horrendous.
 
To me good handling implies that the car isn't vulnerable to excessive oversteer or understeer. The car maintains a very nuetral feeling and doesn't overwhelm you with much body roll. The alignment is good, or aggressive rather. Turn response is over-rated if you ask me, but it's definitely a player in good handling. A low-center of gravity can help greatly but isn't necessarily needed.

Good handling can be decently-judged by the amount of g-force seen on the skidpad, sustainable slalom speeds, etc.
 
Drifting Thunda
Good handling can be decently-judged by the amount of g-force seen on the skidpad, sustainable slalom speeds, etc.
Click to expand...
You bring up a interesting point. Can a car have a poor skidpad number/slalom speed and still have "good" handling? I think so. It's not so much where the car's limits are, but how approachable these limits are, and how the car transitions at the limit.
 
///M-Spec
What does it mean when you say a car "handles well"? What does "good handling" mean to you? What's the best handling car you've ever driven? Why?

Discuss.


M
Click to expand...
Not a car that handles on rails. . . if it feels that way then you are driving it too slow. : )

Good handling to me is perfect balance in weight distribution among the four wheels of the car during acceleration, braking and cornering. The ability to take a car through a high speed turn or a long sweeper with no weight tipping the car to be unbalanced -> Basically just the right amount of weight put on the front right tire on a right hand turn to get it to move the car around the turn while giving the rear wheels enough weight and traction to put power down during the turn to exit at maximum vewlocity. Any weight that tips that balance and your car will not handle at the limit or beyond for that fact.

A car must also have a good deal of control when pushing it beyond the limit. They say that the best race drivers in the world are able to push their cars beyond the limits that the car will allow. Take for example Slip Angle. . . The angle in-between the direction of travel and the steering angle you have inputted. The best of the best are able to drive at the lowest possible slip angle that maintains the maximum traction. In theory you should be able to take a car up to 10 degrees of slip before totally losing control, but that depends on all the variables of weight, car, drivetrains, suspension, tweaks and so forth. The racers that are consistant at the limit and beyond are the ones that truly win consecutively. They generally maintain a car at about 5-7 degrees of slip if I remember correctly.

Another thing to add to good handling is the ability to make up for mistakes like overshotting your ideal turn-in. What type of recovery line will the car travel? Will it leave you with a bad exit speed or will it allow you to not be passed at least on the straight coming up? Those things matter when you have to consider all the variables put into a car. Truly I do not believe there is a concise answer to your question ///M but I believe if we put together things we all agree on to make a car have "Good Handling" feel. I know you of all people understand that a car that handles good to you might be a bad setup for me : ).

One last thing to add. A car that will allow you to be smooth and give the least amount of input to steering to make it around the track will be the fastest. . . So I think that will be in my definition of "good handling"
 
skip0110
You bring up a interesting point. Can a car have a poor skidpad number/slalom speed and still have "good" handling? I think so. It's not so much where the car's limits are, but how approachable these limits are, and how the car transitions at the limit.
Click to expand...

there are cars that have posted good numbers but been slagged for having numb steering or something. thats kinda the opposite of what youre saying, i know.

but if you consider some of the older cars, cars that could flat give you the ride of your life at speeds below the speed limit, then you might be getting somewhere. cars that have a raucous exhaust, skinny tires, good balance.

im thinking lotus cortina, alfa romeo 1750 GTV, BMW 2002 et al. nothing special by todays standards, but cars that are fun and communicative.
 
neanderthal
but if you consider some of the older cars, cars that could flat give you the ride of your life at speeds below the speed limit, then you might be getting somewhere. cars that have a raucous exhaust, skinny tires, good balance.

im thinking lotus cortina, alfa romeo 1750 GTV, BMW 2002 et al. nothing special by todays standards, but cars that are fun and communicative.
Click to expand...

Ohhh yes 👍
 
-> I'd like a car that is very predictable, no pitching, neutral (like you feel the car is on rails, no under/oversteer), and especially if the car does what you want it to do (like drifting, circuit, and wide highway corners).

-> The perfect car to do all of these (so far) stock: The Honda S2000 (I call it pure joy)
 
S2000s are (were) prone to sudden oversteer if you overcook it.

the new 2.2 liter model was partially redesigned to alleviate that and now understeers more than the old neutral steering one.

not quite the car you describe.
 
///M-Spec
What does it mean when you say a car "handles well"? What does "good handling" mean to you? What's the best handling car you've ever driven? Why?

Discuss.


M
Click to expand...
To some degree it's objective, and to some degree it's subjective. I like a car that feels comfortable. I think you can exploit a car's weaknesses if they suit you well and make them work for you.
 
^ Oh! I forgot to specify what S2000 it is (sorry), the model I was reffering to was the AP2 (the one with the 2.2L VTEC), not the AP1 (the one w/ the 2.0). :)

-> In fact I haven't driven the AP1, so I don't know how it handles really.
 
Funny how you ask what "good handling" is, M-Spec, considering your screen name of choice. If anything is rather affordable and can handle sweetly, let it be BMW.

But on to the main points, I would define good handling as a car's ability of being able to take abuse from where one is driving, and be able drive accurately and carefully through it all. To do this, a few key factors come into play: (1) suspension, (2) chassis, (3) driver skill, (4) tires, and (5) effective brakes. Suspension, because you first need to handle it all before you do anything else. Chassis, because you want something strong durable during driving/racing. Driver skill, because after all, what's the point of having a capable car if you're not capable enough to drive it? Tires, because you have to have something grippy to ride on with the road. Effective brakes, because part of handling means that if you're going fast, you should be able to stop just enough to effectively corner through whatever you're driving on.

Five reasons, one post. That's my contribution. May not be the best one, but that's what I think.
 
skip0110
You bring up a interesting point. Can a car have a poor skidpad number/slalom speed and still have "good" handling? I think so. It's not so much where the car's limits are, but how approachable these limits are, and how the car transitions at the limit.
Click to expand...
Good point, I eat my own words! :dopey:

Then again, skidpad and slalom tests can bring out the worst in cars that are supposed to handle good. Like the STi has more body roll than most would desire, maybe it doesn't have thick enough anti-roll bars? Which means it wouldn't handle as good although anyone would agree its limits are very approachable. I get what you're saying though, and it's generally truthful.
 

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