Old Feb 8, 2005 | 10:56 AM
  #23 (permalink)  
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mjanowich
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 284
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From: Herndon, Virginia
Default Re: I finally did something about the performance of the XF

I didn't say it handles like a brick. I will make a correction, I mixed the terms handling and road holding in my previous post. First, let’s make clear what lateral g's mean. It's the centripetal force that the car can withstand before losing traction and going into a spin. It's not a pure measure of handling, because there is no way to empirically measure how a car "handles". So, the closest thing we can measure is how fast a car can travel through a turn without sliding. The Crossfire’s road holding numbers are equal to every other major sports car under $50,000, even the M3. The only car I’ve seen under $50,000 that has a significantly better later g is the Evo. Yes, a Crossfire can go through a turn as fast as an M3 without losing traction. It’s a statistical fact. Many drivers say that the M3 “handles” better than most sports cars out there, so it’s going to be quicker coming out of the turn and going into the next.
Here’s some math for you to make it easier to visualize how fast a car is traveling at a certain g force.

Given the following:
Acceleration=velocity^2/radius
Radius= 150ft (car and driver usually use a 300 ft diameter skidpad)
To convert skidpad "g" to ft/sec^2, multiply by 32 ft/sec^2.

So, the Crossfire pulls .91 g's in most tests. This = 29.12 ft/sec^2 lateral acceleration and a velocity of 45 mph around the skidpad.

A car with a .88 g skidpad is traveling at 44.31 mph around the skidpad.
A car with .86 g skidpad, like the SRT-4 in Car and Driver’s review is traveling at 43.8 mph.
A car with a 1g skidpad rating is traveling at 47.23 mph.

So, handling is a subjective term and the SRT-4 may indeed handle very well, but its road holding is lacking. We all know it’s horsepower that you care more about anyway, so I’m sure you’re very happy with the new car.
 
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