Stance vs. Handling

I'm getting old. I have gotten bored of having to pick routes to avoid speed humps or whatever. So for any car which is going to be used regularly it has lost its appeal. Its an aesthetic choice, and IMO many of the cars I see being showcased here look wrong too low. But thats the choice of the owner / builder not me.

To my mind a car has to have enough suspension travel to be safe. That's a minimum. Next up I'd like it to be at least minimally comfortable. This latter point is personal opinion, the former is measurable and absolute.

I have a picture in my mind about what the correct stance is for any car I own. Its form before function. But I doubt I compromise the dynamics too much, after all we are talking about road driving in old heavy cars...

See that's the flip side of it. I hear a lot of people talk the "function" side like they are about to compete in a Formula 1 season final. My cars are used for little more than pottering about in. And when the truth comes out, that's what most of our cars are used for.

I'm happy cutting springs. I'm not cutting much off though. Not sure if that makes a difference.

I'm *finally* getting onto working on my pile of projects. Don't expect to see any of them scraping the floor as they go...

I have, I had to fit taller front springs onto my 24v Cortina because it wouldn't stop, when you braked it bottomed out onto the (shortened) bump stops and the front wheels slid really easily. Also had several cars on shorter, stiffer springs that hopped round bumpy corners and would go wide when you pushed on, on stock springs they lent over a lot more but continued to grip for longer.

Cars often feel better when lowered because the CoG is lower they lean less, most lowered stuff also gets fitted with wider tyres which often helps the grip levels.

P-U-T was that not also a symptom or having a much bigger engine in too? Most of the slammed cars ive driven have been bumpy bit nothing that I couldnt drive through. On smooth roads they were much better than stock

I love a slammed car, but the downsides can be quite rubbish when you do actually use your car as a car!
Even cars that I own which I just look at as being normal (-40mm or similar) make many garages etc wince and cringe at how 'insanely low' they are!

Most of the time I just put up with the downsides of bumpsteer, grounding out, messed up geometry etc as a high car is just a horrible thing to look at. Even in my competition drift car I preferred to take on the extra hassle of worse handling as I didn't want to have a high car, lol.

Although saying all that my E36 shed is on fully wound down coilovers and handles beautifully!

To me, driving the car and having it suitable for road driving is one of the most paramount things. Hell, I went from having 18" pimp daddy wheels on my daily to 16" wheels to make roads more tolerable (it did handle better afterwards strangely enough).

If it can be made to handle better or to a similar level to stock when lowered with not too many drawbacks then yes I will take the opportunity to drop the car a little . Saying that, many a car I have seen 'slammed' usually have a larger queue behind them on a country road in comparison to a car towing a caravan, some who claim "I have never had an issue with a lowered car" (maybe they don't mind a ride so poor/crashy that the realms of 40+MPH simply do not interest them ). After being in similarly slammed cars the appeal is tricky for me to see but I can see why it appeals for the reasons mentioned above (It is after all, different, and well, in these times of silly expensive insurance premiums etc. this is the time that creativity can come about, not simply a restriction of what can be done).

I shall admit that of the 4 or 5 lowered cars I have owned only 2 handled significantly better. First was a Ford Ka with a Ford Racing kit fitted to it complete with wheels (I am sure the latter and the fact that it was a Ford approved kit had something to do with it (It was not that harsh either from memory or much lower than stock), and the MGB I had (but to be fair, it did not really drive like an MGB after the suspension modifications!).

I guess the other reason why my preferences are the way they are is because I have generally until now used cars daily. Although even now I would say the 205 is the least used car with the Stag being used most weekends due to circumstances etc. (other peeps besides me use the Mondeo .

That's not to say that I don't like lowered cars . I would lower the Sprint if the sump was a little higher (quite scarily low to the ground even with new engine mounts and stock suspension) and some cars you wouldn't have any other way (take MM's Land Rover ).

I'm going to be vague so as to avoid looking like I'm singling out someone for ridicule on the net, which is the last thing I would want to do, but theres a wonderful case in point....

Elsewhere, on another forum, a mate of mine is a member. He has a car he has owned for years, and its in a line of similar cars he has owned. He knows what he is doing and he does it on a tight blue collar family man budget. So a lot of his stuff is second hard parts and home brew adaptations. He's going to try some lowering blocks, conventional wisdom says this is a no-no, but he wants to tweak ride height and so forth and its the cheap way to do it before you lay out for re-arcing the leaves. Nothing flash, just a guy trying out stuff on his car, basic engineering and refining.

Same forum has a chap who is more one of the "in crowd" there. He has all the toys on his car, power adders, lexan, stroker, all that. I don't know him but he seems to have more cash to flash. Much whooping and so on from his buddies as the car is finally out of the 12s.

My mates car does 10.2

My point is that you need to know what you are doing to achieve results.

You can know what you are doing on a budget and you can know what you are doing with plenty of cash. And likewise. People can build a car without a clue at either end of the spectrum too.

I've driven modified cars which drove worse than stock, and putting stock components back on them actually improved matters... Others you'll make some simple mod and it transforms the car from stock you wonder why they don't leave the factory like that.

A lot of this is in the middle ground though. I might drop my Buick an inch or 2 from stock. I predict that will make it behave a lot neater on the road. If I dropped it so it was bottomed out then it would drive like a pig. But pics of it on the internet would get more thumbs up... epic WIN and all that

And that's fair enough, because your Buick was designed to meet the needs of a market where being able to do 40-50mph down an unpaved road in a desert was as important as control on the twisties in the wet and indeed, safe handling in snow, with 1960s tech (and being realistic, the underpinnings of most GM cars didn't evolve massively until the mid '80s). So for the needs of 21st century roads, it can be improved, lots.

Whereas a BMW 3-series with a sports suspension and low profile tyres has already had billions spent on the development to optimise the handling. On the other hand, they're so ubiquitous that you may as well go for extreme appearance to stand out.

Slammed cars may handle fine on perfectly smooth roads. There are not many of those in Britain. Don't see any reason (or have any reason to suspect from the occasional experience I've had of them) that slammed = dangerous, just not particularly appealing on a daily driver.

For me, lowering, adjusting, is all about optimising the car, eradicating the compromises that the manufacturer has built in, if they improve it for my intended use. So I wouldn't mod my C3, it's fine. I can already leave most things behind with it in a set of bends, even if it is quite slow otherwise. I might lower the SLK now I see what it looks like with the right size wheels on, but mainly because the proper AMG lowering kit is not particularly expensive and they'd be new springs instead of 14 year old ones.

Extreme camber angles, though - not 'for handling', but for looks... I can't imagine that a stretched tyre at an extreme angle is particularly safe for nipping to Asda on a rain-soaked school run. And no, I haven't driven a car with such mods, so I can't speak from experience - having seen what the rims and tyres look like on the occasional secondhand thing showing up, I really wouldn't want to.

Grip has a BIT to do with handling, surely But yeah, Citroëns have lots of grip, as a rule, but not the most intuitive of 'handling' (ride quality is usually exceptional, though, another part of the mix). I learned how to drive CXs and XMs quickly, and passengers were usually in absolute terror when I demonstrated how quickly a CX GTI Turbo could tackle a B-road with hedges whizzing past inches from the window. Then again, I thought the MG ZT260 was "a bit harsh" and hated how the MG TF handled compared to the F, in part because the handling element was upset by the low speed ride quality. Great car on the limit though, and a hell of a lot more reliable now the cars are getting on a bit (no hydragas cans to pop).

Hell, 2CVs can grip. And if you want some mad camber in a factory car, put a Citroën A-chassis on full lock and marvel at how the masters got around the problem of using camber to maintain contact when cornering in a ridiculously clever way, in the 1930s!

Just thought of an example of handling/road capability vs. slammed - Capri drivers in the Borders; I had a 2.0 Laser with very mildly tweaked suspension, but crucially, just replaced TCAs. Standard 13" 4-spokes. Nothing special. Understood precisely what the car was capable of, and what it was telling me. Tried a boy racer modded one, all low and so forth... and the weight transfer in bends was all wrong. It was skittish, it handled loose surfaces very badly. I much preferred the way mine behaved on the road.

On a track... who knows. I'd like to have polybushed mine.

I like the varied answers to this, shows theres a healthy varied range of interests on here. Its a bit like asking someone how long their piece of string is, the answer is always going to be slightly different. For me, 'stance' generaly is a result of getting a car to handle better, to make it handle better exibit 'A' will probably require lowering and to get the centre of gravity lower, wider wheels for wider ,lower profile tyres, which in turn stops it rolling about quite so much, then theres adjustable camber and what-not when you get really keen for the track, then its a case of fine tuning it all. As a result of all this theres a good chance its going to look alot better too.
On the other hand you could go crazy and get inspired by many of he extreeemly cambered/tuck/poke cars, but then better handling was probably never the intention in the first place. But it doesnt have to be that extreme, minis look/handle better on 10's, but some would say they look better on 13's, but a mini on 13's wont get you through the twisties quicker than a mini on 10's. Probably.