Thanks sameerrao. Excellent thoughts and comments 8) and I enjoyed reading the article by Damon Hill. I agree with your comment that the advances in suspensions have reduced the disadvantages of the rear engine design. In part, that is where I think I am heading with the series. That the design wasn't so fundamentally flawed but that there were limitations that where included in the original design which made the 911 rear engine design difficult to drive at times :roll: .
You’re right about he 917 being mid-engine but it has 70% of its weight on the rear axle which is unusual for mid-engine designs. I guess the way I wrote about the 917 was a little confusing
ops: . I didn’t make a clear distinction that my point with the 917 was about the amount of weight on the rear axle and not the location of the engine. Where I was going with the 917 was that having a large disproportionate amount of weight on the rear axle doesn’t mean the car won’t be able to handle well.
Of course, there is a difference between having 70% of the weight on the rear axle and locating the mass farther away from the center of gravity than a mid-engine design with 70% of the weight on the rear with the center of gravity and the mass being closer together. Locating mass from the center of gravity causes a rotational force or torque that rotates around the point of the center of gravity. The amount of the torque is a function of the distance of the mass from the center of gravity. In the case of a mid-engine the distance between the mass and the center of gravity is smaller than locating the mass way out on the rear. Therefore the rotational forces are smaller in a mid-engine than in a rear engine as Damon hit on.
I plan on talking about these things in the final post. Great comments
. Keep them coming.