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Originally Posted by lakatu
Are rear engine designs fundamentally flawed
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The answer to that question is yes they are. An ideal sports car has perfect weight distribution and minimum overhang fornt and rear. Overhang being the part of the car in front of the front wheels and behind the rear wheels. Porsche does not have this as the engine is situated on the rear axle which should upset the balance of the car.
Its not just the rear engined cars though, in exactly the same way front engined cars are flawed as they have most of their weight over the front axle. However front engined cars can minimize this by having the gearbox placed at the rear.
The reason porsches are so well balanced are.... well thats porsches secret and the reason why you don't see many other rear engined cars.
What does help the rear engined porshce though is the fact that they use flat configurated engines. This means that the pistons are placed horizontally. The two big advantages of this are that 1. it reduces the centre of gravity - the lower the centre of gravity of a car, the better it will corner. And 2. flat configurated engines produce next to no vibrations which means that it will not affect any other components around the rear, for example suspension which also helps the handling.
Rear engined cars also have good traction as they accelerate. This is because as cars accelerate, most of the weight is transferred to the rear. The more weight you have their in the first place, the more grip you're going to get when accelrating.
This has the opposite effect when braking - the front has most of the weight transferred to it and the back will go light. As most of the weights at the back, the car becomes naturally unstable.
With cornering, as the weight distribution is not perfect, as the fron wants to go around the corner, the back end will want to go sideways.
These are the physics of a rear engined car and you cannot change the,. What porsche have done is minimise the disadvantages of a rear engined car and maximised the advantages. This is why porshces handle so good and not many people attempt to make rear engined cars.[/img]