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Sign of old age... I'd have a Spark cheap.
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>>Sign of old age... I'd have a Spark cheap<<
Based on the Daewoo Matiz I believe = chain cam DOHC engines, NCAP 4*, good prices,
can't argue with that choice.
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Glad to see I'm already driving one of them... also that HJ's wearing the Next grey suit I put in our recycling last month.
Also agree with the inclusion of a Mk.II Granada... my cloth seated Ghia X was great to waft about in.
Last edited by: Fenlander on Wed 12 Oct 11 at 11:26
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Granadas were great - except in snow where they mades BMWs appear to have good traction..
I had two : a 2.3 saloon and an estate. Very comfortable and reliable.
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Good old HJ, the voice of reason in the sea of motoring journalists (especially the telly ones) who promote cars with solid suspension, most of whom conveniently forget the state of Britains crumbling urban and non dualled roads as they blast around test tracks.
I like the most of the modern Daewoos' whichever badge they are currently wearing, the hatted fellow rates them well enough too throughout the range.
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Mk2 Granada - definately a motorised sofa - and plenty of hat room in the back. I loved my 2.8, apart from watching the fuel gauge drop like a stone whatever speed I was doing.
>>Good old HJ
Funny thing about HJ is that he likes cars with a good ride, but one of his favourite cars is the Seat Leon, a car always criticised for an overly firm ride, especially the FR and Cupra models. Guess he just overlooks that small detail.
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It's strange about Motoring Journalists. They seem to have a lack of judgement and good sense...
A review of a BMW 5 sport I read said how wonderful it was, then criticised the ride for being unbearable over rough roads and then concluded it was a wonderful car and best in its class.
Obviously written by some under 30s idiot who has yet to discover the joys of back problems.. or how tiring hard rides are at 9pm when you have worked 12 hours and have driven for 300 miles and are exhausted..
Still .. if they keep the prices of cars I want to buy low, who am I to complain?
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>> Obviously written by some under 30s idiot who has yet to discover the joys of
>> back problems.. or how tiring hard rides are at 9pm when you have worked 12
>> hours and have driven for 300 miles and are exhausted..
So your next car might not be a Yaris then? Good seats and excellent driving position but I find the ride a bit jarring except at higher speed.
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I have seen some carp written, but that takes the biscuit.
Dawoe Kalos, "thats why people liked them"
People liked them soooooooooooooo much they never bought any!
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>> Obviously written by some under 30s idiot who has yet to discover the joys of
>> back problems.. or how tiring hard rides are at 9pm when you have worked 12
>> hours and have driven for 300 miles and are exhausted..
Had a much-tweaked Fiesta last week. 1.6 with a 25% increase in HP and torque, low-pros, progressive rate coils (about an inch of suspension travel!)
Great fun for a short while but my back took a hammering. This thing hurts when you go over a grain of sand.
Have also been driving a Suzuki Kizashi - awesome car, wafty, solid build, and comfortable. Definitely an armchair-on-wheels.
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Kizashi is a Japanese word which means "something great is coming",
:-)
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I may be showing my complete lack of car knowledge here, but instead of subjective views about ride comfort, i.e. excluding seat comfortability, isn't there a standardised test for ride quality?
As an engineer I would, for example, strap an accelerometer to central console and record readings when driving at given speeds over a test track with known bumps.
Then do a frequency decomposition plot (using FFT) to come up with some score to rate high, medium and low frequency response. Then give the car an overal rating?
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Yes, there is lots of work done on improving ride which uses analysis, rig testing, testing on full vehicles to determine how well a vehicle rides.
Although frequency domain methods are used, they are only useful for small inputs, where the car's response is linear. Effects like the spring stiffness increasing due to coils being shorted as the suspension compresses mean that the suspensions are non-linear at larger amplitudes - the principle of superposition is violated, and techniques like FFT (and FRF, etc) are invalidated.
In practice, you would need a number of accelerometers - because the response in all directions is important, and it's also necessary to be able to decompose, for example, pitch from bounce.
There is a useful measure of human response to vibration, the so-called vibration dose value. It's a bit of a faff to calculate, but does allow some comparisons to be made.
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These points about subjective opinion about ride-quality (and what can be done with it) are interesting.
I recall a group car test about a year ago in a well-known car magazine.
The testers pointed out the odd phenomenon that one car was objectively measured as faster than its rivals in the test but all of the testers said that it seemed slower.
Last edited by: Londoner on Thu 13 Oct 11 at 12:57
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The 10 most comfortable trilby hats ... - madf
