I once reversed into a church. My friends said I was taking my car in for a.....service.....(groan)....

My car was reversed into my a coach once. It made a mess of the drivers side front wing, and it was repaired badly - that's why the paint is so crappy there (as Mark will testify!).

cheers

James

I've not crashed my 340 yet (*touches wood*) because I haven't had the opportunity to (I don't intend to, you understand) but my grandfather has had a few hair raising experiences in the old girl..to name a couple...

He was driving home when some dolt came out of a side road while he was more or less opposite it..he feared damage not only to the front wing but the nearside of the axle also...only the wing suffered minor damage which was repaired the next day.

Next, he was on a roundabout driving my mum home from work before her driving days. It was very wet. He came out onto the roundabout, steered slightly to the left and suddenly the car began to slide. It slid across all three lanes of the roundabout before coming to a rest in the central part, where he then recieved lots of toots and beeps and probably a lot more abuse They both got off without a stratch, as did the car.

Oh, yeah, and when I was a kid, the family went to Barmston Beach for a holiday (which is fairly near Bridlington in North Yorkshire). One week into the holiday, my grandad noticed that the brakes had become very unresponsive, so he went to a garage to have them replaced. They were replaced with crappy Uniparts, which made a piercing sound if he so much as tapped the pedal. So we drove around in a really squeaky Volvo. Nice.

imo you NEED to learn to control oversteer to drive a 300. but maybe thats just the way i drive.. having the rear out is great fun

And he wonders why his car is so f*cked...lol

its not f*cked, its just a little old and rusty. whaddaya expect after 180k?!

He's right you know, steer with your rear, much more fun

Once you've passed....find a deserted car park on a wet day, and work out how to a) make it slide, and b) how to stop it sliding.

The critical thing to do if you feel it sliding is not to back off. Having said that, the 300 is a very nicely balanced car, and its very hard to actually lose it.

For what its worth, I slide mine fairly often, and it is tight as a nun's....er...you get the picture....

cheers

James

Winter time is most fun here with car

Oversteering is very easy to control, but car has bad habits of understeer as well. Weight transfer is your best friend when need to avoid understeer.

Keeping it in slide is very very important when rear is coming out, if one fails to keep it in slide with throttle and gently retain grip, then fishtail effect is reality because steering is rather slow. Powersteering is good friend there as steering is faster.

But here police is not friend of oversteering, I have not got any problems, but need to knock wood now

When everything is covered with ice and snow, all rwd cars seem to be playing with oversteering or kept in garage, lol.

jtbo wrote:But here police is not friend of oversteering, I have not got any problems, but need to knock wood now

Yes, VERY true. Ignoring the fact that your car can be under far greater control than a FWD car sliding, they see it sideways and freak out!

cheers

James

Heh, I left fwd comment out from my post but you said it

For me it feels almost impossible to slide out from road or hit something with rwd car, but with fwd it feels impossible to avoid hitting as there seem to be no control when it slides. of course it could be that my skill with fwd is very bad, even i know how to use brakes and throttle with fwd.

Btw, when learning to control oversteering it is good to practise to keep slide angle and speed very stable, use throttle to control slide angle and your steering wheel to control where you are going, use later brakes to keep slide on and you can drift on straight line. It takes whole lot of practise to get that far though, I'm not yet quite there.

Biggest problem with my 360 has been understeer on winter so that is still limiting my practising. Differential lock would be nice to have. I had once possibility to buy one, but I was out of money then. It makes sliding more easy to control.

a fwd car is no more likely to leave the road than a rwd car, and is in fact a lot easier to handle skids in, as you do not have to spin the wheel backwards and forwards. its not as much fun, but its bucketloads safer. afaik a diff lock will not help control slides, just make it harder to get into them

Or just weld the diff...steer from the rear....and find a supplier of cheap tyres....

cheers

James

Well...kinda.

The key difference is what happens in oversteer. In a FWD car...you'd pretty much just better start praying, whereas its catchable (and FUN!) in a RWD car. Having said that, FWD cars are far less likely to suffer from oversteer in the first place!

RWD is a far superior system for the skilled driver (grip, better control, better refinement...the list goes on), but it was pretty much abolished in 'normal' cars for three reasons...

1) Most drivers are crap, and couldn't help stacking RWD cars into trees.
2) Most car manufacturers are crap, and couldn't help build cars that want to stack themselves into trees. For example the E30 BMW 3-series, and the early Porsche 911. The 300 might not handle as 'well' as these too, but it is more controllable in a slide than either of them.
3) It's cheaper to make FWD cars.

The more I learn about 'performance' driving and the 300 series, the more I realise just how clever the suspension design really is. It tries to understeer almost all the time for safety (to make incapable people think they're about to lose it), and if you do manage to kick the back out, it is beautifully balanced.

That my friends is the reason so many dumb kids stack Saxos. 1) There's not much warning of when they're gonna slide, and 2) When they do slide, its curtains!

cheers

James

actually, its easier to catch oversteer in a fwd car. you cant drift it easily, but you can opposite lock and floor it and it will pull out quicker than any rwd car ever could (because the front wheels are 'pulling' the front of the car back into line).

atop of that, fwd cars are generally quieter, more spacious, cheaper to run and more reliable.

True, but try changing a clutch on a 440