Why built to understeer?

Fishexpo101 hit the nail on the head. It's a combination of a couple things. Namely, the fact that understeer is easier for average drivers to manage, so for safety reasons, it's a standard practice for manufacturers to engineer non-sports cars to understeer. Secondly, tuning a chassis to have neutral handing would take time and cost money.

Keep in mind, the 93-01 Corollas for the most part were made before or towards the very beginning of the Import Tuning phenonmenon. Up until about 99, there weren't that many people tuning compacts other than Hondas. Therefore, Toyota didn't expect people to want good handling from a Corolla. If handling was your main concern, they expected you to step up to the $17,000 Celica or the $25,000 MR2, not the bottom of the barrel $10,000 Corolla.

Times have changed though. Now that Toyota and other manufacturers realize what young car buyers want, they've created cars like the SRT-4, Corolla XRS and the whole Scion brand.

Personally, I kind of like the idea of turning a faded green economy car into a pimp ass silver beast that handles just as well as anything on the road.

yeah......it's a Conspiracy
yet another way of briging down and limiting the man

I think because it goes into the cost of building the car. like eliminating understeer would up the price tag signifigantly

oh, to the scion comment.. they understeer too.. badly..

but i've been working on this.. mine's getting a bit better..

by cost of a car eliminating understeer, do you mean making cars RWD?

I dont think any car is built to over/understeer.. its all about lack of attention to a car's suspension geometry. Of course engineers for a Kia Rio wouldn't give nearly as much attention to the suspension of a car than engineers for a Ferarri Enzo. They're just trying to make sure the car dont tip over.

Why built to understeer?

i hear over and over that these cars are built to understeer.

my question is why are they built to understeer? shouldn't they be built to have neutral handling characteristics? or is it part of the limitation of a civilized suspension setup? what are your thoughts on this?

I think understeer is easier for the average driver to handle than oversteer is -- if that's correct, maybe that has something to do with it..just a guess =)

Everybody is right - FWD cars naturally tend to understeer or push. Many times, suspension components are selected to make sure that the car has a degree of understeer built-in - all for the sake of driver safety. Like CadetLee mentioned - makes the car easier for your average driver to control. To make the car handling neutral would be great - but like Killercocopuff and jspexae102 pointed out - would make the car very expensive and be out of place in a typical econobox. Even when you step up to the Celica or MR2 - still understeer present, just Toyota playing it safe.

supposedly, understeer is easiest to predict. it's not necessarily the easiest to counter. my theory... I think its a way car companies help out insurance companies by making you unable to control your car out of a situation so they can make money.

i knew everyone was going to say OH NO NOT THE DREADED OVERSTEER!!!!

that was why i used the keyword neutral which means the car goes where you want it to go.

So now that is has been acknowlaged and defined, whats the best way to get rid of it? Im assuming lowering the car will help, as well as wider wheels, better tires and stiffer shocks. What set-ups is everyone running? Im not interested in ricing out my Corolla, just making it a better-then-average daily driver, give the Civics a run for their money...

Brooks

Good excuse to ricing your car but really, lowering, wheelbase, suspension tuning, strut bars, etc. all helps.

In my opinion, as long as your car doesn't have the huge drainage pipe sized exhaust, and doesn't sound louder than my alarm clock, it's not ricing

i HATE. fwd.... period.

I have driven both. I really love how rwd handles. I loose control in the snow... Do i continue to slide not being able to do anything? Nope. I simply counter steer what is needed and apply a little gas and hurray im straight agian.

Only problem rwd has is from a stand point traction. When your in first gear and trying to go if your under gravel or ice. Its kind of hard. Usually i have to start in 2nd

Also for some reason reverse grips better

Yeah my mom's Benz is alot of fun in the rain when you turn the traction control off. It adds alot to the driving experience to be able to power oversteer and slide the tail out at will.

The most fun in my Corolla I have is scaring small children with my exhaust and taking corners way faster than my stock suspension was ever meant to.

careful the feds might call you a terriost for being to loud. Then take your car and feed you torcher juice for 3 months...

tried it doesn't work

i've also known that to counter understeer, you can tap the e-brake a little to make the back swing out a little bit so itll even out the turn. it's not natural reaction for the average person to do that, but it works. even i know that it works, but i cant react quickly enough to hit the e-brake. This method helped me a few times when doing quick u-turns.

uh ADD guys.....getting back on topic, Someone asked what he can do to improve his handling delema and what we have in our cars (suspension wise)

actually i finally understand why i like driving this FWD corolla. it feels so unstable. especially during high speed cornering. it gets my heart pumping. it is very exciting to drive on the edge. they say driving a FWD car takes more skill to push it to the edge and i believe it.

as for tuning to counter understeer i have gone with wider tires in the front, a staggered setup to help the car turn in better. i love it.

You've hit it right on the nose. FWD cars are actually harder to drive than RWD in certain situations (tight or high speed cornering for example). Ask some Auto-X or short road courses people - most will tell you that starting out with FWD will make you learn to drive clean (can't push too hard or you start eating cones or grass/gravel). Jump into a RWD car with more neutral handling and you automatically start to lap faster - because you learned to drive clean and not induce understeering. Usuing more throttle - you'll start to rotate the car through the turns but not too much to start drifting (looks cool but burns time).

I'm seeing a bit of misinformation up there, FWD are known for a fact to be better than RWD in poor weather conditions, period.. that is why autoX times for FWD cars are LOWER during rainy days, also why I have to run around in the rain picking up cones for RWD cars on those days. If you look at other forms of motorsports that dont race on clean dry tarmac such as RallyCross, they either use AWD or FWD.

With that said it is true that RWD car are able to take corners at higher speed on dry tarmac. This is because a RWD car, especially those with LSD's are able to rotate the chassis into and out of the apex using a technique sometime refer to as 'power over-force,' but the most important part to this technique is regaining traction which gets harder as conditions worsten. With FWD, a technique called 'left foot braking' can be used to counter understeer, but car setup would play a large role on rather or not this move would be effective.

If it was me I would say handling has as much to do with factors like weight distribution and wheel base as which set of wheels are doing the driving.