Jalopnik Review (GT)

[REX-RACER]

That was me.

There are TWO things that Ford did to this car to promote understeer in wildly unhealthy ways.

First was tire stagger on the GTPP, second was the significantly wider rear track than the front track which is true of ALL S550 cars. The IRS pushed the rear wheels out an inch wider than the front. That wider track may not seem like a whole lot but it reduces that lateral weight transfer which doesn't load the tires up as much. This means more rear grip compared to the front which is the very definition of understeer.

WHY Ford did it is beyond me, probably to try and make the car put power down coming out of corners better but what it means for the enthusiast and aftermarket is more parts to throw at the car. It will take a bit more work to get these cars balanced out than the S197 which had a closer (but still not perfect) front to rear track width ratio.

The other thing that really strikes me as lazy on Ford's part is 275's and 255's for PP cars. Dear Ford: Don't fear the tire. When a 1LE comes shod in 285's on 20x10 and 20x11 wheels all the way around at a price point that the PP is going to hit easily, Ford should have taken a page out of their book and DID THE SAME. The car now has the weight to need these bigger wheels and tires and it is really hindering these cars in performance tests.

Good points! Iirc the track of my '01 Cobra is +1" front to rear as well. People have surmised over the years that part of the reason for that was a poor attempt to fill out the rear fender wells better which are wider than the fronts . . . it was a very poor attempt.

As far as the S550 goes all of that does paint a somewhat puzzling picture but perhaps it's as you say a nod to the drag racing legion who have vociferously voiced their the lamenting of losing their beloved SRA. Add to this the natural front weight bias that will be more pronounced in the GT and the picture becomes even more murky? An example of engineering over-compromising in an effort to be all things to all people? :shrug:

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[Whiskey11]

... Doesn't almost every powerful RWD (and many AWD) car have wider rear tires? I mean everybody generally seems to want to do more to stick the rear tires. It's a huge part of the reason mid-engine and rear-engine layouts exist.

As I read your comments, it sounds like praise to me, in spite of the negative context you're saying it in.

Also, R&T didn't seem to have any trouble kicking the tail out when they wanted to have some fun.

Do OEM's do that, yes. Do enthusiasts interested in anything but burning down a drag strip and car shows? No because it dicks up the handling of the car and makes it that much harder to tune the car to do what you want. Go look at any "powerful" Front Engined RWD car in any road course race series. How many of them are running staggered setups? How many of those few running staggered setups would run a square setup if they weren't bound by the rules of the governing racing body to run a staggered setup? Now look at the competition for the PP GT and what it comes with, 20x10's up front, 20x11's out back and 285's square. The Camaro 1LE comes with some stupid wide wheels with what I consider to be the bottom end of what the car should have for tires. The new GT PP isn't terribly far behind the 1LE in weight (about 100lbs lighter) and has a staggered 255/275 setup on 9 and 9.5" wheels.

Kicking out the tail and having a balanced car are two different things. A car with wider rear tires (and a wider rear track) will push (understeer) everywhere in a corner, on or off the throttle until you have either removed the weight from the rear somehow (braking usually, not possible on a factory car for obvious reasons) or overpower the rear tires with the throttle. It shouldn't be a shock and surprise that not every corner allows you to use the throttle to correct the attitude of the car on course. No where is this more relevant than in autocross where the tight course dictates a very narrow drive path and understeer is the enemy, perpetually. Correcting with the throttle takes time and doesn't necessarily make the car quicker. Tuning this out is going to require some significant compromises elsewhere in the chassis with regards to tuning... a heavier rear swaybar which removes a lot of the independence of the rear wheels can cause you to lift a wheel in a corner which is bad for just about everything except power sliding everywhere.

As for me and my goals, this generation represents a healthy non-starter for me. It's heavier, wider, and either too powerful (V8) or the same as what I have (EB vs my 3V 4.6L), has worse gearing (max speed in 2nd gear with the tires I run is about 60 mph which is 5 mph too slow) and a heftier price tag. The addition of an IRS is the biggest load of "meh" for me and doesn't justify the weight increase, price increase, or width increase. All of those hurt performance where it matters to me.

 

[REX-RACER]

... Doesn't almost every powerful RWD (and many AWD) car have wider rear tires? I mean everybody generally seems to want to do more to stick the rear tires. It's a huge part of the reason mid-engine and rear-engine layouts exist.

Asymmetrical width tire layouts have existed for quite some time, it's one of the reasons I tell the hacks at tire shops to kiss my @$$ when the start talking about rotating my tires! :rant:

For the hardcore track guys like over at Corner Carvers the conventional wisdom seems to have shifted on this over the last few years and they all seem to favor a "square" tire set up or I've even heard of a few running slightly wider tires on the front in an attempt to combat the ever present understeer boogie man ( I always sorta wonder how bigger tires up front impacts the wheel bearings?).

 

[REX-RACER]

Do OEM's do that, yes. Do enthusiasts interested in anything but burning down a drag strip and car shows? No because it dicks up the handling of the car and makes it that much harder to tune the car to do what you want. Go look at any "powerful" Front Engined RWD car in any road course race series. How many of them are running staggered setups? How many of those few running staggered setups would run a square setup if they weren't bound by the rules of the governing racing body to run a staggered setup? Now look at the competition for the PP GT and what it comes with, 20x10's up front, 20x11's out back and 285's square. The Camaro 1LE comes with some stupid wide wheels with what I consider to be the bottom end of what the car should have for tires. The new GT PP isn't terribly far behind the 1LE in weight (about 100lbs lighter) and has a staggered 255/275 setup on 9 and 9.5" wheels.

Kicking out the tail and having a balanced car are two different things. A car with wider rear tires (and a wider rear track) will push (understeer) everywhere in a corner, on or off the throttle until you have either removed the weight from the rear somehow (braking usually, not possible on a factory car for obvious reasons) or overpower the rear tires with the throttle. It shouldn't be a shock and surprise that not every corner allows you to use the throttle to correct the attitude of the car on course. No where is this more relevant than in autocross where the tight course dictates a very narrow drive path and understeer is the enemy, perpetually. Correcting with the throttle takes time and doesn't necessarily make the car quicker. Tuning this out is going to require some significant compromises elsewhere in the chassis with regards to tuning... a heavier rear swaybar which removes a lot of the independence of the rear wheels can cause you to lift a wheel in a corner which is bad for just about everything except power sliding everywhere.

As for me and my goals, this generation represents a healthy non-starter for me. It's heavier, wider, and either too powerful (V8) or the same as what I have (EB vs my 3V 4.6L), has worse gearing (max speed in 2nd gear with the tires I run is about 60 mph which is 5 mph too slow) and a heftier price tag. The addition of an IRS is the biggest load of "meh" for me and doesn't justify the weight increase, price increase, or width increase. All of those hurt performance where it matters to me.

:clap2::hail:

That early video of the white GT power sliding all over that auto-x course must have made you cringe almost inconsolably!

I'd still say a "base" eb car w/ MT6 / PP / Recaros might be the real track day hero of this bunch though. :shrug:

 

[ilkhan]

Do OEM's do that, yes. Do enthusiasts interested in anything but burning down a drag strip and car shows? No because it dicks up the handling of the car and makes it that much harder to tune the car to do what you want. Go look at any "powerful" Front Engined RWD car in any road course race series. How many of them are running staggered setups? How many of those few running staggered setups would run a square setup if they weren't bound by the rules of the governing racing body to run a staggered setup? Now look at the competition for the PP GT and what it comes with, 20x10's up front, 20x11's out back and 285's square. The Camaro 1LE comes with some stupid wide wheels with what I consider to be the bottom end of what the car should have for tires. The new GT PP isn't terribly far behind the 1LE in weight (about 100lbs lighter) and has a staggered 255/275 setup on 9 and 9.5" wheels.

Kicking out the tail and having a balanced car are two different things. A car with wider rear tires (and a wider rear track) will push (understeer) everywhere in a corner, on or off the throttle until you have either removed the weight from the rear somehow (braking usually, not possible on a factory car for obvious reasons) or overpower the rear tires with the throttle. It shouldn't be a shock and surprise that not every corner allows you to use the throttle to correct the attitude of the car on course. No where is this more relevant than in autocross where the tight course dictates a very narrow drive path and understeer is the enemy, perpetually. Correcting with the throttle takes time and doesn't necessarily make the car quicker. Tuning this out is going to require some significant compromises elsewhere in the chassis with regards to tuning... a heavier rear swaybar which removes a lot of the independence of the rear wheels can cause you to lift a wheel in a corner which is bad for just about everything except power sliding everywhere.

As for me and my goals, this generation represents a healthy non-starter for me. It's heavier, wider, and either too powerful (V8) or the same as what I have (EB vs my 3V 4.6L), has worse gearing (max speed in 2nd gear with the tires I run is about 60 mph which is 5 mph too slow) and a heftier price tag. The addition of an IRS is the biggest load of "meh" for me and doesn't justify the weight increase, price increase, or width increase. All of those hurt performance where it matters to me.

So sell the factory wheel/tires and stick on a square 285+ setup with your tires of choice? The people who have seen it say there is plenty of room for more tire.
Fuel cutoff isn't until 7500 afaik so those extra 5mph aren't a bit deal at all. Id prefer a 3.55 Torsen myself, but the 3.73 is fine.

 

[Whiskey11]

So sell the factory wheel/tires and stick on a square 285+ setup with your tires of choice? The people who have seen it say there is plenty of room for more tire.
Fuel cutoff isn't until 7500 afaik so those extra 5mph aren't a bit deal at all. Id prefer a 3.55 Torsen myself, but the 3.73 is fine.

Wheels and tires do not fix the wider rear track unless I want to run spacers up front to push the front track out. That is certainly an option if the fenders permit it.

Factory fuel cutoff for what, the GT? My understanding is that the hard redline is at 7000 RPM so a tune would be required for more. IIRC that redline is a hard redline, much like the hard redline for my car was 6250 but the gauge said 6k. IIRC the gauge on the 2015 GT's was around 6750 for the "redline".

I know what you are thinking though, who keeps their cars stock? I do. My first mod didn't go on this car until after the bumper to bumper was up and that was all suspension. I didn't even have an aftermarket exhaust piece on my car or a tune until well after the powertrain expired.

Now I'm a minor fish in the grand scheme of things but for me the base EB + PP and manual trans was on the radar up until I started seeing the performance numbers and weights. The rules in ST for SCCA autocross have some really screwy wording for boosted cars. Basically I can't tune for more boost for more power. I can do other things that change how much boost the car makes, like exhaust work, intake piping, etc, but I can't command more boost in the tune. Because of that, my thought process was to drive the car with the base tune until it came out of powertrain warranty, but with the low RPM of the 2.3L (which is just odd to me) and the extremely short gearing, we've added that final "ax" in the decision to buy one of these. It isn't happening.

 

[REX-RACER]

Now I'm a minor fish in the grand scheme of things but for me the base EB + PP and manual trans was on the radar up until I started seeing the performance numbers and weights. The rules in ST for SCCA autocross have some really screwy wording for boosted cars. Basically I can't tune for more boost for more power. I can do other things that change how much boost the car makes, like exhaust work, intake piping, etc, but I can't command more boost in the tune. Because of that, my thought process was to drive the car with the base tune until it came out of powertrain warranty, but with the low RPM of the 2.3L (which is just odd to me) and the extremely short gearing, we've added that final "ax" in the decision to buy one of these. It isn't happening.

That seemed really weird to me as well. I've heard some other speculate it may be due to the fact that stock turbo is already maxed out in an effort to combat lag? My presumption is this will be one of the tings we'll know asap as one of the first things the aftermarket tuners will do ( which doesn't really help you if I'm reading correctly ) will be to extend the redline and see what happens?

 

[jeebuspwnz]

OEMs introduce understeer ALL THE TIME. Find me a car that comes from the factory without some. It's incredibly rare. BMW does it, Porsche does it, Mercedes does it...They don't just do this to kill all of your fun, they often do this for legal reasons. Because when cars start spinning out from under their owners, the blame goes back to the manufacturer. However, when a car pushes well that's just your car saying, "hey fella, slow down!". FYI, the new M3/4 has the same 255F/275R setup with an even wider rear rim (10") and 1" more rear track than front. The M235i has 225F/245R (same size my old e36 M3 had).

Fortunately for us enthusiasts, there are a number of ways to cure understeer. Most of us that track our cars go square, often adding very little width to the back and a LOT to the front. You can also run mild spacers up front to try and even out the difference in F/R track. Even subtle toe and camber changes to the car (both front and rear) can have quite an effect on the neutrality of the car. My BRZ came with ZERO degrees camber up front from the factory!!!!

I think it's badass that GM put 10 and 11" rims with 285s on the 1LE, and even more badass that they put 305 trofeos on the z28. Unfortunately I don't like the Camaro so it's not really an option for me. Do I wish FORD had the balls to do something like that with the Performance Package? Yes, absolutely. But realistically the 255/275 setup will be fine for aggressive street driving and a dedicated set of wider wheels will be on order for the track.

 

[ShawnO]

Ford dials in understeer to prevent the common man from killing themselves. My 2010 M3 was the same way. The car pushed all the way around an autocross track. The solution? Match tires widths.

 

[Whiskey11]

That seemed really weird to me as well. I've heard some other speculate it may be due to the fact that stock turbo is already maxed out in an effort to combat lag? My presumption is this will be one of the tings we'll know asap as one of the first things the aftermarket tuners will do ( which doesn't really help you if I'm reading correctly ) will be to extend the redline and see what happens?

The redline can change but if I'm not making power up there all I'm doing is hurting myself. With my 3V, I make usable power to 7000 RPM from the stock 6250 cutoff. From the reviews the EB falls on it's face at 5000 RPM and continues that trend to redline and the dyno we saw from MT says basically the same thing so unless the tuning is just so assbackwards to force a larger turbo to spool at lower RPM and it will still breathe fine at higher RPM with some tuning changes, it will take a larger turbo to produce more at the top end to justify pushing the RPM higher.

OEMs introduce understeer ALL THE TIME. Find me a car that comes from the factory without some. It's incredibly rare. BMW does it, Porsche does it, Mercedes does it...They don't just do this to kill all of your fun, they often do this for legal reasons. Because when cars start spinning out from under their owners, the blame goes back to the manufacturer. However, when a car pushes well that's just your car saying, "hey fella, slow down!". FYI, the new M3/4 has the same 255F/275R setup with an even wider rear rim (10") and 1" more rear track than front. The M235i has 225F/245R (same size my old e36 M3 had).

Fortunately for us enthusiasts, there are a number of ways to cure understeer. Most of us that track our cars go square, often adding very little width to the back and a LOT to the front. You can also run mild spacers up front to try and even out the difference in F/R track. Even subtle toe and camber changes to the car (both front and rear) can have quite an effect on the neutrality of the car. My BRZ came with ZERO degrees camber up front from the factory!!!!

I think it's badass that GM put 10 and 11" rims with 285s on the 1LE, and even more badass that they put 305 trofeos on the z28. Unfortunately I don't like the Camaro so it's not really an option for me. Do I wish FORD had the balls to do something like that with the Performance Package? Yes, absolutely. But realistically the 255/275 setup will be fine for aggressive street driving and a dedicated set of wider wheels will be on order for the track.

That they do but they don't usually do it through geometry tweaks like pushing the track width out this far unless the car has a nasty tendency to oversteer that can't be cured through changes to spring rates (which is how they usually do it). Porsches are particularly notorious for wide rear track widths but hey also have a much higher tendency to spin due to the engine configuration and layout (rear biased mid engined or rear engined depending on how you look at it). BMW uses tire stagger almost exclusively and I suspect Mercedes is the same as both brands focus heavily on a good ride quality while maintaining a sporty ride but it shouldn't be a surprise that this trend has changed to wider track widths as well.

This Mustang is adding a lot more to the mix than just tire stagger on the GTPP though... it is adding that rear track width to all of the cars to get that understeering "balance" as well which serves as a large annoyance to those of us who want to push the car as even with a square setup you are going to have some inherent understeer from the wider track. The only thing I can think that might balance this out is how the front suspension's virtual pivot point (dual ball joint front suspension) is going to come into play. I doubt that it will counter an inch in track width variation but I could be wrong and would be glad if I was.

You don't have to talk to me about making changes for the track/autocross. I live it! ;) It has taken a lot more than subtle changes to get my car where it is today but one less headache for me was the car being pretty easy to balance by just using a wider square tire setup and a basic alignment. I'm not sure these cars are going to be as direct to cure that push. Again I hope I'm wrong.

 

[TampaBear67]

This was my favorite line...

It's not everyday that a Bentley Continental GT driver cranes his head to scope out a Ford – even in LA – but it happened. And it happened twice.

 

[jeebuspwnz]

I'm not sure these cars are going to be as direct to cure that push. Again I hope I'm wrong.

I think they will be easy to cure the push. Hell, even the FRS/BRZ has a .8" wider rear track and those are widely considered to be rotation machines.

A bit of negative camber up front, a pinch less rear toe in, and a square wheel/tire setup...the s550 will be neutral me thinks.

 

[Brent302]

Surprisingly enjoyable review.

 

[souprmage]

Nice review.

I'm hoping a DSP will help clear out the mud from the Shaker, but other than that, it was very close to what I was expecting.

 

[Brent302]

Nice review.

I'm hoping a DSP will help clear out the mud from the Shaker, but other than that, it was very close to what I was expecting.

Where did he mention the Shaker was muddy...

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