quattro digest, Vol 1 #3216 - C-5 et. all at speed

[l.leung at juno.com]

Inheritly, acceleration should not aerodynamically stablize a car other tha=
n there is rearward weight transfer under such an action. As there is limit=
ed acceleration of any car near it's top speed (unless it's one whose top s=
peed is more RPM rather than drag limited)the "stabilization" of the car at=
 that speed is pretty low. In the case of the C-5 Corvette, from what I've =
read (never have had the chance to take it, nor any other car anywhere near=
 150)it is pretty well aerodynamically designed, i.e. it's stable at top sp=
eed. Same can be said (again, reading recent test in R&T) for Porsche 911's=
 (993-6, etc) Ferrari 360s and many other cars intended for such speeds. As=
 for Civics and GTi's, well, my GTi is rather twitchy (though it is set up =
for low speed manuverability for Auto-X) at speeds much above 100 or so, so=
 I rather doubt that even if they could be brought up to that speed that th=
ey'd safely maintain that speed. From things that I've done at half that sp=
eed on the track (car ended up backwards in the mud, and I ended up "cleani=
ng" my shorts too) and things that lister Gary (GMBCHEF at aol.com) has said o=
f a run in with a Civic, I honestly think a 150MPH Civic/GTi would be a rat=
her (un)guided missle, rather than a car....

LL-NY