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Everyone likes the look of a lowered car on large wheels but when it comes to the way a car goes down the road you want suspension travel & small, light wheels. Problem is the car manufacturers are now building their cars ‘pre-lowered’ and blinged out from the factory and its getting worse year by year.

The result is that today’s cars are already too stiff and low to start with; in fact in some cases aftermarket tuners will soften the suspension to improve handling. Take for example the ‘01-04 M3 - Schnitzer’s kit softens the rates, as does DINAN’s. The ‘05 M3’s improved handling came from suspension settings that were more lax. (The Z4 and new 3 have been criticized for having too little suspension travel and wheels that are too large as well, particularly with the sport package).

One of Porsche’s engineers recenly admitted that their cars with PASM adjustable suspension were actually faster around a track with the suspension in the standard rather than sport setting but that driver confidence and the subjective impression of speed was greater in sport mode.

This road test from evo is just one of the many examples I’ve found in the popular press and during my own evaluation drives of cases in which the handling of the car was diminished by larger wheels or the firmer suspension setting. Here are a few excerpts:

On the bumpier, tighter stretches it pays to knock the [CLS’] suspension back one setting, as the stiffest mode never lets the big Benz settle completely…

[The M5] also has two stages of suspension stiffening, but the second of these is simply too uncompromising for anything other than the very smoothest roads. However, once you’ve found the ideal setting, the M5 allows you to mount a more sustained attack on the road…

You’d expect the bigger rubber to generate more grip, but you never really sense the [Quattroporte] Sport GT keying into the road, and though it does carry prodigious speed, there’s less feedback and progression. When at or close to the limit, there’s a snappy edge to the handling that the standard car doesn’t have. Worse, on the bumpiest sections of our test loop, the Quattroporte’s wheel control falls to pieces, the oversized alloys simply overwhelming the Skyhook dampers’ ability to control their vertical movement. It’s a real shame… Sport mode… stiffens the suspension, which is then too much for bumpy surfaces and exacerbates the wheel control problem. It all seems so unnecessary, for in all honesty there was little wrong with the standard Quattroporte chassis… The truth is we’re still huge fans of the standard car, but it’s a great shame that the Sport GT modifications prove the old adage ‘less is more’ so conclusively.

(Click here for more on this topic).

Consider for a second that the VW Eos, priced in the low to mid 30s is largely based on the same componentry the $15,000 Rabbit is made of or that the Volvo C70, priced in the low 40s shares many components with a Mazda 3.

Many have pointed out the SUV boom was fostered by the car companies because they could take a rudimentary pickup truck priced in the low teens, change the bodywork, add leather seats for all and sell it for $50K.

It seems to the world is moving away from truck based SUVs to more compact and handling oriented ones (think X3, RD-X), but luckily for the car companies buyers will still pay Filet Mignon prices for the equivalent of reheated fast food.

Folding hardtop mechanisms or on demand all wheel drive systems add cost, sure, but doubling the sticker price? That’s just greedy. And no one seems to mind…

I just heard a Corvette C6 drive by with what I assume was a ‘custom’ exhaust. It sounded terrible. Granted it wasn’t as loud as some cars with aftermarket exhausts, but the note of those 8 cylinders was drowned out in a haze of whooshing and fizzing.

Exhaust tuning is not as straightforward as it seems – many debate the high end power vs. low end torque issue but the way I see it you can 2 of the following three: power, quiet, or system size. I.e. if you want to make more power without increasing volume you have to increase the size of the mufflers (witness the exhaust on a BMW M5, so large there’s no room for a spare tire). If you want more power but the system stays the same size more noise is the consequence…

But regardless of what you drive, focus on spending on a system that’s designed for your vehicle specifically, not a ‘universal’ muffler made to fit. There are companies that focus on letting out more of the engine note (e.g. Stromung, Supersprint) and those that just go for loudness (e.g. Tri Flo, Borla) – make sure you know what you’re buying, lest your car sound like a UPS truck as it goes by.

The climate control system in the upcoming Acura RDX with technology package is being touted as the world’s most advanced, a claim that seems believable when you consider cars it takes latitude, longitude and direction of travel to counteract solar gain on the side of the vehicle in the sun…

It seems that for every German engineer applying technology for technology’s sake there’s at least one Japanese engineer deciding how useful features can be implemented using existing hardware…