carcounsel.com |HID|

the R8 has a delicious, tip-toe poise and a stubborn reluctance to be thrown off line. While it feels different to a 911, it shares the Porsche’s sense of a malleable, elastic limit, which you can lean on when required. That’s always been something only the boys from Stuttgart seemed to understand. Until now… half a dozen increasingly spirited laps reveal the full extent of the R8’s forgiving nature and exploitable balance… More to the point, its also tidier and more controllable than a 911 C4S is on track. – evo

Click here for a link to a video from Car and Driver.

Scroll down on this page for a refreshingly visual discussion of cam timing and lift…

I posted some time ago that I’m expecting huge things from Hyundai’s upcoming rear-drive flagship. This could be the most obsessively engineered, biggest bang-for-the-buck sport sedan since one of my all-time favorites, the ‘91 Infiniti Q45 (you know, the one that was the purest expression of the engineers’ art – before the marketers softened it up and slapped a grill on it).

Here is an excerpt from an update by MT’s unimpeachable imported editor, Angus Mackenzie :

For a company with a reputation for fast-tracking new models at a pace that makes even the Japanese dizzy, the BH has been a long time coming-more than five years, in fact. But that doesn’t mean Hyundai has been slacking; Concept Genesis is on its second exterior (the previous design was scrapped, after the hugely expensive tooling process had been started) and third chassis setup (the rear axle was upgraded from a four-link configuration to five-link only last year)...The lower control arm is pressed steel, but all the other links are forgings. The compact coil springs are mounted separate from the shocks, which are located to the body by way of aluminum castings. The front suspension features a short/long-arm setup executed entirely in forged aluminum, with large cast-aluminum top mounts for improved precision and rigidity...Insiders claim the car’s body-in-white, rich in ultra-high-tensile steel, isn’t only lighter than that of a 5 Series, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, and Lexus LS, but also has 12- to 14-percent-higher dynamic torsional rigidity... The V-8 drives the rear wheels via ZF’s smooth 6HP26 six-seed automatic transmission.

The clutch is snappy quick, the brakes are abrupt, the steering is darty, the ride is nasty… The quickness of the controls is fun right up to when is not. Out in the twisties the mood turns edgy, particularly when the road lurches up and down. The too-sudden brakes pitch the tail up, the steering bites ravenously into turns, the suspension abruptly unloads a corner, and the path gets uh-oh... Let’s just say the Mini is great fun if you think it is.

NOTE: Journalists so rarely take into account how the test car’s equipment changes their ‘rank’ and here there is no mention of whether the test car had the firmer suspension or not (it’s no longer standard on the S).