F1 cars. BMW M3/M4. BMW M5. McLaren. Audi RS5. Those are just a few examples of cars whose noises lay victims in the path of turbocharging. But, they say the future is turbocharging. Or the present, really, if you look at how many cars already are turbo, some even base and optional engines. There are a lot of technical pros and cons to turbocharging, which I won't get into here. but one of the biggest subjective downsides is the noise. Some dismiss it, if the specs and the numbers are good. Some prefer all the whine, whooshing, and hissing. Some, however, mourn the death of N/A noise. Everyone who is even slightly familiar with what I like in cars knows I'm in the last group, and it turns out to be a special group because Ferrari engineers and/or their customers are in the group as well, because Ferrari is patenting a technology that makes turbo engines sound better. The system is a hybrid (no pun intended) between an electric supercharger and a traditional turbo. An el...
I'm finishing up a comparison post (link to introduction: Intro: Focus RS vs Golf R vs WRX STI vs Evo X ) and, throughout the post, I realized that I have to go off topic a lot to talk about how each type of differential changes the way the car drives. As a result, I thought I'd write a separate post to go into more detail before I post the comparison to keep it more focused on the cars and avoid veering off topic too much. By saying "Limited Slip Differentials" in the title, I am including torque vectoring diffs because, although current conventional terminology treats them differently, a torque vectoring differential is, in essence, a very sophisticated limited slip diff (LSD) that can be manipulated to actively help the car handle better. And while none of the cars in the comparison use open (without help from the brakes) or non-gear mechanical LSD’s, I’ll briefly discuss them so that the post is more inclusive. I’ll only focus on using power to help the...