bad94ss

most importantly, front to rear weight ratio. just for the stocker, BMW offer 50/50 weight. talk about handle. our car camaro firebird got heavy front and light rear. so in order to drive our car really well, you have to be really good.

KeithO

It's funny that you would mention the Integra Type R. If you look at the car in my sig, you'll notice that the car has Type R stickers on it. The original idea to do this came from a Type R driver that I used to autocross and track with (he moved to Florida and now writes for Grassroots Motorsports Magazine). He had a modified Type R and was a bit faster than my old FS LS1 in autocrosses. We swapped cars for a few fun runs one day. My times weren't as good as his but were about the same as in my LS1 - more seat time would have made me faster. (Remember, I still think it is weight.) We also ran a track day together and we were roughly even - his modded ITR (head work, suspension, IIRC) and my FS-legal LS1. He was faster in the turns and I killed him on the straights. We had a running joke that if I had Type R stickers, I'd have the additional power to draw away from him for good. I finally got around to getting stickers this year but I put them on my current LT1.

The Type R does handle nice. I still think it is weight.

S2000, Type R, Civic - they are all light (and the S2000 is rwd!). ...did I mention weight?

RedHardSupra

fbodies, are suprisingly not too bad in the weight ratio department. side to side they are only like 51.4/48.6, front to back i've heard everything from 60/40 to 54/46, and i can see the difference just on options alone, although probably not 6% worth.
You also have to consider where you sit. you add 200lb *** somewhere in there, that's gonna offset it significantly. Supra's for example do not have perfect balance, but they're not meant to be that way. Why? because they ballparked the weight of the average human driver, and engineered it to have a good balance WITH the driver in, which makes helluva more sense.
did anyone actaully cornerweighted their fbody with the usual crap installed (trans/ps coolers, catch cans, coilovers, zr1s, etc)? i'd be really curious.
There's few other things to consider: weight is one thing, but since we're talking weight transfer, it's all done on a torque arm, so the distance from the center of gravity is very important too. driver is a lot of weight,but it's probably much closer (thus less imporant) than a 42lbs battery (or the huge hood) sitting way far in a corner.
anyway, fbodies are not too bad, what is really messed up is the roll center height in the rear compared to the front. front is a very nice 1.75" (IIRC), but rear is like over 11"! for comparison, in a z06 the real roll center is also <2" in the back, allowing much more shock/spring in the back. that's why fbody guys have to run strange combos like 550/150.
I solved my ***-happy problems with 17x11 zr1's, and BFG KD's. also i have a Racelogic Traction Control is sitting on a table too, which should make it a very easily controlable rearend.