FRporscheman

I've never had any 4wd or awd cars, but I'm sure I'd be best off in an audi if I were driving through mud or snow. However, I'd rather take my bro's front wheel drive VW to the track than the TT - it understeers, but it would at least be more entertaining to toss it around than how the TT looked with Tiff driving it.

BlueDog944

FWIW, all new cars are designed to push. Learned this from several chief instructors and read it somewhere. Seems designers feel that its safer than a car that would tend to step out in the rear.

959Lover

Get away from my Volkswagen
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Ashkan, 18

'95 968 6-speed coupe - Bro's
'85.1 944 - Bro's (prepping for paint, and converting interior to black!)
'84 944 - Mom's
'83 928S - Dad's

My ride: '85 VW GTI 8v

luckett

That 350Z sure doesn't look like it's pushing!

ninefiveone

The 350Z pushes too. The folks at 5th gear are very talented at inducing oversteer. It looks great for the cameras and does take a lot of skill to do it well. But it's not the quickest way around a track.

The TT pushes more because it's nose heavy and that's the way its suspension is tuned, not because it's awd. If the V6 motor is heavier than the 1.8t, than the v6 will push even more. You can find plenty of clips of EVO's, STI's, and S4's in lurid power oversteer. You can even find a few FWD cars people have tuned for oversteer.

As with any FWD, AWD, or RWD car, you can put the effort into suspension tuning that will make a car understeer, oversteer, or be pretty neutral. There are limits to that but 80% of cars can be tuned to perform decently around a track.

The 924/944 chasis has some things going for it that make it a little easier to tune: 50/50 weight distribution and relatively light weight being two major characteristics. RWD comes in a solid third behind those two.

But the 924/944 suspension design isn't anything special. Struts up front, trailing arm in the back... not really very glorious. Struts, particularly in the pretty standard manner that they're implemented in a 924/944 aren't great performers at the extremes of travel. You have to spring and damp it very firmly to get good performace out of it and that will come at the cost of really making the ride poor.

Trailing arms are a pretty old approach that unlike struts, has been largely abandoned in new suspension designs. All these new multi-link rear suspensions do a much better job of keeping the contact patch on the ground, controlling body roll, and delivering compliant ride.

One of the things being discussed here is handling and we're seeing the wide variations in what someone thinks constitutes good handling. Good handling on the street isn't the same as good handling on a track.

Back to the question orignially asked: I would use the TT for a daily driver. It's going to be way more comfortable and way more reliable.

cjeckert

The only thing is its terribly unpratical, you cant really fit anything in the "trunk" and the rear seats are tiny alot less room then the 924s. But overall its any enjoyible car to drive around but i just didnt like it when i took it to autocross.

luckett

Actually, the weight distribution is not very different:
350Z 53 front / 47 rear
TT 58 front / 42 rear

This is a gross oversimplification of the dynamics that occur, but the AWD can contribute to the understeer since the front tires are subject to the lateral and longitudinal forces acting upon the tire's contact surface during acceleration while cornering. In a RWD car, the tires are only subject to the lateral forces. It just depends upon where the F/R tires are relative to their peak lateral force..

ninefiveone

That difference is actually quite substantial. Especially since neither car is a real lightweight.

The TT is 200lbs heavier in the front, and a similar 200 lbs lighter in the rear than a 350Z. Not to oversimplify but that's a big difference in weight distribution.

The TT is carrying 2 good sized people on the front axle, and none on the rear.

The 350 Z is carrying the same two people but one on the front axle and one on the rear.

Since good performance at the track has a lot to do with weight dynamics and managing that weight transfer, that's a pretty significant disadvantage.

It gets more significant when you consider the limits of adhesion as the cars start reaching their performance envelopes. All things being equal, the suspensions would be identical and they would be on identical tires. You can soften the front suspension, and stiffen the rear of the TT to get neutral handling but the most g forces it will generate will never be as high as the 350Z since the Z will always be pushing the front tires with 200lbs less weight. Actually, i think if I did the math/physics, it might even be more pronounced than the empirical differences in weights... Levers and such. But i'm old and physics class was a long time ago.

To make things worse, the TT doesn't have a particularly great front suspension design. More or less the same as on our 924/944's. A humble but effective strut. A quick search on the Z indicates it's got a 3 link front suspension that looks to be more like a double a-arm setup. That's going to keep camber changes to a minimum throughout suspension travel unlike our strut setup that starts getting into really bad positive camber at the extremes of travel that you get under hard cornering.

Now throw in what Chris brings up which is that an AWD setup pushing any power to the front wheels at the limit will push a tire out of it's friction envelope... but the diffs should be reproportioning power so that shouldn't be a problem.

Ah but looking at audi's website, only the Q7, S4, and RS4 will send 100% of the power to a given axle... the TT will only ever shift up to 67% to a given axle. That's a real problem for track performance... I wonder if there are aftermarket diffs to solve for that? Maybe it's possible to swap in an S4 diff?

Long story short, unless you're competitively racing, I doubt a TT will be a bad track ride but it has a few more challenges out of the box.

Dave in Chicago

Just keep the 944 and buy some snow tires. I just pulled the snows off my 968. It's a full race set-up with quite obnoxious spring rates, no rubber bushings, etc.

I'll drive it in anything up until the snow is filling the grill

xsboost90

i would have to agree with that!