Quote:
Originally Posted by SYT_Shadow
My two cents:
I dislike the mid engine thing. American cars suffer from too much spreadsheet-itis, that is, the desire to 'check the box' on things.
Examples:
-Flat plane engine like the GT350. Then it drinks oil like there's no tomorrow and is unreliable given the complaints on the Mustang forums. But hey, they were able to check the damn box
-Dry sump oil system. Cuz if expensive cars have it we need it too! Nevermind that later on it'll still suffer oil starvation. Meanwhile, the E9X M3 and F8X generations don't suffer oil starvation without any fancy check the box exercises.
-Auto gearboxes that are worthless piles of manure. Like the 8 speed in the Z06. But they still spoke about it being faster than PDK/DCT... perhaps when the DCT is disconnected from the car the 8/10 speed is faster
-Lots of cooling stuff. Diff cooler, tranny cooler, oil cooler, whatever. Then it overheats with stock PSS tires in 80F weather.
-etc etc
So, I feel the mid engine thing is a massive distraction. There is no handling issue with being front engine rear wheel drive. I wish they had concentrated on building a better driver's car.
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All really good points. A mid-engine Vette was inevitable though. They've been trying to push one through since the 1970s. The powertrain tech is here and they are making gobs of power and the car was due for a redesign. They could have easily gone with a front mid-ship design, but mid-engine is the preferred way to go for most performance marques so that's the direction GM went. The Camaro will take care of the front engine and RWD performance duty.
You do bring up a good point about cooling. Let's hope GM used mid and rear engine Porsche's as their benchmark for cooling design. There is definitely more effort in keeping this design cooled off reliably.