No I am not impling that Porche's are swing axle cars nor did I say that IRS could not work. What I did say was that IRS in "standard form" on the Bug was designed to make the car understeer more. Modifications to the IRS spec can produce improvements and I don't mean to imply that the IRS theory is somehow wrong; remember, Bugs are not Porche's.roachghia70 wrote:are you implying that porsches are swingaxle cars? last time i checked everything since the 356 has had irs. even the "lowly" 914!
I too drove both IRS and Swing Axle Bugs with torsion bar front suspension and my experience is the contrary. In North America, you had only one year of Swing Axle with the factory Z-bar, so much of the American experience never touched the late swing axle system. What the Z-bar did for the swing axle was to make it more neutral without the loss of positive handling. It is extremely difficult to make a Z-Bar swing axle lose traction, even on a wet road, when fitted with proper tires.
In respect of what Paul Illick said:
What Ralph Nader did for the American auto industry (or even the European) is consider by some to be a crime. In many respects, the effects of some of what he did was to take the responsibility away from the driver and put it solely with the manufacturer.
You are right about the relative costs of the systems but then VW had to do whatever they needed, to protect their market. It speaks volumes if the Buggy market was supplied by rolled Volkswagens, but somehow I doubt that is actually the whole truth. Ultimately, Nader undoubtedly caused the increase in cost of production of the vehicle and is, in part, responible for its demise in the 1970's. Something very similar befell Audi, when they were not the sole culprit. Politics?
