Bring Back the Touge

Touge is the Japanese term for winding mountain road. Thankfully the love of cars and driving transcends languages and cultures. Drifted.com presents this video of a 1st generation Toyota Cressida drifting on a touge in Norway. There’s a professional stunt driver behind the wheel, a hot model riding shotgun and two professional filming rigs chasing the car. Enjoy:


Source: Daniel Hovdahl on YouTube via Drifted.com

Multimatic’s In-Wheel Suspension ’32 Ford

Multimatic-32-Ford-coupe via Multimatic.comMany people are calling Mulimatic Inc.‘s new ’32 Ford demo car “The world’s most advanced Hot Rod” or “The world’s best handling ’32 Ford.” These are bold claims which I’m sure plenty of people would like to contend, but today we’re going to talk about the unique suspension system that Multimatic has come up with. They call it their In-Wheel Suspension and as the name suggests, all of the components that guide the wheel travel are housed inside of the wheels. If you think about how much wheel travel a street car or race car needs, maybe 3 to 5 inches compression and 1 or 2 inches of droop, that range of motion can easily fit inside the diameter of modern 17 to 20 inch wheels.

What Multimatic has done is mounted the wheel to a hydraulic cylinder that controls its stroke. There are no control arms, pivots or even ball joints of any kind. As the wheel moves through it’s travel, hydraulic fluid is displaced which travels through lines to what is pretty much a remote coilover that’s mounted to the firewall. A spring mounted valve gives the suspension its spring rate and damping is adjusted very much like a traditional shock. The entire system allows for compact and flexible packaging for oddly shaped chassis. Having a single point of force transfer probably also means the chassis can be lighter since it doesn’t have to have hard mounting points for all the control arms and links.

As for whether or not the Multimatic has built the best handling ’32 Ford in the world remains to be seen. Though interesting from a packaging standpoint, the in-wheel suspension may have some major drawbacks. I would say the first one is maintaining the temperature of the hydraulic fluid. There’s a lot of energy being transferred and that will heat up the fluid which will change its viscosity and damping characteristics. I’m also curious about how good the handling of the car can be with a linear “axle path.” With this system, you can’t do things like camber or toe gain with loading. Without having driven the car, my guesses could be totally unfounded. Either way, Multimatic has built a cool hot rod and the In-Wheel Suspension system is a pretty fascinating concept to wrap your brain around.


Source: AutoFocus Canada on YouTube

Drifting a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta

Apparently Chris Harris is now back in Ferrari’s good graces because they definitely hooked him up for this test of the F12 Berlinetta. Harris got to drive the car for a few days and then they gave him 4 sets of tires to nuke doing his signature oversteer review. Beyond being fun to watch, this video goes to show that Ferrari is approaching the use of sophisticated electronics packages correctly. Instead of augmenting a mediocre car into supercar territory, the base car is built with a superb natural balance and the electronics are used to make it more livable and usable. Sit back and enjoy the entertainment brought to you by the sacrifice of many expensive Pirelli tires:


Source: DRIVE on YouTube

1994 JGTC Round 4 – Sugo

Designer Jon Sibal posted this video on his Facebook page for Throwback Thursday. It’s footage of a young Keiichi Tsuchiya racing the Advan Porshce 964 Turbo in the Sugo round of the 1994 Japanese Grand Touring Championship (JGTC). There’s a pretty eclectic mix of cars on the starting grid including a Ferrari F40, R32 Skylines, Supras and RX-7’s. I believe Tsuchiya-san is racing with his mentor who eventually became his team principal at the ARTA NSX team.


Source: YouTube user rocketpencil