[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by Sonertial

...I recently installed M2/3/4 Lower Control Arms. This is the single biggest improvement at tootling around DD speeds... When pushing it the extra camber gives a much more positive turn-in...

Agree completely! My favorite mod as well!

[albertw]

The current issues of Motor Trend and Car and Driver have comparison tests of the Supra with the M2C and Cayman (and Mustang for C & D). The limit handling of the M2C gets a lot of criticism. C & D talks about the difficulty of controlling oversteer, and MT is particularly scathing, describing initial severe understeer transitioning to snap oversteer when the fronts finally hook up.

This is probably the wrong forum to discuss those observations, but the M2 section seems to be interested only in the acceleration aspects of the road tests (shallow of them, I think).

I'd be interested in hearing comments on the articles from people with track or aggressive street cornering experience with the M2 and M240. I wonder if these characteristics (if real) are a result of the staggered tire setup or whether they are unique to the M2.

In my car with the same funflat Pirellis front and rear I find the car to be very balanced at the limit. With just maintenance throttle all four tires start to slide at the same time, and oversteer is easy to induce and control with just a bit of extra throttle. But that's as far as I'm willing to push it on the street.

I'm just idly curious, as I have no interest in an M2 or even a staggered tire setup. I'll probably switch to non-runflat all season tires when these wear out, in the hope of getting a bit better steering feedback.

[YamaLink]

Originally Posted by albertw

In my car with the same funflat Pirellis front and rear I find the car to be very balanced at the limit. With just maintenance throttle all four tires start to slide at the same time, and oversteer is easy to induce and control with just a bit of extra throttle. But that's as far as I'm willing to push it on the street.

I'm just idly curious, as I have no interest in an M2 or even a staggered tire setup. I'll probably switch to non-runflat all season tires when these wear out, in the hope of getting a bit better steering feedback.

It's like I could have written the same above. Tested the M2, but I do so much winter mountain and resort driving that even "good snow tires and common sense" would've been a disaster in the track-focused M2 (the styling is so nice, admittedly) even though I drove a 2wd Toyota for decades and seemed to do just fine. I'm glad my 240 didn't come with summers like the SQ5 this way I can wear them out to be replaced with non-runflats; I do prefer stickier yet costlier summers, and will never take the cheap route with discount all seasons again. Depending on our snow year (farmer's almanac says it's gonna be nasty) I may get away with the all-seasons instead of buying dedicated winters. For pure street I'm fine with the car as-is, and may not get a Stage 1 or M2 lower arm control, etc. Not to derail the thread, how you liking the 790? I just brought one home, replaced my Husky 701. Kept the KTM Super Duke R.

[albertw]

Originally Posted by YamaLink

Not to derail the thread, how you liking the 790? I just brought one home, replaced my Husky 701. Kept the KTM Super Duke R.

Briefly (it is a car forum after all), coming from a CBR600RR the 790 fits my 70+ body a lot better, and its behaviour in the twisties is almost as good. The best single thing is the twin cylinder vibration, which doesn't numb my throttle hand the way every inline four I've ridden has. I find the throttle response a bit abrupt when starting to accelerate past an apex, which is going to take some concentration to master since that's what leads to a high-side.

[dradernh]

Originally Posted by albertw

This is probably the wrong forum to discuss those observations, but the M2 section seems to be interested only in the acceleration aspects of the road tests (shallow of them, I think).

My 2¢ on the subject is that straight-line acceleration is the easiest way to access a street car's performance.

For example, when taking a right-hander on the street you can't roll all the way left to the edge of the oncoming lane's pavement before bringing the car back right to the turn's apex. You might be able to do that here and there out in the country when the sightlines are long enough, but it's generally not an option, and for a host of reasons. That leaves the average owner using the stoplight grand prix to measure his or her car's street performance.

Originally Posted by albertw

I'd be interested in hearing comments on the articles from people with track or aggressive street cornering experience with the M2 and M240. I wonder if these characteristics (if real) are a result of the staggered tire setup or whether they are unique to the M2.

I don't see the C&D article, but I read the MT article. They didn't think much of the M2C's driving dynamics, did they. C&D, however, appeared to have a different take on the M2C in this piece, where they considered understeer to be easily managed: https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews...-drive-review/. Perhaps the different experiences are down more to the drivers than they are to the car.

My experience has been that if you want a street car (any street car) to perform reasonably well on the track, you're going to have to modify it to suit where and how you intend to drive it. I chose to start with an M240i because it was a less expensive route to achieving my ends. An M2 would also have required a decent amount of money be put into it to achieve those same ends. FWIW, I don't have trouble keeping up with and staying ahead of M2s at the track. As ever, the driver mod continues to be the principal means of going faster.

The two things I've given up by choosing the M240i over the M2 is the ability to easily fit wider tires and the (lack of) availability of an AP Racing front brake kit from EssexParts.com (https://www.essexparts.com/essex-des...87M2f80M3f82M4).

The lesser tire width I can work with; the brake kit I'd practically kill for. The only solution I can come up with is to buy the brake kit parts from Essex and have a race shop fabricate the caliper mounting brackets. Unfortunately, I've checked and wasn't surprised to learn that that is prohibitively expensive.

[albertw]

Originally Posted by dradernh

For example, when taking a right-hander on the street you can't roll all the way left to the edge of the oncoming lane's pavement before bringing the car back right to the turn's apex. You might be able to do that here and there out in the country when the sightlines are long enough, but it's generally not an option, and for a host of reasons. That leaves the average owner using the stoplight grand prix to measure his or her car's street performance.

I don't see why you need to run a racing line on the street. What I do is find a few turns with good sightlines out in the boondocks and run down the inside of the lane through them over and over again, increasing my speed in each incrementally until I reach the traction limit. Then if I'm feeling really sharp I play with it by inducing a bit of oversteer. If I see another car I drop right out of play mode. I'm not practicing for the track or trying to take the corners as fast as possible.

I'm not advocating this behaviour for anyone else, but for me the benign limit handling of my M240i with the square tire setup, no LSD and allseason runflats is what makes this possible, along with the safety nannies of Sport+ to maybe save me if I really screw up. If my car understeered until it snapped into serious oversteer, I wouldn't do it.

If that's really how an M2 handles at the limit (and possibly an M240 with staggered tires), I think it might be of interest to people considering an M240 vs an M2 who drive fairly briskly through the twisties but never intentionally approach the traction limit. Now and then a corner can surprise you with less traction than you expect, because of contamination or a hump that's a lot more abrupt than it looked from 50 yards away. Benign limit handling might make the difference between a scary moment and leaving the road.

[dradernh]

Originally Posted by albertw

I don't see why you need to run a racing line on the street.

You don't need to. What I intended to get across is that you can run a straight racing line on the street all day long (absent enforcement), but you generally can't run a racing line through turns on the street. I think this is why many forum members focus on acceleration.