Car enthusiast here and hard disagree. I respect anyone willing to pursue aesthetic so hard even at the cost of practicality. I enjoy cars slammed so low that the rim is bending the fender out etc.
At a certain point the car is sacrificed in the pursuit of some aesthetic point and I find that very amusing, and quite like it, even if it is practically “dumb”. It’s far stupider to get weird as hell about some very niche slice of car enthusiasts who bother doing this to this extreme.
Sure. Everybody is allowed to like what they like. And I have zero issues with seeing these cars at a car show. But the moment these fuckwits try driving these cars on a public road they deserve ALL the hate they get. They are prone to mechanical failure and are often unable to navigate common road conditions safely. One day I was on a road trip and there must have been a car show somewhere along the highway because every few minutes along the highway I’d see a group of cars with this mod along the side of the road with one of their number in obvious distress, with a wheel falling off or some other thing.
Camber for drifting is to provide more or less grip or control. Especially on the front tires that lose contact surface when they are turned 80 degrees. Drift cars usually don’t have much camber on the rear, the front is usually under 10 degrees with the top of the tire tilted inward.
Camber in the case of the OP has nothing to do with performance or practicality. It is done to be extreme, either in the case of camber for camber sake or to allow the car to ride as low as possible with the largest wheels/tires possible. The OP example is almost certainly camber for camber sake due to how extreme it is.
even worse are modern american cars, they look like they have breathing issues and are so hideously oversized that people are literally backing over their kids on their own driveways
Frontovers, not backing over. The hoods are so tall that they straight up run over their own kids in their own driveways, killing them, driving forwards.
The problem is that these are incredibly unsafe. You’re putting about 5% of the part of the tire meant to keep the car in control on the pavement. I don’t want to be on the road with these morons because if they hit a pothole, who knows what direction they’re going to ping off.
As far as style, I’m with you, but these are massive safety compromises.
I mean I don’t exactly see stance cars out on the highway often, but maybe thats my area and when I’m awake. I think they’re usually more of a project you take to car shows/meets or whatever cause they’re lowered so far they scrape all the time in regular driving and the suspension can’t work without a meaningful amount of travel. Though it could be bagged (riding on air suspension that can rise and lower).
I think they look silly and they’re definitely not practical, but I don’t know that stance cars actually end up being a safety hazard, so I’m not inclined be judgey other than to say I don’t personally like them. I could be wrong about the level of risk they pose people day to day though- in which case my stance would change.
I’d have to imagine it would wear down the tires incredibly quickly too. I’m not much of a car enthusiast but I’ve never understood this one when I’ve spotted it in the wild. It seems incredibly impractical.
Someone once told me that when the car is going 100mph+ the tires stretch out and touch the road, providing full coverage. They could not answer how the tires maintained pressure while stretching that much nor how that provided any benefit that wouldn’t have been there with the tires on the ground to begin with.
It’s an exaggerated version of something that’s used in racing, but going this far is not useful.
When you go around a corner, the car will lean into a bit. If the tires are angled like this (known as “toe”), more of the rubber is in contact with the road through the corner. Of course, this comes at the expense of having less rubber touching in the straights. Racing teams will tweak it a few degrees depending on how bendy the course layout is.
But only a few degrees. Toe to this extent doesn’t do anything but wear down a little strip of tire.
Hey thanks for the excellent explanation. I always wondered what the point was and you summarized it perfectly so that even an idiot like me can understand.
Yes that’s because they’re on a track. When going quickly around the corner, the outside tire will receive a high lateral load roll so that it will have a “normal” contact patch. The inside tires do almost nothing anyway.
I once saw these cartoon drawings of tuned cars in a shop somewhere.
I thought they looked neat, but that was back when I didn’t know people actually angled their wheels like that. I thought it was just stylised like that for effect.
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