The most recent article posted about the 2011 Mustang technology covers pretty well some of the thoughts in IRS.........
2011 Mustang Tech: What's Under the hood?
But to consolidate, my position with regard to IRS is not so much that it improves performance and helps it beat other cars in speed and G-force. That is missing the point. 99.9% of Mustang buyers aren't clocking their cars every day on a road course or drag racing to see whether their rear suspension getting them that extra tenth of a second. What they
are doing is living in them every day on real roads with real bumps, holes, expansion joints, and other surface irregularities.
An IRS is about two things:
1) Marketing
2) Refinement
The fact that even Ford itself puts the IRS in every other vehicle it builds including the even
trucks like Explorer, Sport Trak Pick-Up, and the Expedition tells you they themselves believe it to be a superior design. Ford brochures brag about the IRS in these vehicles, telling of its superiority in the areas of handling, stability, control, and refinement.
If a live axle were better, why not have it in the new Flex? Why not in the new Taurus? How about the Edge too? Why not in the Fusion, Escape and even the Lincolns? They could have a live axle just like the Mustang's for the AWD models and just a dummy beam for the FWD versions. Why is it they spend the extra money and add all that "extra weight" on every other car they build if an IRS is not all that much better?
Fact is the only reason Ford has stuck with the live axle in the Mustang is because it was considered cheaper and easier. Period. The Mustang had no competition, so why spend the extra money to make it better? In fact it is well known that the 2005 Mustang was going to have IRS, the engineers and marketing people wanted that. It was all but ready to go into production. But the bean counters changed course at the last minute to save a few bucks. Then they crash developed a new live axle design, shelving the IRS that so much development had already gone into.
Rumor is however that after all the money was spent developing the IRS that never was plus the extra money spent to then develop a new live axle at the last minute, the end result costs $100 more per car than the IRS would have. So in that analysis, the whole thing was a boondoggle. Well times are changing and the Mustang can no longer wear combat boots to the dance if it wants to keep taking the best dates home.
Aside all the factual and logical reasons that IRS is far superior to a live axle, marketing and image are honestly the most important. Every car magazine and media outlet will continue to say "The Mustang is great but, that live axle...." It will never stop being dogged for that. As long as the Mustang has a live axle it will be considered a throwback, less than, and crude to the younger more sophisticated buyers the car will need to survive.
Your last comments are illustrative of this......
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Originally Posted by chiefstang
I'm sick of hearing 17 year old kids talk about the Genesis coupe "outhandling" the Mustang 'cause they read somewhere that a solid axle doesn't work.
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Those 17 year olds are going to be car buyers some day. Right or wrong, they will be headed to Mustang's competitors with their paychecks precisely because "they read somewhere that the solid axle doesn't work". You sell car cars. You know very well that when a buyer has an idea or a notion in their head that they are sticking to, they aren't going to be swayed. They might not even tell you, but its in the back of their mind and nothing you do in the booth will overcome it. They leave saying "they have to think about it". Believe me, I have been there trying to crack them myself.
But, just as Ford salesmen selling an Expedition will tell a customer it is better handling than a Tahoe because of the modern independent rear suspension, a Chevy salesman is telling some secretary that the Camaro is far better than the Mustang because of its IRS. And if you look at the sales data, there are a lot of secretaries buying that new Camaro.
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Originally Posted by chiefstang
Anybody who bashes the way a 2010 Mustang handles or drives, clearly hasn't driven one.
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Well I have driven quite a few of them. And they are good cars. The 2010 Shelby GT-500 is a good car, one I put nearly 3000 miles on driving across the US last April. I loved the car actually and wish I had one in the garage.
But, it could be a lot better with the refinement of a modern rear suspension. Ford has done well to make the live axle as good as it can be. But that is like saying you have made a Pitbull as safe a dog as it can be. It is still a Pitbull no matter how many children it has not mauled today.
In that 2010 Shelby GT-500 I still got the rear end to jump and skate going around corners on rough roads. I still got the thing to skip sideways accelerating over a cattle guard on an on-ramp. It still jumped and swaggered on freeway pavement changes. I have driven a lot of RWD cars with IRS that
do not do that from Ford, Chevrolet, BMW, Mercedes, Nissan and most recently, Hyundai.
Those are all crude and frankly unacceptable behaviors in a $50,000 halo sports car in the year 2009. And that is coming from a guy who has owned a over a dozen Mustangs since I was 14 and love them enough to build much of my hobby life and most of my business around the marque. If that is what
I am thinking, imagine what someone who isn't as biased or brand loyal is thinking.
Ford might piss off a couple of drag racers by getting rid of the live axle, but they will win the rest of the world if they do. And in the end the drag racers will have no choice to suck it up because there are no other live-axle choices on the market any more. If they just have to have it that bad, surely some of our awesome aftermarket companies out there will have a swap kit with a tried and true 9" rear end available in no time.
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