Is there a new "racecar stance" trend?

Driven5 said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Would you agree if I said "good street clearance" instead?  My point is that air springs could just as easily be used to lift from a performance oriented height that's still too low for clearance challenged areas on the street, rather than just to lower from a street performance height for hard parking.  The former could still be just as useful to those with no interest in true hard parking.

Perhaps, but that would be a very unusual application, since your performance-oriented spring rates would have to be rather soft - maybe a very lightweight car. For this use, I think air cups make more sense than air springs.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Fair enough.  So it's still most important to those who want to park low, or be able to fine-tune the suspension performance on the fly, but also helps the performance ride height to occasionally increase clearance as necessary on the street too.

I remember a trackday event at Auto Club Speedway in CA. In addition to us taking our cars out, Mazda showed up with some of their 3 (or was it 4?) rotor cars to run as a demo! In addition, an autocross was going on at the other end of the facility - and a car show was being held. The irony was that it was composed solely of stunna race-car-stanced street cars, all of which look like they never got driven, all lined up where we filed by to get on track. I'll admit taking great joy idling by, in effect, advertising, "Out of the way, kids, we're heading out on track, how about you?", all while they were showing off their pretend sports cars. They of course had to totally ignore everyone passing by, even the really bad-ass cars well worth staring at.

GameboyRMH said:

Driven5 said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Would you agree if I said "good street clearance" instead?  My point is that air springs could just as easily be used to lift from a performance oriented height that's still too low for clearance challenged areas on the street, rather than just to lower from a street performance height for hard parking.  The former could still be just as useful to those with no interest in true hard parking.

Perhaps, but that would be a very unusual application, since your performance-oriented spring rates would have to be rather soft - maybe a very lightweight car. For this use, I think air cups make more sense than air springs.

Air cups are definitely the way to do it. Their problem is that the setups are near 100% custom right at the moment, ie: you may as well put in air struts.

Most air strut setups I've seen don't require users to go full hard for the track and are typically run 50-80% or so over street pressure. There's also a lot of extras that go with air struts which makes them more expensive and complicated to install by nature. OEM's don't really want to deal with that so it's metal coil and fluid damper for the sake of production.

Airlift Performance advertises 5 inches (127mm) at full extension for the MS3. That's more than enough to get over most obstacles.

Gigantic wheels are not my thing but more power to them..  

What are those things anyway, 20x14?   

Too big wheels and stance camber but other than that the car is fine. It's way better than that 45 degree camber hellaflush Oakland area E36 M3. I'm glad that stayed on the coast. 

If it becomes a thing for these people to do their cars up in racing livery i'm totally fine with that.