How to appraise a car like a chassis engineer #278

Hey, it's Adam Grant from WorkLife, a podcast from Ted.

This episode is brought to you by Freshworks.

Freshworks believes the complexity is the enemy of efficiency, so stop wrestling with

bloated expensive service software that takes forever to implement an update, where ROI

is someday, not today.

You've been overcharged and underserved for way too long, uncomplicated with fresh

service for IT and fresh desk for customer support, and with Freshworks' AI-assisted

service software, you'll work smarter, not harder.

Freshworks uncomplicates.

Learn more at Freshworks.com.

Have you ever had to put your plans on hold due to symptoms of generalized miastinia

gravis or GMG?

Like taking that weekend trip, talking with friends, or enjoying a meal.

Learn about a treatment option that may help.

TreatGMG.com to learn more.

That's TreatGMG.com.

Welcome back to the Intercooler podcast, everybody.

The podcast powered by car finance specialist JBR Capital.

This is episode 278 with Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel.

We've got a guest in the studio today, David Poock.

Hello, David Poock.

Hello.

Welcome to our podcast studio.

Thanks for coming in.

David Poock, that name isn't going to be familiar to a lot of people listening to

this.

Your work will be.

You are a chassis engineer, a ride and handling engineer.

Those are the words you would use, or would you say something a little different?

Vehicle dynamicist is how we refer to ourselves.

Vehicle dynamicist.

Wow.

Okay.

And what I want to do in this episode is find out a little bit more about you, but also discuss

the ways in which engineers appraise cars, assess cars, and see how that compares to

how journalists appraise cars.

I know Andrew's a bit nervous about this one.

You're worried that we're going to come out of this looking like a bunch of fly-by-night

idiots, aren't you?

I thought it had occurred.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, largely because we are.

It's a problem, isn't it?

So, David, people might well be aware of the work that you do with Alpenes these days.

With Life 110, your Alpen tuning company.

You've done a lot of tuning work on A110s and now the A290.

I think you've recently taken delivery of your A290 and you're sort of working out

what you can do with it.

That's right.

Yeah.

So I've only had about four weeks.

I set up Life 110 2019 and it's kind of evolved into what it is by, not by accident, but not

by really knowing what I was doing to a certain degree.

Because my background before that is vehicle dynamicists, this is said.

So I did that since university and probably before.

So actual vehicle development and evaluation that we'll talk about, but the science

behind how it makes the carbon.

Just before we do that, I'm really interested by, you see, you decide to set up this business

and the focus of this business is the A110.

And I'm just really interested in why you chose that car.

Because to us, if there was a car which really didn't need an awful lot of improving,

the only 10 out of 10 car we've ever had on the intercooler.

And yet you chose that car.

Was there something about that car which you just thought, well, it's fine, but

I can see how it could be a whole lot better.

I would not say it was that strategic.

No, I bought the car because it was actually because of Harry Metcalf, funnily enough.

So I was working with Harry from an SVO perspective.

You were at JLR for a long time.

That's right. JLR for 19 years.

And so we were doing high performance SVO, you know, JLR products.

And the lightest of that was 1750 kilos.

And that would have been what?

Project 7.

Project 7 was actually, yeah, you're right, Project 7 is slightly lighter.

So I was sitting in the canteen with Harry and he said,

oh, have you driven an A110?

Is that the other?

And I was like, no, it had kind of slightly passed me by at launch.

And he said, oh, I weighed it and it's like 1,100 kilos.

And I was like, you know, how have they done that?

Because we were weighing Caimans at 1450 kilos.

Yes.

So I became sort of hooked by it at that point.

And then I wanted to know more.

So because I was leaving JLR anyway,

I decided I had to have one just to understand what it was

and what it meant to be a lightweight car and how they'd done it.

So I bought one without driving it.

I just bought it.

And I had one eye on could this be a business opportunity

or not, you know, because I had a my own business itched.

I wanted to scratch.

So I drove it for the first time, having already bought it.

And I remember driving it down the motorway

after about 20 miles thinking, hmm, I think that there's

something I can do with the geometry to improve steering

around the center and this, that and the other.

So it was forming in my mind because the beauty of the A110

is the standard car is very, very in a certain place.

You know, for a sports car is at one end of the spectrum,

isn't it? Yes, I would say.

So anything I do has to move it away from that.

But actually, there's lots and lots of scope to do that.

So the products for it evolved by me owning one

and thinking, how would I make this better?

What would I want to do with it?

So that so that car became your test bed presumably.

Yeah, so that original car I still own.

So I bought it with 1,000 miles on the clock

and it's now done 36,000.

So I used it as my every day car for two years.

But also presumably put all the bits on it that came along

and just used it as your development hack.

Yeah, so everything I sell, I've developed through my own cars

because that's just how I used to doing it

in my engineering background.

So it just evolved that way.

And I launched my first product a week into lockdown

or before lockdown.

It was like the worst timing you could possibly imagine.

We did that with a podcast.

We did that with a podcast, yeah.

But it's kind of like people help me understand

what a brand meant and how to grow a brand at the same time

and what it stood for and the rest of it.

And it's grown from there, really.

When I check the classifies for A110s

and I do this a lot, and you read through the adverts,

I swear every other advert says life 110 upgrades,

life 110 gear shift paddles, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I think the market penetration I've got

for the UK has been pretty good, really,

because it's the lonely, what, 1,300 cars?

Yeah, is that what it is?

I think so, I think that kind of volume.

And are you shifting stuff overseas as well?

Yeah, yeah, everywhere, yeah.

So France is the biggest market.

France, for you, France is bigger than the UK.

No, France is the biggest market for Alpine.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

As a percentage terms, it's enormous.

Like it's 75% of the cars they made is still in France.

Is it?

Yeah, it's huge.

And so I sell plenty to France, but per volume of car,

my penetration isn't as good because I'm not French.

You know, there's plenty of people in France

doing a similar thing.

Oh, they're really?

So you're not the only person who is tweaking those cars?

No, I was one of the first.

And I think that the market's kind of grown

as a result of people wanting to tweak their A110s,

actually, I'm surprised.

I think I'll be surprised now how many people

buy the car with a plan to change it slightly.

You know, because when they launched it,

you think it was a purist car where people would buy it

and leave it alone?

Yeah.

And actually a huge percentage tweak them.

People love to fiddle, don't they?

Do you know what?

David Tuig left a comment underneath,

I guess it was his own article.

Remind me who David Tuig is?

The bloke who led the development of the Alpine A110,

one of our writers.

So he wrote a story and in the comments,

he mentioned that he's looking at buying,

and I assume this is out there in the public domain

because he's written it in a comment.

He's looking at buying an A110 and upgrading it himself

and doing all the things

that he wished he could have done back in the day.

There you go.

Which is fascinating.

I can't wait to see if he does do that.

So let's briefly A290.

So you've had it for a few weeks.

Does it feel like an Alpine to you?

So we know it's based on the Renault 5,

that A110 is a bespoke clean sheet sports car.

So it's a very different thing.

So have they managed to give it some sort of alpine-ness?

I think that's a hard sell, a bit of a hard sell.

It's got, I can see where they're going with it

from a hot hatch perspective.

You know, the actual, the ride and handings

is quite well judged, I would say, for a hot hatch.

It's not too soft, but it's not kind of like

overly firm, but it's definitely,

hasn't got the, it's definitely a firmer,

more hot hatch character than any A110 is, for example.

The, in weaknesses, it's steering is its biggest weakness

from my perspective.

So, you know, so, actually I read that Steve wrote

on the app.

Yeah.

You know, so like a talk steer is like bananas.

Like, you know, full throttle out of there,

any kind of junction and the car's wriggling

all over the road.

That's like a, that's interesting.

And then it's the steering's just not quite sharp enough

for what it's trying to be, I don't think.

So you can do something about that?

Yes, but it depends how big it is.

Yeah, so, but you can sharpen up the steering

and far from that inducing more talk steer,

you can actually reduce the talk steer.

Yeah, there.

Yeah.

Do you think there is such a, such a thing?

And anybody who's ever driven a powerful

front-wheel drive car will know what we mean

by a talk steer.

That sort of tugging at the wheel you get

when the front drive shafts,

which are also steering the car,

are kind of like unable to cleanly transmit the power.

Do you think there is ever such a thing

as desirable talk steer?

Because it is at least a form of interaction

between the driver and the car.

If it's gentle and not.

Potentially, as a signature.

Yes.

Of what's happening.

Yeah.

That sort of signal that you're kind of

pushing the car a bit.

Yeah.

I think you need some of that.

Yeah.

I think it is that it will steer itself

as in how I would describe it.

So you accelerate and the car starts steering itself.

So you try to counteract that and say,

don't do that.

Yes.

And then, but then it does something else.

So you chase it, you know,

and that's the worst.

That's a talk steer or any such behavior

that's worse.

That's like my toddler.

Yeah.

It's the same thing.

Yeah.

So you can't just correct it once

and then it behaves.

It's constantly chasing it all over the place.

Yeah.

So the only way you stop that is

by coming back out of the throttle.

Yeah.

So I've already tweaked the front geometry

to try and kind of like understand

where it's coming from.

So I've made it better.

I know I'm pretty sure I understand

what the root cause is.

And it might be an expensive fix as a part change.

And that might be why Alpine didn't do that.

You know, because they've got to put

a business case together.

Yeah.

So, but it gives me something to do.

And the ride arc is quite high, you know.

So just from a pure hot hatch visual perspective,

I think it will, you know,

ride up down and wheels out.

You've not started marketing any A290 products yet

because you're still going through the car

and figuring out what needs to be done.

That's right.

Yeah.

So I want to, you know,

I don't want to be first to market

for the sake of it.

I want to actually create something

that's a useful upgrade, improvement

that would suit a customer that's living with a car.

So I've had a number of social media messages saying,

what can you do about the talks there?

Have you?

Yeah, straight away.

Interesting.

I've had a few people saying,

well, steering's a bit woolly and disconnected.

What can you do about that?

So I know that that's the Australian way.

I've had a number of people,

which I probably started saying,

I can't believe there's no cup holder.

Yeah.

So that's your big thing at the moment, isn't it?

But it's not necessarily my life expertise

to fix, but it is one of those things

where I've, you know, twice now,

I've like gone on the way to Goodwood.

I was driving the car to Goodwood

really early in the morning.

I thought, oh, I'll just grab a coffee.

And of course, I had to hold it.

Yeah, which is actually dangerous.

You know, in a modern car,

it's a bit of a miss, isn't it?

Definitely.

So you have to, I don't,

there must be a decision process

as to why they did that.

And they've definitely got an A110 style signature

on the center console.

But there is space to do something.

You've just got to decide it's important, I think.

Are you allowed to talk about

the non-alpine work that you do?

Probably not.

Okay, all right.

Well, got to say for that.

Yes, I do consultancy, be economics,

out in the bigger world.

So that was something I didn't intend to do,

but it came along because of a demand.

And then it's sort of like grown

into a bit of a big thing.

Yeah.

So I have to deal with that at the same time at the moment.

Okay, so let's talk about,

let's get stuck into the nitty gritty of all this stuff.

I want to, let's go all the way back.

Let's talk about a rookie engineer out of university.

How does he or she learn to appraise a car?

So you're working for an OEM, Jaguar Land Rover.

Is there a sort of specific process?

Is there a whole?

There's only tuition.

Yeah.

Does only teach you what to do?

So yes, is the answer.

So if you think about it in evaluation terms,

I actually looked up evaluate as a dictionary definition.

And it's to form an opinion and give value,

I think is what it said.

So, you know, it's what's affecting me.

And that's really important

because we're given an opinion

and we're making some judgment.

So when you evaluate a car, that's what we're doing.

We're giving an opinion based on the, you know,

subjective driving or some data or whatever.

And then you're saying, that's good or bad.

What I think I've learned is that

when it comes to vehicle evaluation,

which is a big part of a vehicle dynamicist's job

because that's how you decide what's good and bad.

It's not something that everyone can do, you know,

it is a skill.

So I think that, I think, you know,

by the nature of the job, the three of us do,

it's a skill we have.

Because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able

to do the job we do.

So to evaluate something is like a skill in itself.

And you can teach, you know, quite a lot of that.

And I think you are reliant on some kind of

natural ability or something.

I was gonna ask.

To say, because I've, you know, so leaping forward,

I've tried to train other people, you know,

in terms of vehicle evaluation,

or you work with certain people

and there's definitely, you'll find that

some people are better at it than others.

Yes.

It's just a skill.

So presumably to do it at a properly professional level,

level for a major OEM,

where the conclusions you reach

will make a material difference to the car.

You can't learn that.

You can't learn all of it.

You need to have a certain sensitivity.

I mean, what do you need?

Do you need to be the world's greatest driver

or do you just need to be able to feel what a car is?

What are the, what's the stuff you can't learn

that you still need to be able to do?

I think there's a, it's partly a mindset.

And it's partly as you say, like your feel

or however you're perceiving what's going on.

Some people are better at that than others.

So you find people will want to do the job

and then you'll find people that are naturally good at it

and you might train them up

and then you'll find other people that need more work

but they still are trained

and they get to being a good vehicle evaluator.

And it's something that, if you think about it,

because it's not driving an evaluation

or evaluating a vehicle, two different things.

So you can drive anywhere and think,

I've no idea how I got here or what the car did.

I just got here.

But the flip side of that is that you can evaluate

the cars all the time.

Like you can, you know, sometimes I don't know

if you've ever experienced this where you're, you know,

because you do it so often, I've done it once

where I've taken my own car with an unknown well

and it's full of the family and luggage

and we're going on holiday

and driving down the motorway

and I'm doing this.

What are you doing?

It's like, well, if you noticed how the steering

has changed because of all the mass

and this and that and everyone's looking at you oddly

but it's like one of those things you can't let go.

You can't have the same, I'm exactly the same.

So, but it means that you're constantly

practicing the skill at the same time.

Yeah.

And on that subject of feel, actually,

that's an interesting topic

because I thought the weekend I was working,

not working, so I had a driver using terms

such as I feel the car turns into aggressively,

does enough rotation mid-corner,

understeer and exit, not riding the bumps

well on the rear axle

and they were all described in normal driver language

from a field perspective

but he's talking about a ready-controlled car.

Oh.

So there's no physical connection.

His only observation is eyesight.

So, if you think about it in those terms,

feel is not necessarily like a physical contact

or a movement.

It's like a, you go up 11 and say it's a perception of.

Yeah.

I asked the vehicle to do something and what did it do?

Yeah.

And if you think about it,

a pilot can't fly in the fog without the instruments.

No.

Because you can't.

Yeah.

And if you shut your eyes as a passenger

and you don't know where you've gone,

you could probably have an idea or say,

well, I think you went left and right

and you might have braked.

But actually, you couldn't accurately know where you've gone.

So you're hugely reliant on, you know, eyesight

as part of that evaluation.

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze,

talk about refreshing.

You know what else is refreshing this summer?

A brand new phone with Verizon.

Yep.

Get a new phone on any plan

with select phone trade-in in my plan

and lock down a low price for three years

on any plan with my plan.

This is a deal for everyone,

whether you're a new or existing customer.

Swing by Verizon today for our best phone deals.

Three-year price guarantee applies

to then current base monthly rate only.

Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

And now, a next level moment from AT&T business.

Say you've sent out a gigantic shipment of pillows

and they need to be there

in time for International Sleep Day.

You've got AT&T 5G, so you're fully confident.

But the vendor isn't responding.

An International Sleep Day is tomorrow.

Luckily, AT&T 5G lets you deal with any issues with ease

so the pillows will get delivered

and everyone can sleep soundly, especially you.

AT&T 5G requires a compatible plan and device.

Coverage not available everywhere.

Learn more at ATT.com slash 5G network.

I was once asked by, I think it was an auto car

to write a story.

And it's basically entitled, What is Handling?

And I had to boil it down and boil it down

and boil it down to a sentence.

And I think that sentence in the end went,

the ability of a car to do what its driver

ask it to or expects it to.

Because any deviation from that,

through all those things you're talking about,

you may be telling you to aggressively

or oversteer or understeer or anything else.

If that's not what you're wanting it to do,

then that is adding to your workload.

That is reducing your level of confidence in the car.

And that is, to me at least, degrading the handling.

And is that kind of somewhere near where you'd,

how you'd describe it?

Yeah, I think so.

I think for handling specifically, yeah.

I split them into like what I would call,

just because of terms we used to use at JAL,

a body-induced input and that's an external force.

So you're driving down the road,

ride is external, the car's going over bumps.

It's reacting to.

There's cameras on the road, there's side winds.

So the car is reacting to external forces as one.

And then the other, the flip side is that,

is the car reacting to driver demand.

So the driver's saying, do this,

and the car does, well the output is what you expect.

Because you never say, well I can see the corner,

therefore I'm going to steer 15 degrees on the steering wheel

and assume I'm going to go around the corner.

Your brain doesn't work like that whatsoever.

You steer the amount based on your experience to date,

that means you're going to go around that corner.

You steer, I think I need to steer this much.

And the car doesn't go around the corner

as you expected and you're like,

so you have to adjust mid-corner or all those things.

And that comes back to exactly what you said.

I think I would describe that as almost like linearity

as a term where when you drive a car for the first time

and I think your experience is even more than me

because of the number of cars you drive,

you'll negotiate a few bends, especially on a road you know

and you're a few speeds and your brain has extrapolated

what it thinks the car is going to do

in all these situations that you haven't yet experienced.

So your brain is straight away building a map of

this is how this car behaves.

So and then you go and reaffirm that,

you drive it further and you think,

I did that corner and it did what I thought,

it did what I thought.

So very quickly you build a map,

this is how the car is going to drive

based on these few inputs I've done

and it keeps doing what you expect.

And that's what I would say is a linear car.

Yeah.

And then if you've got a car where

it did one thing at low speed and then you think,

well, that means that high speed is going to do this

and it's just something completely different.

You're like.

Does that mean it's a bad car

or is that just a specific sort of car?

Perhaps it's optimized for a certain type of road

and driving.

I guess it depends on the goal, isn't it?

Because some manufacturers,

especially the German manufacturers in high speed terms,

I'm thinking Autobahn,

they can make quite an agile car

and then they'll do things with the chassis and aerodynamics

which means they turn into the world's most dull

unresponsive cars for cruising down the Autobahn.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But it's changed its behavior but that's what they want.

But do you think that,

and I say this because

the only tuition I've ever received

was me and my colleagues from Watercar

this is 30-odd years ago went to Hethel

and had a couple of days being taught by John Miles,

the famous XF1 driver and Lotus chassis guy,

how to do what he does.

And he always maintained that you can get a very good idea

of everything a car is going to do

without ever doing more than 20 miles an hour

and that fundamentally how the car responds

at 20 miles an hour is or at least should be,

how it's going to respond at any speed you're doing.

Is that still the case?

I think probably less so nowadays

just because of the amount of tech in cars

and things we've learned since.

So you can manipulate a car much more

than you ever used to be able to.

But in general, it's definitely what you want.

So in my mind what he's described is what you want.

You know, I've driven this car at 20 miles an hour

and I think, I like this.

And then it does what I want

and then you want it to just keep doing what you want.

That's what I desire in a car.

He did show me, he did say to me,

what you need to do is get in a car

and you can't get your testing

and go to your nearest roundabout

and put in an input that will take you

around that roundabout and then don't change it

and see whether the car is capable of following that

for the entire duration of the roundabout.

And he said, and this was a long time ago

so maybe they're better now.

But he said, almost no cars will.

Almost no cars will actually do a full lap of a roundabout

without needing some kind of correction

because they're not going where you're pointing them.

Which just struck me as being bizarre

but then I went out and did it

and time and again you get in something

and you go and you set an input

which will start it going around the roundabout.

But by the time you got halfway around

it wasn't where you wanted it to be anymore.

Which I just thought was extraordinary.

Yeah, so I think cars are better at that these days.

So how I would break down that kind of like behavior

in the linearity terms again,

there's a few sides to it which is

how much the car steers per fixed hand will input.

So you steer 15 degrees, you get a certain,

that's not to say, you steer 30, you get more,

you get, so you build up a picture of

when I steer this much the car does.

That much.

And you get incremental gains.

So that's in pure angle.

You've then got speed of input.

So I've steered quickly and the car responded quickly.

I steer slowly and the car responds slowly.

So the faster you steer the car keeps up with you

because you can get, one of the biggest things

you'll find is that's where the linearity falls down.

So you can drive quite slowly

and the car does what you want

and you steer it quickly

and there's like a everyone stops and thinks

and then the car responds after that.

That's the second term.

And then the third part is what you've just described

where you've steered and you've left the car alone

and it suddenly speeds up.

What will happen there?

Or it suddenly slows down.

So you've got, it's like this.

And that's the big map that the brain is building

just from a few inputs.

And I think that it's something we just do naturally.

Well, that's the question.

So does it matter?

If you got to the point where,

which I think we're all at,

anybody who drives regularly is actually,

you are correcting the car all the time

but not even aware of it

because it has become such an innate,

such natural thing to do.

Does it actually matter that a car

isn't going where you're pointing it

and that the car is fundamentally

not producing reliable outputs to your inputs?

I think it depends on the car

and who it's like for and who the customer is

and what the brand is,

you know what the brand wants to have

as a core value because I find,

do you find cars,

when you live with a car

it has like a, what I would term a natural gate

where you just get in it

and it goes along at a pace where

it just settles down and you just drive along.

So we used to have a Discovery 5

and that car happily just lulled about.

I never drove it fast, aggressive at all.

It didn't want to but then it was brilliant at what it did.

It just had a natural speed of the way it did things

and you could say that in pure terms of

how fast it responded and doing different things

it was not as good as that as another car

but it didn't matter.

It's always for, yeah.

Yeah, and then you get in.

And you could make it a lot worse

if you made it a lot more reactive.

That's not what you want from a Discovery 5.

Absolutely.

Defenders similarly,

like we've just replaced a Defender

with a Range Rover Sport last week

and the character shift is instant

but then that's what you want.

So I jump out of my A290

into a Defender, which is the most extreme example

and I'm just getting off the drive thinking,

God, it's just like creeping off the drive.

You know, just like gradually creep off the drive

whereas the A290 is like, off we go.

And that's just a throttle characteristic

as one example.

So the cars find their natural gate,

the Panda 100 HP.

Crackling guy, do you got one of those?

Yes, I've got one.

And that is,

you can feel the cars frustrated

if you're not wringing its neck.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, if you drive it slowly,

it like bounces around and you know,

it wants to rev and you just have to get on it

and then it's happy.

So.

All I would say,

back to the point that I was making about,

doesn't matter if you're not aware

that you're doing it.

So let's say you're driving a car

and you are constantly correcting it

but you know,

to not any greater amount

and you're expecting to do it

and so you're not even conscious of it.

The moment you get into a car

where you don't have to do that,

that's when you notice it.

Yeah.

That's when you don't notice the cars you have to correct.

You notice the cars you don't have to correct.

And that's when you get those sort of car park moments

where I mean, I remember having this

with the A110 when I first drove it

just driving the car and just,

and you know, with things like Lotus Elise

and that sort of thing.

And you just sort of feel,

this just feels right.

And when you actually boil it down

to what it is about that car

which has suddenly made you feel as so at home

and so confident and so happy in it,

it's because actually it's doing what you wanted to do

and it's not like cars like,

I mean, the shiny example of how not to do it

is the Alpha 4C, which you were always correcting.

Even in a straight line,

you're just driving down the road

and it's going there and it's going there

and it's going out and all your confidence has gone

and you get to around it

and you don't even wanna try and push it

and then you're into that other thing

where you've got a car where you don't wanna drive fast

but which is set up to be driven fast

and it just gets, yeah, grim.

It does.

And now, a next level moment from AT&T Business.

Say you've sent out a gigantic shipment of pillows

and they need to be there

in time for International Sleep Day.

You've got AT&T 5G, so you're fully confident

but the vendor isn't responding

and International Sleep Day is tomorrow.

Luckily, AT&T 5G lets you deal

with any issues with ease

so the pillows will get delivered

and everyone can sleep soundly, especially you.

AT&T 5G requires a compatible plan and device,

coverage not available everywhere.

Learn more at att.com slash 5G network.

El rugido de los aficionados,

el ritmo de las porras, la intensidad en la cancha.

Esto es más que sólo un partido de fútbol.

Con Draft King Sportsbook,

esta es tu oportunidad de convertir

cada jugada en una gran garancia.

Descarga la app de Draft King Sportsbook

y usa el código HEART.

Ese es el código HEART para que los nuevos usuarios

reciban 200 dólares en bonus bets al instante

cuando apuestes sólo 5 dólares.

En asociación con Draft Kings, la corona es tuya.

Problemas con el juego?

Llama al 1-800-GAMBLER en Nueva York.

Llama al 877-8-HOPE-N-Y o envía un mensaje de texto

con la palabra HOPE-N-Y al 467-369 en Connecticut.

Hay ayuda disponible para problemas con el juego.

Llama al 888-789-7777 o visita cspg.org.

Juegas responsablemente.

En nombre de Boothill Casino and Resort, Kansas.

Debe ser mayor de 21 años.

La elegibilidad varía según la jurisdicción.

No válido en Ontario. Pueden aplicarse cargos en Illinois.

Las apuestas de bonus son de un solo uso.

La apuesta no se incluye en las ganancias

y caducan después de ser otorgadas.

La oferta finaliza el 29 de septiembre,

20-25 a las 11.59 PM hora del este.

Los términos en DraftKings.com.

Barra Sportsbook, Barra Promos.

I just want to talk a little bit about experience

and how important that is in your job,

your line of work.

Presumably, building up that database of other cars,

dozens and dozens of other cars

that behave in a certain way.

That's a core part of it, isn't it?

And being able to call on that database.

Because certainly from our side,

I think it's one of the most important things.

How can you possibly assess a car

when you haven't driven its predecessor

and its competition?

Absolutely.

How do you know where it is?

What's good, what's bad?

Yeah, so when I first started doing fit economics,

it was 1998 out of university.

And the experienced people say,

well, if you do this for six years,

you might let you do it for yourself.

And you think, six years.

And what they're trying to get across

is exactly what you've said,

is the experience of doing the job

and the size of the topic.

And just getting used to,

I would say you by experiencing lots of cars,

but also doing it a lot.

The way I look at it is you build

like a reference model in your head.

So because you have to,

one of the differences without

is I drive the same car over and over and over again.

And some of those changes can be really, really small.

And what I don't get to experience

is lots and lots of different cars.

We benchmark a few,

but I'm driving the same car over and over and over again.

And you're driving lots and lots of different cars,

which can be helpful in-

And often only for a couple of hours at a time.

Yeah, so I've spent 10,000 miles in whatever car,

all these money changes and positioned it there

and then say, here you go and you drive over two hours

and say, well, I don't like that.

You know, so, but there's a,

we both, we all have to evaluate the car

within half an hour, I would say.

So if we're doing a change on a car

and we wanna drive that change

and subjectively evaluate what it's done,

that's a half an hour.

And then you've made a judgment and you say,

well, I didn't like that.

I don't like that.

I like that, you know, it happens that quickly.

Yeah.

So what did you think when you're back in your JLR days

where you and your team spend not weeks or months,

but years developing a car,

honing it to the finest possible ledger that you can,

making it as good as good can be.

And then it ends up going to a bunch of motoring

journalists, frankly, none of whom are qualified

in terms of official qualifications.

In an environment, they don't know

because the launch is set in some lovely hot sunny location

and they drive the car for, you know,

a couple of hours, if you're lucky

and then produce a verdict, which, you know,

if it appears in an important publication

may well have a material effect

on the success of that car or otherwise.

You might, other times you just sit there

and go, actually guys,

you don't know what you're talking about

because you've not committed any kind of evaluation

with sufficient rigour or time

or understanding of what this car is trying to do.

I would say it's not happened to me.

And so the only time I found that to be something

that has affected a decision

is when you've moved from launch to long-term.

So I think that because we spent so long in the car

we've got, we're more in tune with a long-term assessment

than we are with the first one, which is fine.

But if you come along to a launch and drive a car

and two hours say, oh, it does this and that's rubbish,

if I'm surprised by that, I think we've done a bad job.

Right, yeah, you know, don't you?

You already know.

So there's two ways of looking at that.

One is that we know how good the car is, we do.

Yeah, of course you do.

And what we're balancing off is who's gonna buy it

and how much they're gonna pay for it.

And when we run out of time and all those other things.

And budget.

So no car on sale ever has been

where the vehicle dynamics is stored.

Whoever's doing it, it's gone,

I can't do better than that.

Yeah, this is as good as it's gonna be.

No one's slapping the sales on the back and said,

I'm amazing.

It's perfect.

Never, never.

So there's always a reason why you stop, basically.

So that's how I describe it.

Time and money usually being two of them.

We keep going, we keep going.

Someone says you have to stop now and we go for it.

It's as good as we can get it for now.

So there's that side of it where I don't think

you're telling us a bit about the vehicle behavior

that we don't already know.

And then the other side of it is that the company

has to have done a good job in framing

what the car is and who it's for

and why it is what it is.

And I've seen mistakes made where you've driven a car

without context and you get an opinion of it.

But actually when you explain what that car is about

and what it's for and what it's supposed to achieve,

then it actually frames it differently.

Because I've heard you say Andrew in the past

that a good car is one that does the task

it's supposed to do very, very well.

That's absolutely true in my mind.

And it doesn't matter whether it's a tiny car

or super car or a luxury car or whatever.

That's right, yeah.

So I look at Range Rover Sport SVR,

the previous model and F-Pace SVR,

they were successful models,

especially the Range Rover in terms of sales.

And they never won a like the best steering,

handling, whatever group test.

And we didn't intend it to be that way because they're SUVs.

So I've know, I didn't, it's like what's the point

in making an SUV that can demonstrate

it handles as well as a saloon car?

I don't, you know, what's the point in that?

It's an SUV.

If I wanted it to be a saloon car, I'd buy one.

But also you couldn't do it, could you?

Because you're fundamentally limited by the laws of physics.

Yeah, or you could do it,

but the price you pay would be super stiff ride

or other things, you know.

So you lose far more than you gain.

Exactly, so you have to say, well, at its core,

this car is an SUV,

I'm gonna make a performance version of it.

Not, I'm gonna make a performance car

or I'm gonna make it in an SUV.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

You do it the right way around.

And you make it perform well

without fundamentally changing its character.

And going back to what you were talking about,

cars having a certain sort of gate,

a certain sort of way they want to be driven.

So, you know, a Range Rover SVR is still a car

that you're gonna want to be able to lull up around it.

And if it was just like pinging around,

it'd be horrible, wouldn't it?

Yeah, it did like that car's full of character

in some ways because it's slightly flawed almost

where it's got so much power and torque

and it pitches.

It does like a speedboat.

Like it's almost part of the fun, you know,

like it makes it feel like,

oh, wow, they've put this massive engine in a Range Rover

and it feels like that.

Oh, I've said for a long time that engineers should start,

we're at the safety of our engineers to start

engineering in the right kind of faults into cars.

Cars that faults that don't actually

make you not want to drive the car,

but just involve you a bit more

and give the car a bit of flavor,

a bit of character because, you know,

I guess there's one very objective thought

which says that the fault-free car is a car

you'd barely be aware of driving

because it would just do it all for you.

Yeah. And who was that?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

I do think there is something to be said for that

and it's incredibly difficult to kind of do

because in the engineering world, everything's better.

As you know, so I heard a,

the name escapes me.

The guy runs the Porsche GT models.

And you're just pointing at?

Yeah, so.

He might be listening, by the way.

Okay. He does a regular listener.

So I heard him, what was he doing into him?

Where he was talking about,

this GT3 is better than the last one.

Yeah. It just is.

Everything it does is better than the last one

and that's true, you can't argue with it.

Absolutely true.

And that's how we do it.

It rides better, uses less fuel,

it's faster, it sounds, you know, everything is better

because that's just how things are gonna progress.

So to then say, we're gonna make this thing worse

or flawed is really, really difficult to charge.

Course it is.

Super, super hard.

Yeah.

And that's why I think like.

But better is almost by definition

an objective assessment, isn't it?

Better is faster, slower, more frugal, whatever.

Whereas what I'm talking about

is something you could never see on a specification sheet

and it's something which just talks to the human being

within us all who wants to be involved

with the process of just why I love old cars.

You know, it's why I've got a very small,

unimportant collection of rubbish old cars

because I just love how busy they make you.

And I wish that modern cars would do,

and I appreciate that I'm in a very small minority

because most people just want cars

to go from one place to the other

and too much of that would be incredibly annoying

when I drive the Range Rover

got parked outside of home.

I want to be as removed from the sensation of driving

as I possibly can.

But if I want out to enjoy driving a car,

which is why I wish the A110 had a manual gearbox

and I know why it doesn't and I appreciate that

but anything that gets you more involved with the process

even if it is technically not improving the car

even if it may actually technically be making it worse

for that sort of car and that sort of driving

that's what I want a car to do.

Yeah, and so how I think I would use

going all the way back to like evaluation

or the training side of it.

There's like three stages of that.

And the first part is you drive a car

and you're just determining what it's doing.

You know, so like, right,

so when I steer the car does this,

when it goes around the car does this,

so you're just determining what it's doing.

And in my experience,

when people who are used to doing vehicle evaluation

and journalists and engineers get together

and they use and they just describe

what the vehicle is doing,

they tend to agree most of the time

because we can all feel what the car's doing.

This is what it's doing.

Everyone goes, oh yes.

What then happens is you then have the

do I like that or not conversation

and what would I like to do it instead?

And that's when all the arguments start

because everyone says this is what the car's doing.

And everyone goes, yes it is.

We all agree on that.

And someone will go, I don't like that.

But I do like that.

And I wish you did that instead.

I don't want it to do that.

You know, and that's when you could introduce

like flaws or different character

or whatever you call it to say,

I wish you did that.

And that's really hard for manufacturers to judge

because especially the less niche a car is,

the harder that is because of the number of people

that might be driving it.

Yeah, the number of different opinions.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's all.

And in Lutheran way back to training,

then on the job training was firstly about that step one,

can you determine what the car's doing?

Yes.

Can you feel that?

So you can do, I started off with tire testing.

Tire testing's the best place because you,

the tire is the, you know,

from a vehicle dynamics point of view,

the tire is the one, the most important part

of that chassis because it can change everything,

absolutely everything.

It's just one component.

So if you go tire testing

and you're trying different tires and compounds

and constructions and those sorts of things,

you end one, you don't know what's going to happen

and two, anything could be affected.

So you have to absolutely be able to tune in,

you know, everything that's gone on.

Yeah.

So you need to be out of,

so because you're then telling the tire manufacturer,

that's a good tire, suits the car, that's a bad tire,

you can't go wrong, you know.

So you learn that first part of, you know,

I drove a car, we changed something,

I drove it again, this is what changed,

this is how it was different.

So that's like a first step

in terms of on-the-job training.

I think I was lucky that I started at Jaguar in 2000

and that was in the Ford era where

you know, when they did the Focus,

you know, Mondare and Focus

and the Paris-Jones era where they worked really hard on,

you know, DNA, what was DNA of a car

in terms of how you set out what you want the car to be.

But also a system they called Artur2,

which is the, I wouldn't say process,

but a structure behind how you assess a car

and they had a big process defined

how you did it, you could go to Belgium

and be trained in how to do it, you know,

and it would like be structured

in the way you would record it.

And what it did was it took language

out of that as much as possible

so that you could say, you know,

when I go over this particular input on a proving round,

how much does the body move, is it a lot, is it a little?

You know, so it's trying to use terms

to kind of like get everyone on the same page

just to just describing what the car did

and how it behaved and uses less language as possible.

So it was like trying to put some kind of structure

and science behind it.

So, you know, so I was, I had the benefit of that

as well as, you know, on the job

with guys that have been doing it a long time.

So you just kind of like hone your skill in that way.

Yeah.

And you just, you know, I feel like

I can do quite a good job of it.

Well, no, I know, I know you can.

And I'm sure you do too.

Because...

In a very different way.

But, you know, so that principle is the same for you

is surely, you know, you're getting a car

and you think, what's this doing?

And I would say, I would say I listened to a car first.

So like you get in the car,

I've not been in this car before

or I've changed the component, I'm just going to drive

and I'm just going to let it talk to me.

Like, what's it telling me about what's different

or are you just allowing that to happen?

Or are you very, very consciously going,

what's the steering doing now, this corner, what's the...

Or are you just sort of absorbing it,

just letting it seep in?

I absorb first and then,

I think something you touched on earlier,

a road you've driven a thousand times is really important.

I was going to ask about this.

So, you know, so it's easier for engineers

because they're working in a certain place

and they have roads they use all the time.

So you've changed.

But they also have to be worthwhile roads, don't they?

Yes.

There's no point if they're dead straight

and belly and smooth.

No, that's right.

So I would say, you know, I go and just drive the road

I know and I let the car talk to me

and I absorb what it's doing because I, you know,

I know I've driven this corner a thousand times.

So I know what it takes to negotiate it

and when something different happens,

it kind of like shouts at you.

And then once I've done that, and I think,

well, that's interesting.

And then I might go and like ask questions of it.

So you absorb information

and then you might go on like a dual-courage way

and just sort of like...

Exactly.

Just, well, what happens?

Sometimes you might also drive a bit badly.

This is what I do.

You know, I want to sort of over-adjutate the car

on the way into a corner or something.

I just want to know how it responds.

You're not necessarily trying to drive

as skillfully as you can.

Sometimes you just want to see what the car will do.

Yeah, and you'll see test drivers

that can be different to racing drivers in that, you know,

so like a racing driver's trying to just make that car

sit on the balance to go as fast as it can.

And the test drivers got it completely out of control

because they wanted to see what happened.

And the skill sets are different.

So for that, as you just thought.

I think it's interesting that you go about

in exactly the same way that we do or certainly that I do.

I think it is so important to just drive the car,

first of all, and actually not think too hard about it

and just let all that subjective stuff

sort of flood your mind.

Because I think if you get into a car and you think,

right, I'm going to turn into this corner

and I'm going to think really hard about

how far I've turned the steering wheel,

what input I've put into this control

and what the car is doing.

I think you can massively overthink it.

And I think that you can get unreliable results

from thinking too hard about it,

particularly if you haven't first, just let the cars,

you say just so important, let the car talk to you.

Because that general sense that you get

is the most reliable, for want of a better word,

data that you'll ever get from a car.

Because that never changes.

You're never going to drive it one way

and feel one set of things and then do the same

and you'll feel completely different because it won't.

And then after that, you can start to interrogate it

a bit more closely.

Yeah, so those first impressions really matter.

They really do.

Yeah, as I said earlier,

building a picture of that car immediately,

like, because we all love talking about the A110,

is what it does really well.

An A110, as you say, you've done 20 mile an hour,

so I've left home, pulled out my driveway,

I'm doing 20 mile an hour and it's immediately going,

it's immediate, it feels light immediately.

Absolutely.

And I've barely been anywhere.

So you think, well, how's that?

Because how is it making,

and it's just the sense of how it reacted

to the road inputs, as small as they were,

how it reacted to the small steering demand,

it just feels light straight away.

It does, doesn't it?

It really does.

And that's the thing with,

I mean, because cars are,

generally speaking, so heavy these days,

there's some really clever systems

that they put on them.

All the active and passive torque steering,

four-wheel steering, and, you know.

Active roll bars and all sorts of things.

Active roll bars, very, very clever shock absorber systems

and that sort of thing.

And you can make a heavy car mimic

to an extent the behavior of a lighter car.

What you can't do, you may not agree with me,

but what you cannot do

is exactly what you're talking about.

You can't make a heavy car feel light.

You may be able to make it behave

like a light one to a certain one,

but it'll still feel like a heavy car.

And I guess that's just physics, isn't it?

And there's no way around that.

You're never gonna get a two-ton SUV

to feel like a catering.

It's never gonna happen, is it?

No, I don't think so.

And I think that's, exactly as you said,

you can objectively on paper

or through a series of performance definitions

and say this heavy car did what that light car did

and you go, hey, there you go, they're the same.

But when I drove that light car,

I was, my sensation of, this is light, was like immediate.

And this is fun and this is, yeah.

And it's, you know,

I think the A110 is defined by its lightness.

It really is.

Yes, it really is.

And its magic trick is that there's not a downside.

Like I've driven my car to the south of France.

Yeah, that's the crazy thing about it.

I've been to see, David Tuiget is home in Annecy,

which we did as part of a European holiday.

And that's the beauty of it.

But you can't, what I've not managed to do,

because I've probably not thought about it hard enough,

is determine objectively what we're feeling

that makes it appear light.

I've thought about it too much.

Right, okay.

Because what you conclude is that there is no conclusion.

It's just something about the way

that humans perceive things.

But it doesn't, to me,

I don't need to know how my television works.

It's just one of those things

that you know and you feel and it's innate.

And it's the fact that you feel these things

rather than why it is,

which to me is what matters, really.

Enough A110?

Yeah.

Well, I'm talking about any car.

You never mentioned A110 on this podcast.

No, we don't.

We try to avoid it.

Well, listen, we very quickly ran out of time.

That was a good one because 50 odd minutes just flew by.

It did.

We're done.

So, it was good fun to hear

about how engineers go about doing this job.

And actually, I think journalists came out of it

in reasonably good form.

I have to say that we, yeah.

I think you've probably been quite kind to us.

No, I don't think so.

Because I think-

I think if we came on your podcast,

it might be quite good.

Luckily for you, I don't have one.

But I think the takeaway for me though

is that journalists and engineers,

as long as we're representative of our groups,

are actually quite close together.

But we just have different opportunities

within our roles, don't we?

Yeah.

But broadly speaking,

the way we go about doing what we do

is really quite similar.

Yeah, we tend to,

I think we tend to get along,

probably for that reason, don't we?

Yeah.

Like, you know, lots of engineers like me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know lots of the media for the same reason.

And you kind of get along

because there's a lot of commonality in there.

Well, we'll just call people, aren't we?

Yeah, yeah.

And then I think I've heard you say before, Andrew,

that, you know, the reason you do this is not for driving.

It's because you wanna write.

Yeah.

And the same for me.

I do this because I've got a car that drives a certain way.

I want it to drive someone another way.

And I'm fascinated by how to make that happen.

And the driving part gets me there.

And so we have like two different ultimate passions,

but a share core.

I mean, I love driving, but I love communicating.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

If I had a choice of driving or communicating,

I'd stop driving immediately.

It's probably a terrible thing to admit to my car podcast,

but I just love being the messenger.

Yeah.

And I can't help but bury myself in a problem

or some data that says or understanding,

you know, this car behaves like this.

Why is that?

That's, I'm off.

Yeah, that's what I want.

That's what I stuck in there.

Yeah.

That's what I wanna go and do.

And you won't stop until you've.

Yeah.

Found out.

I wanna understand, learn, it could be just understand

or it could be actually improve and make better,

but that's the core.

And then the driving and evaluating part gets me there.

Well, listen, we need to wrap this up.

Oh, thank you, David.

That was terrific.

That was great.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks for coming in.

No problem.

Check out Life 110 if you have an Alpine,

any kind of Alpine it seems.

And yeah, if you're watching on YouTube,

please just subscribe to our YouTube channel.

If you're just listening via a podcast app,

make sure you follow the show.

And in return, we'll be back again next week.

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze.

Talk about refreshing.

You know what else is refreshing this summer?

A brand new phone with Verizon.

Yep, get a new phone on any plan

with select phone trade-in in my plan

and lock down a low price for three years

on any plan with my plan.

This is a deal for everyone.

Whether you're a new or existing customer,

swing by Verizon today for our best phone deals.

Three-year price guarantee applies

to then current base monthly rate only.

Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

El rugido de los aficionados,

el ritmo de las porras, la intensidad en la cancha,

esto es más que solo un partido de fútbol.

Con Draft King Sportsbook,

esta es tu oportunidad de convertir

cada jugada en una gran garancia.

Descarga la app de Draft King Sportsbook

y usa el código HEART.

Ese es el código HEART

para que los nuevos usuarios

reciban 200 dólares en bonus bets al instante

cuando apuestes solo 5 dólares.

En asociación con Draft King's, la corona es tuya.

Problemas con el juego?

Llama al 1-800-Gambler.

En Nueva York, llama al 877-8-Hope & Why

o envía un mensaje de texto

con la palabra Hope & Why al 467-369.

En Connecticut, hay ayuda disponible

para problemas con el juego.

Llama al 888-789-7777

o visita cspg.org.

Juegas responsablemente.

En nombre de Boothill Casino & Resort, Kansas.

Debe ser mayor de 21 años.

La elegibilidad varía según la jurisdicción.

No válido en Ontario.

Pueden aplicarse cargos en Illinois.

Las apuestas de bonus son de un solo uso.

La apuesta no se incluye en las ganancias

y caducan después de ser otorgadas.

La oferta finaliza el 29 de septiembre,

20-25 a las 11.59 pm hora del este.

Los términos en DraftKings.com

Barra Sportsbook, Barra Promos.

And now, a next-level moment from AT&T Business.

Say you've sent out a gigantic shipment of pillows

and they need to be there

in time for International Sleep Day.

You've got AT&T 5G, so you're fully confident.

But the vendor isn't responding.

An International Sleep Day is tomorrow.

Luckily, AT&T 5G lets you deal with any issues with ease

so the pillows will get delivered

and everyone can sleep soundly, especially you.

AT&T 5G requires a compatible plan and device.

Coverage not available everywhere.

Learn more at ATT.com slash 5G network.

How to appraise a car like a chassis engineer #278

About this episode

Land Rover Discovery 5

Land Defenders

Land Rover Range Rover Sport SVR

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from The Intercooler