The road narrowed and began snaking up the side of the mountain—writhing around rock walls, sidling past steep drops, twisting and turning as we climbed toward the clouds scudding over the pass ahead. It was time to stiffen the sinews and sharpen the responses, time to put the Maserati Levante into Sport mode.
Someone kicked a swarm of angry hornets into a coffee can, turned the tires to concrete, and started using a sledgehammer on the drivetrain. Oh wait, that’s the go-fast exhaust note, the pumped-up air springs, the take-no-prisoners shift protocol in the transmission. The Levante’s telling me, loud and clear, I can drive fast now.
It’s not just Maserati. Most automakers play this game when settings for dynamic systems such as suspension, transmission, steering, and throttle are switched, for one simple reason: so drivers believe they’ve made a difference. “The customer gets the experience of the change,” says Aston Martin dynamics guru Matt Becker. “They press the button and feel, ‘I’ve made the change.’ ” The very best practitioners massage the message with Kremlin-esque subtlety, deliberately overshooting the ideal settings for effect and then bringing them back to where the engineers really want them to be.
- Read about our trip from Italy to England in a Maserati Levante HERE.
Maserati engineers readily admit they could make the ZF eight-speed automatic in the Levante shift as smoothly as a Ferrari dual-clutch transmission when it is switched into Sport mode. But they deliberately programmed a pronounced thud-shunt on upshifts because many customers apparently think that’s what a sporty drive experience should feel like. But few drivers have ever had the opportunity to ride shotgun next to a truly quick and gifted racer and marvel at how smoothly they drive and how relaxed they make a car feel at speed. For most of us, our racing experience is limited to the cinematic, where going faster means more effort, more sweat, more noise, and more drama.
Only a handful of BMW’s possible 243 permutations can possibly deliver optimal dynamic performance characteristics.
There’s nothing sinister about what the auto industry is doing. We’re not talking about fudging emissions standards or crash tests. Massaging a vehicle’s dynamic feedback loop might change perceptions, but it doesn’t cheat the laws of physics. Allowing customers to select the way their vehicles drive is a byproduct of the sophisticated electronic tools and technologies that also allow dynamics engineers to more precisely calibrate and control vehicle systems. The key question: How much should customers be able to change?
One Maserati engineer told me he’s intrigued with the approach BMW has adopted on its current generation of M cars, where drivers are offered multiple settings for stability control, throttle mapping, shock rates, steering feel, and transmission shift speed, allowing up to 243 possible permutations. He likes the idea because he sees it appealing to a whole new generation of Maserati buyers—customers who’ve never heard of Juan Manuel Fangio but have grown up with video games that allow them to personalize the performance characteristics of their virtual cars.
The concept is tempting. The problem is, on real-world roads, in real-world weather conditions, only a handful of those permutations can possibly deliver the optimal dynamic performance characteristics and the precise ride, handling, steering, and powertrain responses that development engineers believe are best. The rest are second-best options. Or worse.
Vehicle dynamics engineers would be fools if they didn’t make use of the powerful tools and the technologies they have at their disposal today. But these tools and technologies should be a means, not the end. Many of the world’s most endearing and interesting automobiles—from Porsche 911s and Chevy Corvettes to Jeep Wranglers and Range Rovers to Subaru WRXs and Golf GTIs—made their reputations precisely because the way they drove so obviously reflected the skills and personalities of the small group of people who designed, engineered, and developed them. They never offered customers an endless menu of choices. They delivered a clear point of view.