The business of steering, handling and feel

DRIVERS have to deal with the chore of sawing and steadying that steering wheel, especially during the wet season when one has to be extra vigilant as to what can be ‘felt’. But what actually is steering feel? Also, what’s this thing that

What they actually mean by handling is how the car sticks to the road and how quickly it follows the direction where you point it as you turn the steering wheel. Handling is graded on the car’s immediacy of response to a driver’s steering wheel inputs. Since cars nowadays have power steering as standard,

are “quicker”, which means less turns from lock to lock, i.e. maximum steering wheel movement to the left and right.

Handling is affected by a variety of factors beside the steering ratio. These include shock absorber tuning, spring stiffness, suspension travel, weight distribution, axle unsprung weight, width of track,

traction end (front wheel drive, rear or all-wheel) and many more. All these are paths of contact that channel how the car copes with the road. These sensory messages are fed to the hands on the steering wheel and the seat of the pants as the locus of balance.

It used to be simple: if your car was a sports car, quicker steering at the expense of requiring more effort to park was to be expected. Family cars had lighter steering to ease parking but with a little less response sensitivity through winding roads.

Nowadays, you can dial in your choice of power assistance, like the city, highway and sport mode on

and comfort, which in layman’s terms is quite light, light and very light. The all-seeing and all-conquering computer may also be able to sense the kind of driving

in most cars made in the Fatherland.

Despite the hydraulic damping designed into steering racks or boxes to minimize transmitting road shock, almost all car engineers try to mimic the push-back and feedback one feels when steering; this is the return to the center or straight ahead tendency of all steering. An extreme was ‘ 60s American car steering that was so light and devoid of any road feel that you didn’t rely or care to rely on seat-of-pants feel like changes in car body lean, shifting of weight and the pull of centrifugal and centripetal forces. What mattered to driving in stateside road conditions was where the front of the car was pointing. Wind up with too much speed in a corner? A kick of the loud pedal and that V8 torque would get you out of trouble. That’s why even with soft boulevard cruiser suspension, American car designers never found the need to compensate for sloshing body lean by installing seat side bolsters. Corners were to be slowed into and the bench seat was more than adequate.

Return to center wasn’t always like so. Early McPherson strut applications in early ‘ 70s Ford Escorts and Holden’s Toranas prevented any return to center and was most disconcerting. Citroen’s daring Maserati-engined SM of the ‘70s, meanwhile, had hydraulic steering that returned to center even when stationary or parked. Nowadays, with the advent of electric power assistance, many motor- an increasing radius corner, common to mountain passes in Switzerland and the EU.

Whatever kind of steering feel the carmaker dials in, it doesn’t change the fact that all is relative to how and where the driver sits. That’s why the correct driving seat is mission critical. It is most important to make your derriere, to be precise, the immovable and unshifting center of the universe.

The supine and arms-stretched-out driving posi-

series is not all that it is made out to be. Move the cushion too far back and your feet will struggle to reach the pedals, changing your center of gravity by displacing your butt in the process. Recline that seat too far and you will have to stretch forward to reach the wheel. This is why many drivers can’t seem to break the habit of grabbing the steering wheel underhand because they sit too far back, which necessarily shifts their weight and throws off their balance drastically. Like riding a bicycle, they are actually hanging on to the steering wheel to keep their balance. As steering columns have

mistakenly pull it down to lowest rake. This causes the driver to put his weight on the wheel and again balance on the steering wheel and worse, conduct steering by pulling up on the steering rim.

What should be a simple technique of getting the right seat is invariably overlooked, smothered by years of habitually getting used to a less than ideal and outright perilous driving position. As a rule, as Roadwise’s motorsport driving trainer and rally champion Vip Isada never fails to remind, one should push the steering wheel and not pull. The effort to push comes from the shoulder and not by unconsciously shifting the weight of the body or the seat of the pants. While one shifts one’s weight to balance on a two-wheeler

in a four-wheeled car. Note, also, that our sense of balance is not only dictated by what we see around us but by the inner ear.

To reduce all of this to simple terms, most car fans and hacks have a simple rule: if the car leans too much at speed turning into a corner, making one

and even intended direction, the car handles poorly. Usually, this is the trade-off with soft suspensions in family cars that prioritize a cushy ride. Stiff suspensions like those of sports cars have little body lean

and balance is hardly perturbed. Ride comfort is not the priority in this case.

Another aspect of handling is driving at high speed in a straight line. Suspensions that have poor pitch and roll control amplify small bumps taken at high speed, resulting in lurching instability and reduced resistance to crosswinds. This can sometimes feel life-threatening and forces the driver to slow down.

Many popular Asian cars are guilty of this. Having homegrown speed-regulated expressways and almost perfect pavement, First World engineers have overlooked the generally bumpier roads that we and other less advanced economies have. The cost-cutters also have a role by keeping parts cheap: short springs with minimal coil count and short dampers with cheaper valves allow minimal rebound control that results in frequent bottoming and so on. Asian carmakers who

that amplify the ride discomfort. excuse is that it is a precaution from overloading.

and bouncy ride in the rear, making the car unstable at high speeds.

The proper thing to do is to lengthen the wheel travel and spring height with more coils and longer damper tubes. European cars manage a close to ideal compromise of good handling with a comfortable ride because of this. Raising the ground clearance is not the same. If overloading is a genuine concern,

level pumps and controls should be offered.

Getting your seat right is important as -- we never fail to mention -- you are the point of reference of everything that goes on around you. With the right seat, one can now assess the kind of steering feel one is experiencing, which will help one translate if the car is a good handler or not.

How badly the other guy drives or how incompetently the government deals with public works is out of our hands. The public and the state may wrangle

infrastructure backlogs, typhoon destruction and whatever else but like our immediate destiny (or destination) where we steer and how we feel is all in our hands.