Wikipedia talk:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-03-27 Corvette leaf spring

Specific respomces to Autostreams points 1a. Short and pithy are not qualities of good technical sources. They are qualities of opinion pieces.

1b. The disadvantages are in dispute. The ride quality and handling of the car may or may not be bad (I have my own opinion on this subject but I will leave it out). The issue is are the concerns raised by Motor Trend actually CAUSED by the unique properties of the leaf spring or not. Mind you the only thing that make the leaf spring truely unique vs a coil spring is the anti-roll effect. This link contains a web forum discussion with an aftermarket tuner who replaces the leaf springs http://forums.corvetteforum.com/showthread.php?t=1918713&page=3 Note the following comments from the tuner: Coilovers make our job easier to R and D new things. and ''The car works very well for 85 percent of the owners. The car is fast, cheap, and puts down all the performance numbers. I may regret saying this but, Yes the factory leaf works very well for the street-light track. For all the requirements that GM has to meet, the leaf springs meet or exeed the goals and raise the bar for everyone else. Building a factory style car has many different PITA, that us aftermarket companies don't have. '' Basically for an aftermarket tuner, it is easier to use commonly accesable coil springs rather than custom leaves. He also notes a dislike of the factory dampers.

1c. Again, it should be adequately demonstraited that the alleged poor ride quality is because of the type of spring, as opposed to say spring rate (universal to coils or leaves, damping, unsprung weight, the run flat tires (generally know for poor ride quality) etc).

2a. Why off handedly dismiss a fundimental descriptive error of the suspension system yet blaim the same part? Autostream has never answered this point.

2b. "behaving like" implies properties similar to. However, the article doesn't explain this and based on existing Wikis this would be inconsitant with the suspension design used on the Corvette.

2c. The physical counter claim is supported by illustrations from wiki entries, both mine and others. The source by Lamm has not been shown to be biased nor factually incorrect. You are correct my sources don't counter the claims about FEEL however, they do show that the claim that the feel is the result of the specific use of a leaf spring is in question. They also suggest other areas of suspension design could be the cause.

2d. Amoung web forums the "Car of the Year" award is very questionable. Additionally, the writer of the Autoextremist.com wrote a lengthy piece talking about the marketting and sales tie ins that Motor Trend demands of a recipiant. http://www.theautochannel.com/news/press/date/19991027/press002043.html (scroll to bottom of screen for article)

3. If you disagree with my other points please explain why.

4. If Motor Trend is indeed paid by the manufacture as you claim they can no longer be considered unbiased in any of their views and loose all credibiity as an independent source.