Handling the ride

Delivering a balance between ride and handling traditionally has been a challenge for suspension designers, but suppliers of different technologies are showing how compromise may not be the only solution.

Chassis and suspension designers have worked hard since the earliest days of the automobile to smooth out the bumps and potholes in the road. However, vehicles with traditional suspensions designed for the smoothest ride typically have trouble negotiating sharp corners at speed. Sporty cars designed for nimble handling tend to have stiffer springing and a consequently harder ride.

Engineers armed with the latest computer tools have made significant advances in recent years, keeping designs simple while decoupling lateral from vertical stiffness and tuning bushings to improve both ride and handling simultaneously But a purely mechanical suspension can perform optimally only under a limited set of circumstances. A fully loaded vehicle behaves very differently than the same vehicle with just a driver, especially if the body is low in mass. And severe bumps or holes are always tricky to take into account for the extremes of loading.