I love my S2000 but it would be perfect if it had the steering feedback of my old '84 Porsche. You could get a great feel for the front end starting to go away when the steering effort suddenly slacked. Also every little pebble in the road was a tiny vibration. There were some other cars I've driven like this too, all manually steering. Anyway, the S2000 has wonderfully precise steering but it feels (lack of feel more to the point) more like a video game.

Has anyone ever disconnected the power steering (or is that even possible)? Or maybe that would be a ridiculous idea with that much tire? Its that likely alignment geometry would render the effort required to steer to become really nasty.

As far as the Porsche, don't get me wrong, it was an evil handling beast and the S2000 would run circles around it, but I did really like the steering feedback.

And, I'm not so sure I would do it anyway. As is its a one hand steering car at low speeds and that's pretty handy around townl. And as cool as the feel might be, I really don't want to make a beast out of the thing. (maybe an on/off switch? - it is electrical - or am I dreaming)

In any case I welcome your comments if for nothing else the sake of discussion.

 

Steering feel is really subjective and personal, but I come from similar types of German cars and I agree with you 100%.

The S2000's steering is very *precise* for sure, but I find it lacking in feedback. For one thing it doesn't give little messages about bumps and the like on the road surface. Some people call this kickback an view it as a negative, but I actually like a bit of it.

But the big, obvious difference between the S2000 steering feedback and other cars I'm used to- p/s or not- is that the steering effort on the S2k is basically the same under all conditions. It doesn't matter whether you are standing on the brakes, loaded up in a corner, or sliding around with no grip- the steering feel always has that characteristic light effort. I'm really used to cars with steering that gets heavier as more load is put on the front tires. When you're really "on it", the steering then acts as a sort of load sensor- telling you how much of the available grip you're using. Also when you suddenly lose grip, you can tell because the steering suddenly goes very light- whereas with the S2k it is always light. FWIW my '04 has noticeably higher effort at low speeds compared to the '02 I drove back to back, but I'd still prefer more heft and feedback.

But I would be hard pressed to disable the p/s because with such a quick rack I figure the effort would be quite high. Also I'm not sure how good it would be for the mechanical components of the steering system since it's designed to get leverage from a place other than the steering wheel.

Interestingly the car I've driven with the best steering feel by far was not my manual rack MR2, but the p/s on my mom's 1989 BMW 325iX. The ratio is a bit slow, but otherwise it is just perfect. Communicates every pebble and bots dot, super stable, really lets you feel what the tires are up to. I wish they still made them like that, the feel on my '99 Z3 Coupe isn't near as good, and the Z4 I drove had steering that was way lighter than even the S2000.

Peter