Especially with power steering. Nobody would ever notice anything but the understeer in corners.

 

As far as feedback from the tires goes, more caster means you're less connected to the tires. Increasing the mechanical steering effort reduces the role that tire distortion (and the resulting forces) plays in steering effort.

 

At the most basic level, the point of having steering feel (to me) is being able to tell through the steering wheel when my front tires are about to give up.

I figured that the lack of information coming through the wheel in my current car (S2000) has to do with the electric boost, or the low-profile tires, or the combination of the two.

Can I "just" unhook or disable the steering assist to see if it does any good, or do I have to swap parts from a CR?

 

What are you comparing the "feel" to?

 

I'm old enough to have driven cars without power-assisted steering. "Back in the day" it was very difficult for a power-assisted steering system to provide the feel that manual systems provided. Over the years, cars have porked up and power assist became mandatory. Many younger drivers have never known anything else.

 

"Back in the day" cars needed to be started with a can of Ether and a ball-peen hammer too.

 

Other rear wheel drive cars that I have had in general, but recently I was shocked at the difference between my car and a Miata for sure, but even my brother's old Datsun 510 had better communication.

Anyhow, I'm sure that it's not just in my head.

 

Make sure you have a good alignment. You may want to increase caster to the max...

 

For me, the Exige S and the early NSXs(w/ no power steering).
Even the 3 series give better "feel" than our S2000.
This is totally subjective though.

Dan

 

True, and given the weight of the car and the grip of the tires, driving it on the street without power steering wouldn't be much fun. The feedback from the S2000 steering is actually pretty good for a power steering system, but the speed sensitivity bugged me for a long time, becaue it gets confused when sliding the car around and makes the feedback and feel inconsistent. IMO it's not a show stopper though. I've gotten use to it now and hardly notice.