It's probably just me, since I haven't seen any cars in person, but I think I see a difference in the the way the show cars fill the wheel wells, vs the test cars. Is it ride height? Outside tire diameter? Personal psychosis?


showcar:



test car:



Any thoughts?

Johnny

PS My first post, HELLO MUSTANG LOVERS

 

show car has the 18in wheels dont know if that will make a huge difference in ride height or not

 

Thats because the car is taller.

 

I've just seen the showcar at the Chicago Auto Show, but it does lool like that the test cars are riding a bit taller(but that might just be that the have smaller tires?)

Anyone seen both in person?

 

The ride has definetly gotten taller. Those show cars were lowered.

 

I've seen the show car with the 18" wheels and the Pony Drive II vehicle with the 17" wheels. The ride height was about the same for each. I read somewhere that the 17" wheels with the 55 series tires is the same diameter as the 18" wheels with the 45 series tires.

As far as the second picture of the Mineral Grey GT is concerned, there is no way that either car I've seen had that much of a gap between the tires and wheel wells.

 

235/55R17 VS 255/45R18

0.5% difference.

13.6inch radius VS 13.5 inch radius
27.2 inch diameter VS 27 inch diameter

YEP...very close.
If you went from one to the other...travelling at 60mph, you'd actually be travelling at 59.7mph (VERY CLOSE)
100km/h vs 99.5km/h
Wouldn't be enough to even notice.

 

My assumption, with new cars from the factory, has always been that optional 18� wheels were indexed up from standard 17�. The overall diameter of the tire was the same for either and just the sidewall of the tire changed. Is that not always the case?

 

Duh, I move slow. Thanks, Boomer.

 

I took those two pictures... the one of the show car and the one of the test mule, and put them in the program I use at work, scaled them to the exact same scale, and threw some dimensions on them. The ride height is exactly the same... roughly 6" above the ground. The difference we are seeing is that the tires on the show car are a full inch larger than the tires on the test mule. Yeah, the test mule has the 17" wheels and the show car has the 18" wheels, but the tires themselves are bigger on the show car. But still the ride height is the same... 6". So, it looks like the show car had the bigger tires (which would explain why the tires are filling out the wheel wells more), and then they must have dropped the car about an inch. I don't have any kind of photo program here at work... I copied and pasted the pics into word, so if anyone is able to take a pic from Word, and copy/paste it into a photo program to save it as a jpeg and upload it here to the site, let me know. I can e-mail it to you.

 

I thought that also, but didn't understand why they would use SN95 size tires on the new stang (unless it is a mule and it is just for testing).

Seeing as that is the only pic we've seen with a bad ride height, I wouldn't worry about it. In the another thread I showed half a dozen pics of the 05 with a good ride height.

 

Ok, I finally figured out how to save something from this program into a jpeg. So, I'm gonna post the pics I dimensioned, and you all can judge for yourselves. I just hope Dan is right, and the test mule tires are just for testing.

Here is the show car...

 

And the test mule...

 

It definitely needs 18s. Why do they make the wheel wells so large, especially after so much criticism of the 1999-2004 models? I can't think of any other car in the industry like that.

 

Spring kits should be popular in the aftermarket

 

I saw the show car at NAIAS, and the stance was PERFECT in my opinion. Hopefully the production car will be the same. These are mules, so the spring rates may not have been finalized yet... we'll see in october if I have to give eibach a call.

 

What we have here more than anything is an Optical Illusion, The Tires on the Mule are Dressed with a VERY HIGH GLOSS Tire Dressing, along with the Flash of the Camera, and the Shadows it created, cause it to look like there is more Fender Gap than we are used to seeing.

Calm Down Folks! Read the Article from the Mustang Enthusiast Topic, the Guy In Charge of the Exterior Design Said One of the Biggest things they were concerned with was this cars Stance, and Tire to Wheel Opening Relationship. Besides Just Look at ALL OF THE OTHER Pic's we have to the contrary, This car is Gonna Be Fine when it Hits Showrooms!

 

let me explain the tire/wheel/rim size issue.

the rim size defines the rim diameter.
the tire code tells us about width, aspect ratio, rim diameter.

let's go.

a P255/45R18 tire is 255mm (millimeters) wide, the sidewall is 45% of the width, and it is designed to fit on a 18" rim.
a P235/55R17 tire is 235mm wide, the sidewall is 55% of the width, and it is designed to fit on a 17" rim.

the overall diameter calculates like this:

(tirewidth * tireaspectratio/100) * 2 + rimsize

so let's do some math:

overall diameter for 255/45R18: 686.7mm = 27.04in
overall diameter for 235/55R17: 690.3mm = 27.18in

difference is about 0,5%

so... if you get 18" rims... the tires won't fill the wheel wells better

 

The auto industry is going to larger wheel/rim sizes.

With 18's the car fills the wheel wells perfectly IMO.

 

But what if the mule doesn't have either of those tires on it but rather an SN95 size tire? Then the wheel wells would not be as full.