Kia这次在底特律汽车展抢尽风头。这源于他们发布了2018 Stinger,,, 一辆前置引擎，后轮驱动（或者四驱）的性能四门轿跑。这车不但有拉风的外貌，Kia为了保证整车性能，还把BMW的工程师也挖过来了。大家看看网上的视频：











MSN Auto上面提到了一些设计上的细节。其中就包括汽车对前后轮50/50配重的追求。看来可能是有点继承BMW的设计理念。我们板曾经讨论过汽车操纵性的题目，大家也对配重问题发表过见解。



我的理解是当前后轮配重各50%的时候，车子的重心在车身的正中间。所以有利于汽车在各种弯道情况下保持最大的稳定性。有人提过大马力跑车（super car）的配重比非50/50，我觉得因为大马力车的动力过强，所以会为了增加摩擦力而把更多的负重放在驱动轮的一侧。也有人甚至提过F1，但是我觉得F1的任何设计都无法和其他汽车比较的。曾经看过一些纪录片，说F1技术的其中一个例子就说它极强的咬地能力。其来源并不是由车重决定的，而完全是由于空气动力学的设计而产生的。极速行驶的F1是可以产生强大的下压力来提高摩擦力。其强度足以让车子倒过来贴着天花板开!



无论如何，这个stinger确实值得期待。不知道上市价在什么范围呢？



（以下为MSN auto的部分原文）

http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/12-things-you-didn%E2%80%99t-know-about-the-2018-kia-stinger/ar-AAlUxPZ?li=BBisPVf&ocid=spartanntp







1. The
wheelbase informed a lot of Kia's decision making with the car. "Its
114 inch wheelbase [114.4 to be precise] is longer than anything else in the
markets that it's up against. The A4, the A5, even the GS 350, so the benefit
there was, you get a lot bigger backseat," said Hedrick. "The
tradeoff is, you can't twist, turn, and move like a 3 Series, or the ATS. And
that was a deliberate tradeoff. I think for us, it was important, really, to be
true to what the concept of the vehicle was. It's not to be a 3 Series, it's to
be a GT."

2. Out at the
Nrburgring, the Stinger's pro drivers were looking to communicate specific
attributes to the engineers that are more in line with a GT car. "They
were looking for specific things like high speed stability, being able to track
a line, is it balanced when you go over a negative radius? Does the car kind of
offset, and does it feel heavy? A lot of the work is actually done digitally,
before the car was even put together," said Hedrick.

3. Weight
distribution was a key focus, as was the powertrain placement. "We
were trying to get as much as possible, the center of gravity down low, and in
the middle of the car so we get close to 50/50. So that drove decisions, for
instance, they did a lot of work making sure the engine is as low as possible
and towards the middle of the car as possible," said Hedrick.

4. The Stinger
is built on the same basic platform as its K900 stablemate, but with a key
difference. The mid FR platform, it's the modular platform we use it
across the board for K900, our sisters [Hyundai/Genesis] it for their two big FR
cars. But the front and dash, forward, the engine room box is completely
different," Hedrick said. "It's a little bit smaller in the front,
it's a little bit lighter, so that helped with the weight distribution."

5. No, the
Stinger's hood vents aren't functional (surprise, they're a design flourish),
but there is some functional design at the front of the car. "There's
an air curtain [at the edge of each side of the lower fascia]. And what that
does is, when air comes around it creates a turbulence, a low pressure area
[around the front wheels]. This helps create a sheet and it breaks that low
pressure, and it just helps the aerodynamics a little bit. It stops that
turbulence that happens along the side of the car," Hedrick said.

6. While the
hood vents aren't functional, there is a "floating hood" on the
Stinger. "The other big discussion point was using, they call it
an island hood, it's the term that R&D groups call it, I think everybody
else calls it a floating hood," said Hedrick. "Typically, we have a
cut line that goes across just behind the fascia, and it comes down over the
fenders. A lot of other manufacturers use it but it's expensive because you've
got to get all of those parts coming together, and to make sure it's flat and
even all the way across. So this is the first application of that, and we
wanted to give it that premium feel, that premium look."

7. The
interior of the 2018 Stinger carried over elements of the GT concept from 2011,
and packaging and use of top tier materials were a major focus. "I
think from an overall standpoint, this cockpit is pretty straightforward. We've
got the three center vents in it. This was also from the original concept; they
included a lot of the details on that. This has a shift by wire, which helped
in some of that packaging when that transmission came through. The main thing
is the backseat. But I think the other point is the premium materials. We
didn't have any really hard arguments with the bean counters, we were able to
get pretty much everything we wanted," Hedrick said.

8. The
Stingers feature Brembo brakes at all four corners on both the base car and the
Stinger GT, and they will roll on Michelin rubber. But there's still a question
whether they will be summer or all-season as the main option. "There's
only two other names except ours on the car, hence, on the tires and the brakes,
so we wanted to make sure that we had top tier stuff," said Hedrick.
"These are specific tires, they're different sized. We have two sets;
we have an 18-inch, and a 19-inch. The 19s are available only on the V-6 twin
turbo. And on the all-wheel drive, we're gonna fit all of them with summer and
we're having a debate, we haven't finalized yet whether to do all-seasons or
summer."

9. The
Stinger's hatchback-style trunk opening created some specific challenges the
team had to address. There are other five doors out there, but if
you're going after handling, this is a huge engineering challenge, this big
open space in the back of the body. So there was a lot of work that went into
the body in white to make sure there was this stiff, rigid chassis that we
needed," said Hedrick. "This was really a trick because it's right
over the suspension point so you're pushing all of the road inputs right where
you have a giant hole. So the backend, if you watch it on the CAD it can really
move around a lot. So there's a giant ring of ultra, high-strength steel that
goes around this opening, which is a really tough material to work with. It has
to be molded while it's molten, while it's red hot. So they have to move this
thing, and it's all done with robotics to give it the proper shape."

10. The
concept also drove the decision to create the hatch-style trunk. We
wanted to have something that was true to the concept which was two couples
going down to a getaway weekend, a three day weekend, to make sure there's
enough room. If you look at the trunk on a 3 Series or an ATS, or premium
sedans, it's really small. And this, we thought, was kind of in line with the
Kia practicality and the idea that you could use it as an everyday car and it's
really versatile, having this space back here means you can do a lot with
it," said Hedrick.

11. Roughly
130 meters of industrial strength adhesive is used throughout the car. "All
of this was driven to get a really, really, super stiff, light body. It was not
only for safety, it was also for that premium feel that we're trying to build,
that Germanic, European feel. But also just to give it a great handling, so the
suspension can do its job," said Hedrick.

12. The former
head of BMW's M division had a hand in the Stinger's engineering. It's
a really cool looking car, and it's going to drive as good as it looks because
we've got Albert [Albert Biermann, BMW M's former VP of engineering who left
the company to become Hyundai's head of vehicle test and high performance
development in late 2014] involved with it from about halfway through
development. And he's pushing us really hard to make sure that it's a great
drive and also for our dealers to get them excited, because they've never had a
driving car. So it'll be interesting, it'll be really interesting.