Dont Say I never gave you guys anything good!!! Top Gear E34 Road Test video **link**

[Robin-535im]

The next part (chopped off) is a great piece of info for people to know:

Don't lift in a high speed turn!

If you're under even moderate power in a turn and you lift off the gas, the rear unweights, the front has all the traction, and the rear can spin out real easy.

It's rather counter-intuituve to keep your foot on the gas as you start to slide, but if you give a wee bit more throttle you can pull the rear end back in line. Natural tendency is often to lift off the gas and even brake when the wheels start to slide, but that makes it spin out of control faster than you can pee your pants.

- obin

[BigKriss]

Alex, my car power understeers when entering a high speed corner, when exising a corner, under WOT and a low gear, it will power oversteer, but on my car I lose a lot more grip at the front of the car. If you have poor front tires, or the front of the car is stiff, with a looser rear, power understeer is not difficult. On my car, the first signs of the car losing control, it understeers. Brandon is right, these cars are made to understeer.

Youre saying that the tires on front are different somehow from those on the rear? My tires are the same on the front as the rear, my brothers e28 535im also has power oversteer. I believe that that was a 535im in the video. I can understand how it would be possible for just plain understeer to be present in a rear-drive car but, as the video explains, there is really no way for application of power to the rear wheels can cause the front to break traction more readily than the rear. Perhaps the e34 is designed to understeer with power oversteer...however i personally dont think this to be the case, the e34 in the video oversteer even when not under what might appear to be full throttle. Also, any "true drivers car" such as a BMW, i would think, would be made to oversteer more readily than understeer. Like tiff said, something like "oversteer is much more fun."

I am very interested to find out some of the more subtle handling characteristics of a typical BMW. I dont push my car to the limit very often, the only time my car breaks traction is at low speeds and around corners at low speeds. I remember riding in my brothers BMW for the first time after he got it and it was really the first rear-drive car with a sufficient amount of power that i had ridden in, thus it was able to power-oversteer on dry pavement at moderate speeds. Quite a new experience for me. Personally, i would think oversteer would be more controllable for the experienced driver. Although i dont profess to hold great skill in high speed driving, i think i would feel rather helpless in a car whose front tires were plowing off an embankment or into a tree.

[Alexlind123]

I disagree, these cars were made to oversteer. Your car perhaps has custom suspension that causes it to behave in this way.