Quote:
Originally Posted by bobec
But all jokes aside, does anyone know why they chose to compete with the M8, and why for just one season (though a superseason with 2 LMs)
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They wanted a car with a very large floor area for downforce and were intending to get a waiver to chop the car down and reduce its height but eventually the other manufacturers rejected it.
Pretty much all the 4 seat based GT cars end up with close to the same (maximum) width and height mind you. Obviously the 911 has a much narrower cabin than the saloon style 4 seaters though, but even the 991 looks massive beside the Ford GT. Heck even the Ferrari and Corvette look big beside the Ford, because the Ford isn't a GT car.
It actually turns out the outgoing M6 is slightly longer overall than the M8 though, but with a shorter wheelbase. So ignoring wings and mirrors in terms of overall dimensions the M8 GTE is on paper smaller than the M6 GTLM
Doesn't really look it though, does it?
It seems like even though the street M6 and M8 are also very close to the same width, the actual cabin/unibody width of the 8 series is bigger than the old 6 series, which even as a road car has wider fender flares. So the M8 GTE has a tiny bit more frontal area than the M6 GTLM did. But the effect is exaggerated even more because of the M8's weird styling with a very wide "face" where the headlights extend nearly to the edge of the fenders. So with extended race fender flares on both cars that hide the width of the middle of the car in a front on view where the a-pillars and headlights are your only point of reference the M8 appears to be a much wider base car than everything else.
