Edit: Wow thanks for all of the great responses, I was watching Goodfellas and was looking at the cars bouncing all over the place and thinking why was that. I’d love to drive in one to experience it someday.
In: 3156
In addition to all the awesome responses about weight and suspension travel—I’m not seeing independent rear suspension mentioned. Compare the first mustangs after the 00 generation to the later ones and that’s the difference in an old muscle car feel and a modern car feel.
Ford wanted independent and saved the money on it for the first few years. (Shitload of retired ford engineers in my family).
Still in 2003 I got a Buick Century new and it Fucking floated over speed bumps without spilling soda. Good car.
My new one dodge avenger feels like I’m in a rally championship in the Sahara with bumps and loud as fuck, like not loud from the engine but like paper walls or something because sounds like driving without doors lol.
Gotta fix me up the Buick and float again. 👌
Seeing as so far no other top level comments seem to have explain what might actually make a car bouncy/the basic physics behind it I’ll give it a go:
Springs on their own aren’t enough to make good suspension. Compressing a spring stores energy, energy that is returned as the spring decompresses. A bump in the road will compress the spring but after the bump the spring will immediately return to normal releasing that energy in a bounce back up, worse it can start to oscillate up and down as there’s nowhere for the energy to go.
The solution: introduce a method to absorb or dampen that energy. This is the role that the shock absorbers on your car play.
So, why some cars are bouncy but others are not? The bouncy cars are inadequately damped, maybe due to excessive weight, bad/underengineered design or aging components (failed shock absorbers can cause a car to bounce quite dramatically). It’s just another area where modern cars are so exceptionally well engineered so comparing older cars isn’t exactly fair. Modern suspension has a hundred years of development behind it by this point
Most of the basics touched on here in other answers, maybe too into the weeds about bias ply tires and what not. Maybe I can tie it up with a high level overview.
60s and 70s cars were bouncy and loose not just on film!. Suspension and chassis technology has come a long way since then, arguably further than combustion engine technology in the same time, if we’re including anti lock brakes, stability control etc. also the customer tastes tended toward comfortable riding cars, particularly in the American market. It was a sort of feedback loop, since the the technology didn’t really allow creating cars that handled well and also rode pretty well, the customers just preferred the smooth floaty ride.
For many other reasons, technology moved on, safe and secure handling was possible with good comfort, customer tastes changed slowly and those old days are left behind, those old floaty boats are wierd if you’re looking backwards. Some folks used to drive 2 door cars, can you believe that?
One thing the average joes here are wrong about is weight. We’ve surpassed those old cars now with our “dense” modern autos. My first car was one of the last of the old boats, a 1983 Buick Park Avenue. The longest car made in ‘83, just slightly edging out the longest Cadillac. With an iron V8 engine! It weighed 2 tons. Now I drive a Volvo S60. a premium compact car you might call it, the smallest sedan that Volvo makes. It has an all aluminum 4 cylinder engine. It weighs…2 tons. Handles a whole lot better than that old Buick and no bounce;-)
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