When looking at the performance of a vehicle, weight is one of the most important factors in the equation. Heavier vehicles take more energy to accelerate and are harder to stop. They’re also more difficult to control through the corners. Overall, anything that makes a vehicle heavier typically comes with a load of drawbacks to both performance and efficiency. You want your racecar as light as possible.
However, now and then, automakers have found reason to intentionally add large weights to vehicles. We’ll look at a couple of key examples, and discuss why this strange design decision can sometimes be just what the engineers ordered.
Vibration
Anyone who has taken a course on vibrations in university will know that adding mass typically changes things for the better as far as vibrations go. More mass reduces the natural frequency of a system. In a vehicle, if the natural frequency of a chassis or subsystem drops lower than that of excitations from things like the road, drivetrain vibrations, or the engine, vibrations felt throughout the vehicle can be reduced precipitously.
Up to around 1968, certain Porsche 911 models fitted pairs of 27 lb weights on the front bumper in order to balance the weight of the 6-cylinder engine mounted in the rear. Credit: Parts-Wise.com ELLIOT: Please Check
A common example is the Porsche 912E, which substituted a smooth-running six-cylinder engine for a clattery Volkswagen four-cylinder engine. When designing the vehicle to accept this engine, Porsche engineers decided to add a hefty 12-pound weight underneath the transmission cross member. The weight is listed as a “vibration damper,” ..
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