Some very interesting reading here.
The Silver Shadow was always knocked for not being a good handler.
I laugh at things like this, it’s like saying a Kia Carnival handles poorly around a race track (I actually read that in a Carnival write up a few years ago) and its 0-100km time was sub standard
![Anguished face :anguished: 😧](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/6.0/png/unicode/64/1f627.png)
I actually wrote a letter to Wheels asking said journo to give the Carnival to his wife for a couple of weeks for the school and shopping runs etc, as this is what we want to see a Carnival reviews like.
These types of cars, and others of course are not meant for this type of operation.
I do have to say, yes, the Silver Shadow in its original suspension form, (which mine was) was a beautiful car to ride in, and could wallow if driven incorrectly. The biggest initial issue with the Silver Shadow when a new driver got in was its extremely light and powerful power steering.
It would always catch the un educated driver out, and drop the nose very dramatically deep in the direction the wheel was turned due to its extremely soft suspension & damper settings into oversteer, then of course a panic re correction would happen, the driver would pull hard on the steering again.
Any turns of the steering if driven lively to late into the corner would result in this, then of course as the tyres let go, horrible understeer was experienced.
The Shadow needed to be set up for a corner about 10-20m earlier than normal and use the set up to get her around a hard bend at speed. For a 2.2 tonne car, you could actually get her around faster bends pretty well.
Once understood, it worked very well, but images like the above are by someone driving the Shadow around a bend as they would the Mercedes Benz, which of course was a supreme handler, as it had this dialled into its chassis build.
I’ve driven a few of the W116 at speed, and they were all extremely good around corners at speed.
I found the XJ was good around bends and corners, but way too hard for normal around town driving.