Category Archives: Chris Harris Videos

Chris Harris does some of the best car reviews on the internet. I enjoy them so much I decided he needed his own category.

Left Foot Braking – Chris Harris

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Left foot braking is a pretty simple driving technique that you can use to help control front and all wheel drive cars through turns. It’s useful for a few reasons:

I would say the most important reason is to control the car’s balance. When you brake, the weight of the car shifts towards the front wheels. Purposely shifting the weight forward in a turn will give the front wheels some extra traction to dig the car out of the exit. Applying the brake against the throttle allows you to get the proper weight shift without over-braking and slowing the car too much.

The second reason that left foot braking is faster for front wheel drive cars is because it helps the differential. It’s easy for a car to lift its inside front wheel while trying to accelerate out of a turn. Reduced resistance on the lifted wheel will cause the differential to send more power to it which generally results in your engine power doing a one wheel burnout if you’re really trying to drive fast. Left foot braking prevents the lifted inside wheel from spinning too much so a higher percentage of the engine power goes to the outside front wheel to pull you out of the corner.

Chris Harris demonstrates the technique and talks about these benefits in this vintage AutoCar video:

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6 Hours of Spa Francorchamps in a Ford Falcon – Chris Harris

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Chris Harris brings us along for a second attempt at finishing the 6 hour vintage race car endurance race at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium with his mates. They weren’t able to finish last year because of a mechanical failure on their Ford Falcon race car. This year the team upgraded the engine and overhauled the suspension setup. The tuning netted around 15 seconds a lap improvement over last year’s times. Will this year be the year the Falcon finally finishes the entire 6 hours? Watch and find out.


Source: DRIVE on YouTube

Ford RS200 and Audi Sport Quattro – Chris Harris

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As part of the homologation requirements for Group B rally, the manufacturers had to produce 200 road going versions of the cars they used to compete with. The rule was kind of ridiculous given how extreme the race cars were, but it does increase the chance that regular people get to experience what they were like. Chris Harris got to test the RS200 from Ford and the Audi Sport Quattro. He does his usual excellent job of describing what the nature of the cars are like and what made them historically significant.


Source: DRIVE on YouTube

Porsche 962 – Chris Harris

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Somebody at Porsche must have heard that Chris Harris sold his 911 GT3 RS 4.0 liter for a Ferrari 599 and decided to win back his heart. They invited him to the Porsche test track to drive the Porsche 962 that won the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1987. As part of the deal, they also let Harris pick the mind of the man who designed the 962, Norbert Singer. Not only do we get to see the car in action, the interview with Singer really brings the significance of the car into perspective.


Source: DRIVE on YouTube

Mercedes Benz CLS 63 AMG Shooting Brake – Chris Harris

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It still baffles and frustrates me that most of the American consumer population does not like station wagons. This is made worse by the fact that most European car makers produce some serious high performance versions. From what I understand, when men in Europe go through a mid-life crisis they buy really fast autobahn annihilating wagons to get their mojo back. That’s why there are cars like this one, the Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG Shooting Brake. It’s got the new 5.5 liter twin turbo V8 that powers all of the AMG cars except for the C63 (the engineers thought the C63 was too light for the torque of the turbo engine so they stayed with the snarly 6.2 liter NA V8). The wagon / shooting brake body style is more aerodynamic, offers better utility for hauling stuff and I think it looks way better. The fact that somebody can look at this car and still want a lumbering SUV makes me die a little bit inside.


Source: DRIVE on YouTube