Rumours

My friend, torsion beam is in the independent suspension category/family.

Can elaborate, what's not in "independent suspension category/family"?

To me, torsion beam is not fully independent due to its design and try taking corner on bumpy roads with 1 of this. 

hmm... if i'm not mistaken torsion beam suspension is only half-independent 

paul just post this news... i just link it here 

http://paultan.org/archives/2007/04/04/umw-toyota-plans-to-price-new-baseline-spec-toyota-vios-at-under-rm70000/#comments

here are some pic to help to explain what are Independant where one side ride are not affected by the other side bumpy surface....

it designed to deploy on a side only....   so had to comes in pairs... one for the left and the other for the right!

the basic and the more complex multi-linked which means costlier and better handling and rides!

now solid, whenever a car had a beam(quite big) that connected from the Right to Left (or vice-versa) then its solid!  coz the one side movement would had some effect to the others!

So please check this out when you're visiting car showroom next time!!!
Just kneel down from the rear of the car and you could identify it!   don't trust Catalog/Brochures too much!

from what i can remember both Vios and City are Solid(Beam)
Altis, Civic independant but Sentra from what i could remember are Solid!

Any Sentra owner can advise ?

Altis, City, Vios = Torsion beam (Toyota calls theirs ETA beam)

Civic = independent

Sentra = dunno, didn't bother to check.

Torsion, say it's good, it's not really good, say it's bad, it's not really bad. Aih! True independent is the way to go.

bro transformer already explain what's independent suspension /solid so i'll go with torsion beam suspension...

if u looks at the pic carefully u can see there is a torsion beam connecting both wheels together, which allows limited degree of freedom when forced.  So u can say it's half-independent... right???

It can safe the anti-roll bar for compact cars but when compare to double wishbones or multi-link suspensions, it will lose to their handling & driving comfort... the advantage is compact & cheap... it engages little width of the car compare to those double wishbones, multi link etc so its can have roomier back passenger space/room...

sentra nismo has independant multilink rear suspension. but the standard sentra uses something else they call a "multilink beam suspension". which is basically a normal solid beam with some multilink features. even the cefiro uses a similiar modified torsion beam rear.

these are good read-ups on this. even infiniti cars use this.

http://www.se-r.net/about/g20/scc/oct98/tb.html
http://www.autoweb.com.au/cms/A_51888/newsarticle.html