I'd be the last person to defend Tesla's quality control particularly in 2018, although it's significantly better now at least from my experience at the dealership yesterday. But an inch of variance is probably a stretch. I did measure my performance model against a friend's all wheel drive and there was some variation from side to side and front to back but on average was about a centimetre lower. Hard to be clear that this is a completely accurate probe unless your on a super level surface but we measured 13 mmeters, 9 mmeters, 11 mmeters and 8 mmeters. Rear was a little bit higher Compared to spec
It is interesting to see how the notion of what constitutes performance has really changed. I think candleflame makes a similar point in his earlier post. It used to be that performance was just explained by numbers and pretty much acceleration numbers only. But even in the 70s and 80s there was a growing appreciation that European cars that handled better were in fact more fun to drive. The evolution of the Corvette has been an interesting story in this regard. It used to be basically a numbers car. Even though it would generate pretty good numbers on the skid pad and of course impressive acceleration relative to other performance cars, it was not a lot of fun to drive didn't have great handling (or seats!) and dynamically was kind of clumsy. The C7 finally cemented the Corvette as a car with refinement. Not just great numbers but great dynamics. And they finally made it comfortable and a real driver's car. But I think it was either roadandtrack or car and driver that made the recent point that even a C8 compared to the latest iteration of the 911 still lacks a certain kind of refinement in its handling at or near the limit. I'd like to see what one of those two classic car magazines would say about a properly set up model 3.