I think it's rare that you can improve the handling of a car without compromising the ride. That should be expected of any "sporty" car. How much of a compromise is acceptable is of course dependent on the car's exact mission.
There's a huge misconception about what drives what decisions when it comes to handling and ride. Aesthetically speaking, larger rims are preferred these days as we all know. Just look at the ridiculous aspect ratios on concept cars at car shows, tire and wheel option sizes as the model price goes up etc. Or anyone's comments in car forums about cars that have "small wheels" = looks cheap, low rent etc.
In fact a tire's sidewall is an important part of handling, minimize it to an extreme and handling and ride both become worse!
For example, Formula 1 tire's aspect ratio? Huge sidewalls, why?
"The subject of bigger wheels has been raised many times over the last five or eight years," said (ex) Mercedes Formula 1 executive technical director Paddy Lowe.
"The broad consensus is that going to bigger wheels is not a good direction. From a grip point of view it's not positive.
"Like for like, such tires will have a lower grip and the weight will go up considerably, so it's not an attractive direction performance-wise."
As a car corners its tires deflect a little to keep in contact with the tarmac, and how they deflect is a big part of handling - stiffer sidewalls will mean less deflection and therefore less contact with the tarmac. The size of the wheel rims will also increase mass at the hub - it takes more effort to spin the larger mass; also increasing the unsprung weight. Stiffer sidewalls due to very small sidewalls makes ride worse of course, and in addition significantly increases the odds of ruining an expensive wheel on a pothole. And the cost of larger wheels, smaller sidewall tires......
In summary, aesthetics has been determined to be all important, even at the expense of everything else.
