First off let me start by saying I’m new to the series. I decided to give this game a go since I’ve recently built my own PC. The game is absolutely gorgeous. The only issue I have is the weight or just as the subject suggests; stiffness. At the prologue with the Centarion (I think that’s the name), when turning at corners and braking, it felt as if the car was fighting with me. I attempted Switching ABS off but that made it worse lol. Im accustomed to fluidity such as Dirt 3, The Crew, and GRID 2. This on the other hand sent me backwards.
I wish I could help
Just wonna say I had big big issues and problems during first few days playing
I worked em out by trying different cars, driving with normal cars on road, upgraded driver for me wheel, updated windows … ohh and played around with advanced settings in the Controls → wheels → advanced. Hope that helps! 
Thanks for the reply I guess that’s the best I could do. Just wanted to determine the best course of action before I fully delve into the game.
Go into your difficulty settings and set;
steering-normal
abs-on
stability control-off
If you have any “assisted” settings it will fight you for control
Beyond that, you may need to upgrade/tune the car in question.
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Interesting that you say ABS on, I always run ABS off. The other 2 options I agree on
Just wanted to make sure they took it off assisted, the rest is up to them. I still use ABS because the cars actually have it in real life. I also turn TCS on and off at will just like real life and I drive an automatic. But I still post times in the top one percent of the top one percent.
Also they said that ABS off actually made it worse for them in the OP
Oops! Missed that bit in the top post.
Like yourself, TCS goes off and on depending on the amount of HP, but haven’t managed to get the hang of a manual transmission after all of these years
If you can get times like that driving automatic imagine the times you could get with manual
The problem is that I’ve been playing auto for literally two decades. My muscle memory is so hard wired that way, It’s as natural as breathing. I have tried manual with clutch & sadly it looks like I’ve handed the controller over to my nephew… he’s almost 2. It would take me a few months just to learn the basics again, years to get back to where I am now. It doesn’t help that I’ve only owned automatic cars IRL too.
Even so I have noticed that I am a somewhat consistent 5 seconds/minute-lap behind the top spot. And I know that manual IS a way to cut seconds off… however I don’t see myself doing it anytime soon.
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Try it without clutch first
It’s not that much harder than auto
I did try that actually, and even found a scheme that switches the gear up down to the left stick! I cannot understate the importance of that for me. I still need the E-brake to be A but there is no scheme that allows both of those 
I should look into some PC macro settings but it might be hard to do with a standard Xbox controller.
Which input method?
If using a controller, I have the opposite opinion, as GRID feels way too twitchy for me. I think the only Codemasters games that feel right for me are the F1 series.
Just my personal opinion - man/w clutch is useless. No matter how clean you try to shift, the revs often bounce and there’s damage to the tranny. Worse yet, you have to switch it off every time you drive a car with paddle shifters; I mean, why would you want to use a clutch for that? The game should automatically disable it.
Anyway, for good effect, I just lift my finger off the throttle with stick-shifting gearboxes and try to shift using the car’s actual shifting time. The normal shifting BTW, is the real shift time of the car and makes for good immersion.
I’ve been trying to gradually work down my assists. I’ve found that I personally just drive faster with ABS on, and that it doesn’t make much of a handling difference. I do understand the “stiff” handling, as Forza really has the least lively cars of any racing series I’ve played, but if you want to you can try Simulation steering. It’s really impractical because it was executed horribly, but with a wheel it can help with that weird on-rails feeling.
I just had a brain wave… this will help those like the OP later in the game but the that medic guy above me might like to know. The stock Diff settings for a car with an AWD swap & race diff are 50,00F 75,75R & 65 split. That is way too high. I always set my front accel to 13-20 rear accel to 40-60 and try to run with 0 decel if possible. Start at 15F 50R and adjust to suit each car, higher number= tighter car. lower number= looser car. More on that and other tips on tuning here. https://forums.forza.net/turn10_postsm698511_HOON-tunes--Updated-OP-and-tuning-tutorial-post--20.aspx#post_698511
That said this game kind of puts an emphasis on tuning. Being able to tune your cars yourself is nice, but you can load tunes from others in the Garage>upgrades>load upgrades. If you upgrade your cars with race parts, the stock settings in this game are usually off by quite a lot! You can learn how to tune, or you can find a tuner like myself to follow, in the tuning section.
Welcome to Forza!
The steering behavior you’re describing has been discussed endlessly since the FM4 days. It’s the game’s speed sensitivity aid kicking in that makes you feel that the car is understeering or the wheels not turning properly. If you play the game on a wheel, you will no longer experience this (you can apply as much lock as you like regardless of speed), but I have read up on these forums (from long-time wheel users) how the wheel implementation isn’t the best.
So back to your issue - what you want to do is apply nearly 100% of your braking before the turn. In Forza, if you brake hard right until the very last moment, or even brake in the middle of a turn, the game will stop applying steering lock, even if your speed is reasonably slow and you have the analog stick jammed all the way. I so desperately wish you could overdrive the car more on a pad and either adjust speed sensitivity or do away with it entirely, but it is how it is.
Another thing you must do is keep your inside deadzones at zero, outside at max. This way, you’ll have finer control over your car and will most likely get better turning ability with less analog stick travel, if that makes sense. Furthermore, ABS may or may not help, as on one hand, it allows you to apply more steering lock while turning the front wheels, but on the other, the additional friction or slip angle might cause your car to understeer. This is why I love cars like the FXX-K in the game, because IRL, the car has a short wheel-to-wheel lock, allowing you to turn faster and with less input.
Anyway, I believe they may be addressing most of these issues in FM7, so you can bet it will carry over to Horizon 4 as well. Cheers!