I’m 43. I grew up riding in, and ultimately learned how to drive in, a rear-wheel-drive car. The first car I owned was also RWD. My second and third cars were FWD, and I was always annoyed at how they tended to understeer when I got on the gas in corners. Moreover, my third car was powerful enough to break traction (and start hopping violently) when accelerating under less than ideal road conditions.
Happily, my newest car is RWD. With the recent winter storms and persistent hardpacked snow on the roads, I’ve been amusing myself by turning off the stability control and drifting/fishtailing the back end around corners. FWD cars can do a sad imitation of this by making use of the handbrake, but it’s just not the same.
I enjoy this kind of shenanigans now because when I was learning how to drive in the mid 1980’s (when FWD cars were still not terribly common), you had to know how to deal with the back end sliding around in the snow; I got good at feeling what the car was doing or going to do, and what was required at the accelerator, brake, and steering wheel to make it do what I wanted. In fact, when I was a little kid, Dad introduced me to it for entertainment value: we’d all go out for dinner, and on the way home we’d find an empty parking lot, and start doing donuts and slides in the family station wagon, with me and my brother and sister in the back seat laughing our heads off (Mom was along for the ride too, but I think she didn’t enjoy it quite as much as we did).
Nowadays, RWD cars are comparatively rare, and it occurred to me that a lot of younger folks may have never even driven one. Am I right about that? How old are you, and do you have none, “some,” or “a lot of” experience driving RWD cars?