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?
I briefly had an RWD 1969 Olds Cutlass that was, in general, a fun car when it was actually running (which was probably no more than 50% of the time I owned it). Never really saw the whole RWD appeal as vs. FWD, I’m afraid.
I’m 33. When i was in my early 20’s i had a Ford Ranger for a while and in summer jobs i did a bit of full size truck/work van driving.
Living in the north and dealing with snow & ice, i can honestly say i’ll be fine with never again having a RWD vehicle. Sure, with practice you got a feel for it and could better at avoiding fishtailing, but most of the time it was a pain in the ass in the snow. Is it more fun? maybe, in the same way that driving a stickshift is more fun, but i don’t want one of those either.
I’ve only ever had RWD cars. Learned to drive in my mom’s Volvo 240 (which eventually became mine), and a couple of Crown Vics. Only FWD I’ve ever driven are rentals.
33 here. Have had plenty of RWD experience in a Ford Ranger (4cyl, later a V8 swap), an old 1970 Chevy C10, and a BMW M3. Plenty of FWD experience too, and a couple of cars worth of turbocharged AWD experience…
I’m 61 and learned to drive on my mother’s '57 Volkswagen, RWD. I live in western Canada, that that can was a piece of s**t in winter conditions. In fact, IMHO, the best thing to happen to brutal winter conditions was FWD, anti-lock brakes and fuel injection. I’ll take the winter handling/traction of FRW over RWD any day of the week here in winter, and in a perfect world, AWD (all wheel drive)is the best of both.
Summer, however, makes no difference. My first ever FWD car was a 1994 Buick Regal, which also was the first with anti-lock brakes and fuel injection.
26 and I’ve only really driven one car thus far, and it’s rear wheel drive. (Rental cars for 3 days don’t count to me)
It happens to be a Chevy Tracker so I just turn on the 4WD in messy conditions.
Yup, my parents bought the car before I could drive, I learned to drive in it (along with two other cars, very briefly), and then when I left home I bought the car off them and have kept it thus far. I’m feeling slightly antsy about all the replacement cars I’m considering - car-cars, not SUVs or whatever - being FWD. That, and the realization that I haven’t touched a manual transmission in ten years since I first learned it…
I’m 46 and drove RWD cars for the first half of my 30 years behind the wheel. Growing up we had one of each and I spent about the same amount of time driving both kinds. In my 30’s I bought my first new car, FWD, and that’s pretty much all I’ve driven since.
I grew up with and learned on RWD in Chicago. Right now, my car is FWD, but the truck is RWD.
I always got a giggle out of the people with 4WD or AWD who think they’re immune to the effects of snow and ice and go barreling along on their way to Lake Tahoe. Invariably, they were the first ones to be spun out and stuck in a snowdrift.
It’s the only way to put a lot of power to the ground, at least, without complex suspension and differential tech. Not that you can’t have a powerful FWD - there are any number - but you’ll note professional racing brackets are all RWD or, where permitted, AWD, and with good reason.
Only FWD vehicles I’ve owned/driven are two Honda Odysseys. Learned to drive in a '68 Mustang (still have it, with enough power to need RWD) and everything else was RWD or AWD.
Grew up driving rear wheel drive cars. I fail to see the attraction. None of which could handle worth a damn. And they were pretty bad on snow. I grew up watching people spinning tires and rocking themselves out of icy spots. Snow tires were 100% required.
One thing I’ve noticed nowadays is that you just about never see anyone stuck in the snow. People may get over confident and spin out or plow into drifts, but unless their tires are completely bald, they don’t have much trouble getting moving.
I learned how to drive in Australia in the late 70s. I think everything was RWD at the time.
Off-topic, but on Sunday I saw a Mercedes sedan hopelessly spinning it’s (rear) wheels on a tiny hill in Boulder while a half-dozen other cars pulled around it with no problems at all.
I looked it up and found out that all Mercedes have been rear wheel drive until the 2014 model year. I never knew that. I wonder why anyone drives one in Colorado.
53 years old, 16 out of 21 cars and trucks have been RWD. Three were rear engine, although one was a project car I never got around to fixing ('65 Corvair). Still, twenty of those thirty-seven years had a FWD car as my main ride: 8 years with a Ford Festiva, seven in a Datsun Nissan Sentra Diesel (yes, it had all those nameplates lined up on the trunk), and five in a Toyota Yaris.