I can’t really keep track of all the GM, Chrysler and Ford makes, but it’s my understanding that a lot of them, if not all, are front wheel drives. Mercedes continues with BWD, as does BMW, but most other volume makers have shifted.
Just a correction, it’s RWD (rear-wheel drive), not BWD. And there are some still made. My two late-model Thunderbirds are RWD. Mustangs are RWD. Pretty much all American performance cars are RWD. As to why FWD is most common nowadays, I wonder that myself.
FWD has a number of advantages. It handles better in snow (since all the engine weight is over the drive wheels), it can have some cost savings in manufacturing (since engine and drive system are all up there in one chunk) and I think it can result in space savings as well (no drive shaft running down the middle of the car).
I’m not a mechanic, just did some reading when I retired my FWD Celica for a RWD F150.
Doesn’t mean that FWD is totally superior, I think that a lot of sports-car enthusiasts prefer how RWD handles; lots of American muscle cars like Mustang, Corvette, Trans-am are RWD and as you noted Mercedes and BMW still make their cars with RWD. Between all those companies I assume that they’ve got pretty good reasons for sticking with it. My F150 handles better the more weight there is in the bed in part because the rear drive wheels grip the road better. When I’m going up to play in the snow I load a few hundred pounds of sandbags over the rear axle, it makes a noticeable difference. By contrast, my dinky Celica never had any problems in snow.
In general, FWD handles better when you are slowing down because the weight of the car is pushed forward and the drive wheels have more friction with the driving surface. This means that for evasive maneuvers and in slippery conditions, FWD can be a big help. RWD handles better when you are accelerating, which means that sports cars and other cars where acceleration and performance are more important tend to have RWD.
That’s obviously a simplification, but it holds most of the time.
For a while, it looked like all the RWD cars would fade away. Some new US models, though, are RWD. Some of us like the way they handle. Besides, there’s something about smoking the front tires that’s just wrong. If you wanna do donuts in a snowy parking lot, the only way in a FWD car is to go backwards. Is that enough practical reasons to go RWD? Probably not, but they’re selling a lot of Dodge Magnums. 
Lots of reasons, but I’m no car designer. I will throw some out there as they were explained to me… correct me if I’m wrong guys:
-The weight of the engine is over the driving wheels. If you jump on it from a standstill, there will be less wheelspin from a car of the same weight, horsepower and tires that’s FWD vs. RWD.
-If stuck in a snowy or icy rut, you can actually steer yourself out of the predicament in addition to the rocking solution.
-They corner better. The vehicle is pulled through a turn via tires that are being supplied the power and pointed in the direction which you care to point them. A RWD is merely pushing the car into tires that are a few feet in front that may have their own opinions about how they’re going to respond to the road conditions.
I grew up driving nothing other than RWD’s and I can tell you that there’s nothing more fun than taking a right angle turn on a rainy November day in New England with some foliage on the road surface in a torquey little Mazda RX-7, provided the road is all yours. You can go sideways back and forth for a country mile if you want- and I still have an old RWD Celica for kicks, but my daily driver is a FWD VW Jetta with the snows going on Thursday. It defies some 4x4’s in the snow. With the summer rubber… few curves the car won’t handle at some very aggressive speeds. That RX-7? Can’t tell you how many times I could’ve tossed it into the woods (although I miss it terribly).
Anyone know why RWD was around in the first place? is it simpler to design or something?
In addition to what Valgard, FWD isn’t really suitable for larger cars like were made in the past. One of the downsides is what’s known as “torque steer.” This simply means that if you floor the gas pedal in a front wheel drive car, the car is going to pull in the direction of whichever tire is putting the most force against the ground (for complicated reasons, 2WD cars basically have 1 wheel which drives the car forward, 4WD drive cars have 2 wheels on opposite corners doing that). In a large engined car, as most full size sedans were (The definition of “full-size” has changed a lot over the years. Up until the 1980s a full size car was about 20 feet long and a mid-size car was about 15 feet long.), the torque steer presented a massive safety hazard. Any time you nailed the gas, the car would tend to pull in one direction. If the road conditions were slippery, one could find themselves in a ditch, right quick. Even some of the smaller FWD cars haven’t been able to escape this, I read a review of one Saab model where the reviewers found the torque steer so infuriating, they were tempted to shoot the car.
A small car, isn’t going to have such a large engine (since it doesn’t have lug around as much weight) so torque steer isn’t much of an issue.
Also, in a large car, FWD can cause some “jerkiness” as the car goes over uneven pavement surfaces. Basically, this can cause the back end of the car to whip around in an unexpected manner. A shorter car doesn’t have this problem.
FWD is also harder to work on, not because it’s more complex than RWD (they’re about even), but because you’ve got less room to move around in, inside the engine compartment, so everything tends to be stacked ontop of one another, rather than spread out.
According to Lee Iocacca, he was going to switch Ford over to smaller, FWD cars in the 1970s, but Henry Ford II, who was in charge of the company, vetoed that idea.
Yup.
A straight line of engine, clutch, transmission, drive shaft, differential is easier to conceptualize and assemble than having to fold and weave these components together in one highly-engineered, compact lump.
It’s not so much that it’s simplier to design, but that the technology of the time when cars were invented simply wasn’t up to the task. The first cars were horse buggys with an engine bolted on to them and a chain drive. When the first transmissions were introduced they were of the CVT type and had leather belts. Back then, all your engine seals were made of leather, and it was difficult to build a FWD car and have leather seals hold up. By the time rubber seals capable of doing the job came about, RWD was firmly entrenched and cars were, for the most part too large to use FWD. There were however, FWD cars prior to the 1960s. Both Cord and Ruxton produced cars that were FWD, but they were about the only car makers to do so.
This is not correct. FWD cars generaly handle worse than RWD. This is because the front tires have to cope with two kinds of forces at the same time: Lateral (steering) and longitudal (acceleration/braking). So it is much easier to exceed the tire’s grip in a FWD.
In a RWD, the front tires deal with lateral forces and the rear with longitudal, so the load is somewhat shared.
Experts believe that FWD cars cannot safely exceed 200hp, with 250 being the upper limit for some specialy tuned cars like Civic Type-R or Ford Focus RS.
In torque-steer, it is the steering wheel that is forced to turn. If the driver anticipates that force and increases his grip on the steering wheel, then the steering wheel will not be turned and the car will be unaffected.
Also, torque-steer tends to turn the steering wheel always in one direction. It has to do with suspension configuration and settings. See here for more info: http://www.google.com.gr/search?q=cache:JO2UfnP_gbcJ:www.mscsoftware.com/support/library/conf/adams/euro/2002/papers/005_EUC_008_FORD.pdf+&hl=el&client=firefox-a
Also, the following is not correct:
The (non limited slip) differential always transfers more torque to the wheel that “feels” the least resistance from the ground, which is always the outer one. But some torque is transfered to the inner wheel as well, so both wheels contribute to the acceleration of the car.
But even if you are prepared, you can still have the steering wheel yanked out of your hands if the car’s got enough umph behind it.
I was simplifing as I didn’t want to get into the whole mess of locking differentials, limited slip, positraction, etc. etc.
There are a number of current FWD cars with more than 250hp.
Acura TL with 270hp.
Nissan Maxima with 265hp.
Cadillac something or other with close to 300hp.
Heck even the V-6 Accord has 240hp and the Accord Hybrid has even more.
I thought one of the main reasons that car companies switched over to fwd for their mainstream vehicles was due to packaging efficiency. Having all the drive components forward of the firewall left more room in the passenger compartment. There’s no big hump for the driveshaft.
FWD also offers more predictable handling (i.e. understeer or a tendency to push in a corner). Plus you typically get better traction in slick conditions.
Actually, FWD cars tend to have humps nearly as large as RWD cars. They use it for the exhaust pipe. The only car I know of that had a completely flat floor was the Tucker. The original Beetle might have been like that, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen one that I can remember. Hudson Hornets might have had a completely flat floor, but I’ve not seen one, so I don’t know. FWD tends to be slightly lighter, since you don’t have the weight of a driveshaft.
I said no “big hump”, not “no hump”.
I’ve owned FWD and RWD cars.
The humps in the RWD cars are a lot bigger than the FWD.
The RWD car humps have to accomodate the transmission so you lose a lot of front floor space compared to a FWD car.
This is 100% true. Look, very few serious "driver’s car"s come in front wheel drive. Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, BMW, Chevy Corvette, etc. If you value handling above all else, you go RWD or AWD.
If you value churning out tens of thousands of identical units for people that care more about price and interior room than handling (most people, and not that it’s wrong) you can make a perfectly fine car with FWD.
FWD’s primary advantages are in manufacturing cost savings due to easier “packaging” and interior room. Packaging-- installing the engine and transmission in one step on the assembly line is much cheaper than installing the engine seperately from the transmission, seperately from the drive shaft to the rear wheels, seperately from the rear differential and axles. Interior room-- no bulky tunnel in the floor to run the drive shaft through, as you would with RWD. This is significant, and the biggest reason for FWD’s popularity.
What is it about RWD that makes “serious” drivers tend to prefer it? FWD naturally tends toward “understeer” when you push it; RWD naturally tends toward “oversteer”. “Understeer” means, when you go fast into a turn, the front wheels break free and the car tends to plow straight. Going straight is not steering enough, thus understeer. “Oversteer” is the opposite-- when you go too fast in a turn, the rear wheels break free and the rear end starts to swing out. If you’re turning right and your rear end starts going left, now you’re pointing more to the right than you possibly intended; oversteer.
A trained driver can control oversteer more effectively than understeer, and in fact have fun with it. It’s possible to steer a RWD car in an oversteer situation using the throttle, believe it or not. (After all, the rear wheels broke free; the wheels you steer with still have traction.) An untrained driver confronted with oversteer will simply lose control and spin the car around.
A reasonably competent driver can recover from understeer, but probably as often as not, you just plow into the guard rail. That’s because the front wheels broke free-- you can’t steer and you can’t brake effectively. And, it doesn’t “feel” as good: you recovered, but there was nothing fun about that-- just a near miss.
Of course, most drivers take turns well within their car’s limits, and neither above scenario ever even presents itself. If you’re the typical owner of a 4-cylinder Camry with an automatic transmission, you likely have no idea what I’m talking about, and can’t imagine how anyone could ever enjoy driving fast in a corner. Well, that’s fine; you probably don’t need to worry about it anyway.
Well… no offense, but I’m not sure where you’re getting that from. I personally own a 220hp FWD car (Mazda6), and it’s certainly safe. You can buy a US spec Acura TL with 270hp, and it’s front wheel drive. Nissan makes at least two FWD models with well over 200hp. GM makes a 3.8 liter V6 with a supercharger that puts out 240hp, and is in several GM models.
I will agree with you, however, if what you really meant is “experts believe that FWD cars cannot handle as much power as RWD/AWD”. Torque steer comes up, and all that. (One way of avoiding torque steer is to mount the engine longitudinally-- then it’s easier to make equal shaft lengths to the front wheels… it helps…)
Anyway, FWD handling dynamics can be quite good. I’m sure plenty of people could post to this thread about front wheel drive cars with really good handling. I’d submit my Mazda6, and the now discontinued Mazda Protege (I never owned one, but had the opportunity to drive one hard. Very nice, esp. for only $14k!). But I think it’s telling that the highest complement the automotive press hands out to the Mazda6 on its handling is that “it feels like a BMW”-- A Rear Wheel Drive car.
Not really. I owned a Chevy Chevette which was RWD and a Dodge Omni which was FWD, both cars are nearly identical in size and the transmission hump in the Chevette was roughly the same size as the hump for the exhaust pipe in the Omni.
FWIW, the hump in my 1990 Pontiac Grand Am (FWD) is significantly larger than the hump in my 1969 Chrysler Newport. Reason being that the firewall is closer to both the engine and the passenger cabin in the Grand Am, whereas in the Chrysler, the firewall is significantly farther away from the passenger cabin, so most of the tranny hump is under the dash, and the drive tunnel is at about the same height as the one in the Grand Am. Also, the Grand Am is a unibody, so the frame and the body are essentially one and the same. The Chrysler is a body on frame design, so the body sits up higher than most unibodys and this enables the Chrysler to have a lower hump, since the exhaust pipe sits in the space created by the frame.
More than passenger room, once you tool up for it FWD cars are much easier (i.e. cheaper) to assemble. The engine, transaxle, drives shafts, CV joints, brakes, struts etc. can all be put together separately and then inserted into the car as a single unit.
Also (for better or worse) FWD makes small, lightweight, unibody (i.e. no frame rails) construction possible.
The '71-'78 Cadillac Eldorado was FWD and had a pretty flat floor.
Not seen the inside of one, so I don’t know. The floor of the Tucker’s completely flat, since with the rear engine, there was no need to run the exhuast pipe under the floor. AFAIK, the Tucker was the first American car that was a unibody on frame design.