On a related note, why did companies go with FWD instead of mid-engine RWD? Mid-engine cars have the best handling and forward traction of any powertrain configuration (except maybe all-wheel drive in the case of forward traction, but it has more drivetrain loss). Mid-engine cars have more tendency to oversteer which obviously isn’t good for your typical driver, but for high-performance cars, mid-engine would be preferred. Okay, maybe the question should be why front-engine RWD instead of mid-engine RWD? The Fiero is the only mass-produced American mid-engine RWD car I am aware of. If I could get my hands on such a car with a V-8, I would be in bliss.
It may be closer to the left but there’s a shaft going to the other side as well.
There is no production car which is driven by only one wheel.
Rico, the Cord’s a beauty, that’s for sure, though I prefer the convertable version.
snailboy, you do know that the Fieros have the annoying habit of bursting into flames, don’t you? Oh, and if you really like risking death, they do make kits so that you can drop a 350 into one. The reason that they don’t build mid-engined cars is that they’re not exactly practical for anything other than sports cars. How, exactly, would you build a 4 door sedan with a mid-engine? I can’t imagine one with an engine that would be easy to service, not to mention keeping the passenger cabin cool.
Well that’s what I was talking about, putting it in sports cars. I can’t imagine why cars such as Mustangs and Corvettes are front-engine. Corvettes don’t even have back seats! Neither do Vipers. If I pay over $80,000 for a performance car, it should be mid-engine.
Actually, it’s pretty simple: cost. If you’ll notice, most of the really expensive components to design and manufacture that are used in sports cars, like the engines and transmissions, eventually find their way into some other vehicle in the company’s product line. A detuned version of the Viper engine is used in Dodge pick ups, Trans Ams have used modified 'Vette engines, IIRC, and the 'Vette trannys have been used in slightly modified form in some of GMs light trucks, I believe. It’s simply too expensive to have a single vehicle use high dollar dedicated components. If they’re not spread along the vehicle line, you’re going to have an insanely expensive vehicle (though, now that I think about it, the new Cadillac sports car might be mid-engined), and if the carmakers don’t think that there’s much of a demand for such a thing, they’re not going to be willing to risk the necessary capital to build such a vehicle. Note that it can cost car makers as much as a billion dollars to design and produce a new model car.
Also, given the litigation happy environment of society these days, it’s likely that someone would try to sue an automaker over an accident, saying it was caused by the mid-engine placement. Mind you, they’d most likely lose, but still companies are gunshy when it comes to lawsuits these days.
That’s true to an extent, though I would think that would be more reason to make a mid-engine car. I mean the powertrain is basically the same as a FWD car, just on the other end of the car, right? Well there are certainly some FWD Cadillacs out there with some powerful V-8 engines. I believe there’s a Lincoln as well. I don’t think the Lincoln engine is as powerful, but it would be easy to get more power out of it. So why not build a new chassis and move the whole drivetrain to the back? Why didn’t Chevy make the Corvette C6 mid-engine and put the FWD Cadillac drivetrain in it? I still don’t get it.
With the stability assist on, I can accelerate very aggressively while cornering, and the car will handle very well. I have driven two BMW rear wheel drive vehicles (both for several months) that did not handle as well as mine, including a 1997 540i.
Regardless, the point I was addressing was your assertion that “[t]he 200hp FWD limit is a number you’ll hear very frequently.” I have never heard of any 200 hp “limit” on front wheel drive vehicles, and I’ve been an avid car fanatic for 25 years.
With a RWD car, the driver can modulate the power to make the car track straight in a curve. As someone else said, FWD cars tend to ‘understeer’. You’ve probably felt this if you have an average (non-sports car) FWD car. Take a curve at a higher than normal speed, and the car will feel like it wants to ‘plow’ out towards the outside front tire. That’s understeer.
A Rear-wheel drive car can be tuned so that it has mild understeer when pushed to its limits, but with an excess of power you can use the throttle to induce oversteer from the back wheels (the feeling that the car wants to swap ends or pull to the outside back tire is oversteer). By using the gas pedal properly, you can correct for the understeer and get the car tracking smoothly. In a FWD car, adding power just makes it understeer worse.
RWD cars are much more satisfying to drive. Even at low speeds, using a little extra throttle to push the car around a corner makes for a more enjoyable driving experience. We’re not talking about driving like an idiot here, just judicious use of the gas pedal to help the car move around curves. That’s one reason why enthusiasts like RWD.
Also, it can be harder to get sensitive, precise steering feel in a FWD car, simply because there’s so much junk attached to the front wheels and the torque steer problems other people have mentioned. On poorly done FWD cars, you can feel the power pulses from the engine through the steering wheel, which is unpleasant.
Another factor: RWD cars tend to have better front-back weight distribution, because they have the heavy engine in front, transmission in the middle, and differential in the back. In an RWD car, all this hardware is squished up towards the front of the vehicle.
The big problem with RWD comes in inclement weather - rain and snow. The combination of rear wheel drive wanting to cause the car to swap ends when the tires break loose, and less weight over the drive wheels, makes the car squirrely to handle in snow and rain. One of the reasons RWD is making a big comeback now is the availability of electronic stability and traction control systems. Now the car can sense when the rear wheels are breaking free and modulate the throttle to prevent it. This makes RWD cars safer to drive in bad weather, while retaining the good handling characteristics of RWD.
So… If you need an all-weather commuter car that drives well in snow, and which is never pushed to its handling limits, FWD is a good choice. If you want a performance car, RWD is generally superior.
But best of all is a performance-turned all-wheel-drive system. The Subaru WRX STi has an AWD system that is biased towards the rear wheels normally (60% of the power going to the rear wheels), which gives you the feel and controllability of a RWD car. But with AWD, it’s far superior to RWD and FWD for traction and ice/snow/rain performance. Plus, for a performance car you don’t lose power to wheelspin, which means AWD cars can turn in stupendous off the line acceleration.
I’ve read reports saying that within 5-10 years, the majority of cars sold in North America will be AWD. Already there are a number of them - the Ford 500, Every Subaru and Audi, the Infiniti G-35x, next year’s Chrysler 300, and others.
The drawbacks to AWD are increased weight, increased drivetrain friction leading to slightly reduced mileage, increased maintenance costs, and higher initial cost. But these disadvantages are fading as the systems get more sophisticated.
May I ask what car you drive, Cerowyn? And what was the other BMW–have you driven a 3-series?
I too am curious about those FWD CORDs from the 1930’s-bear in mind these cars weighed upwards of 2 tons, and this was before power steering. Also (correct me if I’m wrong) the constant-velocity universal joints (Rzeppa Type) that are used on all FWD cars today werenot available then-so CORD used the old fashioned cardan-type joints-which cause the wheels to turn at varying velocities (the effect gets worse as the steering angle increases!). No, I don’t think those old Cords were much fun to drive! Maybe ok on a straight highway, but parking those cars probably rewquired the strength of an orangutan! 
The transaxle in a mid-engined car is not basically the same as that in a FWD car, not if you’re going to be slapping a very high performance engine in it. For one thing, the joints are different, (unless, of course, you’re going to put rear wheel steering on the car as well as front wheel steering, and there’s not much demand for that at the moment), there’s also the mount points for the suspension, which are going to be different. Then, once you get all the headaches of figuring out how to squeeze the thing in there (and there’s more to it than what I mentioned), you’re going to have to tune the suspension so that the car handles in the correct manner, and while some of that can be calculated before hand, the fine tuning is going to have to take place in an actual vehicle. All of this costs money, lots of money, and it’s for a vehicle which no one thinks that there’s much of a market for. After all, Porsche, Ferrari, and Lamborghini (the only car makers I can think of which have mid-engined models, I’m sure there are others, though) probably sell less than 100,000 models combined.
That means, if you’re going to produce a mid-engined, high performance sports car, you’re going to have to find a way to position yourself so that you take buyers away from those guys. This, of course, will cost money, lots of money, and if you’re going to be converting a well-loved make like the Corvette over to mid-engine configuration, you can expect to lose a lot of your core customers. Thus, you’ve just eroded your market base. Not a good way to make a profit. Plus, many engineers are a conservative lot, at least when it comes to designing things, so if they don’t have experience with something, they’re not likely to take it on.
A few bits:
Thanks to Rick for putting people straight on torque steer.
Not every Audi is AWD. Quattro does not come on every car they make.
In trucks that switch between 2 and 4WD, the 2 is a RWD configuration, not a FWD one.
I don’t believe that on auto setting, the DCCD in a Subaru WRX STi is 40/60 FR. I think it’s 50/50. The DCCD can be manually set to up to 35/65, though, I think. I believe ALTESSA-ETA on Nissans is more rear-biased, though.
Cerowyn, if you think your FWD car handles better than a 540i, either your car is a Mini Cooper, an Integra Type R or you don’t know how to tell the difference between good handling and not-as-good handling.
I have two FWDs, two AWDs, a RWD sports sedan, and a RWD rally car. DantesTenth, if you’ve never broken the front tires free (well, one of them) on your car, it’s because you don’t have enough power to do so, or you aren’t driving as aggressively as you think you are. And while AWD is far superior in the dirt, I really like RWD for the rally car. Lots of fun. 