A potential conflict of interest that Car and Driver has acknowledged and taken a pointed stance against.
Have you actually read Car and Driver, or just decided that they’re guilty of this because you figure they must be?
With a RWD car you can use engine compression (down shifting) to force the rear wheels to brake while leaving your front wheels free for turning (as in no braking on the front wheels means no traction is being used to slow the car and all traction is free to turn the car instead) This feature alone is a huge improvement over the standard FWD set up where you have 70% of braking done with the front wheels, 100% of the acceleration with the front and most of the cornering also with the front.
Taken to its extreme, something like this (YouTube video).
In the late 60’s and early 70’s there was a lot of experimentation with all wheel drive in Formula 1. It seemed to offer advantages, but in practice drivers always ended up with the torque split as far to the rear wheels as possible. I’ve read that RWD gave them more independent control over the two ends of the car, throttle managing the rear, brake managing the front.
It’s worth noting that, for example, C&D have given poor reviews of GM cars on many occasions, yet Chevrolet is still one of their largest advertisers (to be fair, they’ve also lauded other GM cars; e.g. Corvette C6, but they will be extremely critical when it is warranted). They’ve even criticized recent model BMWs.
Just to keep it basic and simple without all the technical gearhead jargon.
When your really on it if something bad happens you wanna get hit in the face understeer typical fwd. Or hit in the backsided typical oversteer rwd ?
Just adding a personal view. I’m pretty much a RWD driver, I really don’t like FWD, not for any good reason, but I never feel as at home with a FWD car. I drove a Mazda Miata for nearly two decades, and switched to a Lexus IS, picking it over the competition in part because it is RWD. Now to be fair, most of the time one would be hard pressed to really come up with a cogent reason for the preference. Modern FWD cars drive well, but they don’t drive quite the same. The reasons cited above are a good part of it - torque steer is probably the most easy to feel. Driving a FWD car for a while and you do tend to get used to it, but jump from a RWD car and it is obvious. Not always in any bad way, but it is always there, just slightly altering the feel. I’m not in any way a “spirited” driver. That was a long time ago, and curiously I probably did my worst in a FWD turbo charged pocket rocket of the time. Turbo lag, torque steer and a not exactly rigid chassis made for fun if not exactly precision driving.
I think there are a range of other concomitant reasons that come into play. As has been mentioned, the space restrictions often force compromises in the suspension geometry. Another thing is that the unsprung mass of the front wheels is higher. The additional mess of actually driving through the same wheels as you steer with only makes things harder. Sure driving through the rears means they add unsprung mass, but they don’t need CV joints or more complex and larger bearing housings and the like. Unsprung mass is difficult to disguise, especially down here in Oz where the roads are anything but smooth.
Maybe it is just me, but I always a feel where the power is going when I’m driving, and I feel things differently in FWD cars.
I was slightly surprised when a friend of mine bought a new car recently, swapping from RWD to a new Golf. She was mostly happy with the new car, but did not like the feel of the FWD. She had a lifetime of RWD cars, and instantly noticed the different feel.
A longitudinal-crank engine, whether FWD or RWD, requires a right-angle drive somewhere along the way (typically integrated into the differential unit). a right-angle drive typically uses hypoid or spiral gearsets, which are less efficient than coplanar helical/spur gearsets you find in the diff on a transverse-mounted engine, FWD car.
IOW, a longitudinally-mounted engine necessarily results in a fuel economy penalty.
I have no idea, is this supposed to be simple & obvious?
What he’s getting at is that if you’re in a turn and you stomp on the gas to the point of losing traction, FWD and RWD cars behave very differently.
in a FWD car, the front end slides toward the outside of the turn; if you hit a stationary object (e.g. a tree), you’ll be pointing more or less straight at it. Your airbags and seatbelt can do a good job of protecting you.
In a RWD car, the rear end slides toward the outside of the turn; if you hit a stationary object (e.g. tree), you’ll be coming at it sideways. Your airbag and seatbelt are poorly positioned to protect you from the impact. Side airbags help, but even in late-model cars, a side impact is more likely to be injurious than a comparably violent frontal impact.
Moreover, a FWD car usually recovers nicely from a power skid just by taking your foot off of the accelerator. In a RWD car, depending on how far the back end has stepped out, taking your foot off of the gas may not be enough to recover; you may also need to apply prompt and aggressive steering inputs, lest you end up spinning the car a full 180 degrees.
To clarify some misconceptions, there are two types of oversteer - lift throttle oversteer and giant smokey powerslides. Let’s exclude giant smokey powerslides because most people don’t do them, and they’re not a factor in most accidents.
Lift throttle oversteer happens when corning at the limit of adhesion. The driver pulls back on the accelerator, which causes the weight of the vehicle to shift forward slightly. The rear tires, which were already at their limit, break loose and the car swings around.
This is a good thing on a racetrack, because it allows the driver to adjust the angle of the car mid-corner with the throttle as opposed to the steering wheel, which uses the front tires to scrub off speed, both slowing the car and overheating the tires. (It can also a bad thing on the racetrack because if you blow a corner, there’s often not enough pavement to resolve the situation. That said, drivers prefer a car that’s “loose,” that is, a car that exhibits a fair amount of lift throttle oversteer.)
The corrective action for all lift-throttle oversteer, regardless of drive wheels, is countersteer and apply throttle. Always. In a FWD car this is nice, because you can be a brute. If you’re starting to spin, you mash the throttle down and the front wheels pull the car straight. In a RWD car, it’s trickier. You need to apply throttle, but too much throttle will break traction on the rear wheels (again), and now you’re doing a big smokey powerslide. The corrective action to that is to reduce the throttle input, but not so much that you get back into a lift-throttle oversteer situation. It’s a fine balance. FWD is undeniable easier to drive in this regard.
On the street, though, most people don’t drive at the limit of adhesion. In fact, the only time the tires are stressed to that point is in an emergency, panic situation. And, unfortunately, what do people do when they panic mid-corner? They lift off the gas. Boom, oversteer.
Because of this, all cars, FWD and RWD alike, are tuned from the factory to favor understeer. You can lift throttle all you want and the car will still go straight. If you don’t want to go straight, tough cookies, because it’s safer if you hit the tree head on than sideways.
Interesting point. How much loss of efficiency are we talking about here compared with other frictional (I assume it’s frictional) losses in the drivetrain?
Yes I was trying to answer the question very simply. Through a corner you can feel the back slip through your butt. With a fwd car you tend to feel it push or understeer towards the edge of the road or the tree thats two feet past the apex of the corner. Unless you lift off the pedal:)
No, with all cars you’ll feel understeer, unless you’ve done suspension work to eliminate it. It’s not a FWD thing, and the whole “FWD cars understeer” is a myth. It may have been true in the era of “Unsafe at any Speed” Corvairs and bias ply tires, but I assure you, a stock 335i will understeer at the limit unless you do a power slide.
I damn near wrecked my wife’s SRT-4 the first time I drove it because of this. I got on the gas a bit pulling from a stop sign and making a right turn and the turbo kicked in about halfway through. I wasn’t ready for the sudden surge of power and the car lurched really hard for the right curb–it pulled on the steering wheel so hard I almost lost my grip. Barely recovered from that one. Curious, I launched it from a stoplight, this time going straight, and again when the turbo kicked on I had to counter steer just to go straight. I don’t drive it anymore–hate that car. Front wheels are for steering, back wheels are for pushing.
Also I find a tighter turn radius, generally, in a RWD. Although I have seen FWD with pretty aggressive turn radius (my gutless 92 VW Golf can almost rearend itself).
Just trying to keep it basic in terms of characteristics. Not in terms of making it bend and twist to do what I want it to do.
Sure you can spend lots of money to purchase or build a front wheel drive car that eliminates most of the bad tendencies of FWD, but the fact remains that in a comparison of FWD and RWD similarly equipped cars, the RWD is the better handling car.
One simple fact that FWD cannot overcome. In a FWD car, you are asking the front tires to do EVERYTHING. In a FWD, the front tires are providing the power to the ground, while also doing all of the steering, and providing almost all of the braking force. The rear tires are mostly just there to hold the rear end off the ground.
My wife has a Civic Hybid. Fine car. Nothing wrong with it for what it is, a commuter appliance.
My “fun” car is a rear wheel drive/mid-engine.
If you’re comparing that to the SRT-4, don’t. The Neon (and PT Cruiser) had a disgustingly large turn radius.
This. When I lived in MI, there were several corners on my drive home, residential streets that tended to ice up with black ice. I enjoyed making a habit of breaking into a bit of a slide around those corners. If the ice wasn’t there, well, no worries, I didn’t slide. If it was there, I’d slide, but never accidentally or too far. OF COURSE the real reason I did this was NOT because it was fun. It was for safety!
For slow acceleration, yes. For fast acceleration, you need traction in the rear: thus the shape of the “rail” speed cars.
More importantly, the ability to TURN THE WHEELS! I remember the first time I saw this in action, in Cleveland, in about 1’ of snow. The guy driving had a Toronado. I thought there was no way this hog of a car would make it through the snow, but the driver (who happened to work for the city driving snowplows) made short work of it, turning the wheels as needed to get out of ruts and keep moving. In deep snow, front wheel is the best. But on slick roads, RWD is better.
The other advantage to RWD is the ability to downshift or engine brake when on very slippery roads, to avoid the front wheels breaking loose and spinning. These days, with ABS, it’s less of an issue. I’m happy with FWD on my macho minivan.
Yes, it does, though more for the average driver than the enthusiast, which is why it’s perfectly suitable for the average car.
When you take a turn too fast, what is your first instinct? If you’re an average driver, you turn the wheel more in the direction you want to turn. The tires squeal, the car “pushes” to the outside of the turn, but you make the turn. That is textbook understeer, and engineers have intentionally designed cars to do that for a very long time. It’s an instinctive reaction, and the engineering plays right into that.
Take the average schmoe and put him in a rear-wheel drive car in the same situation, and do the same thing. As the back end comes around you then have to countersteer, meaning you have to turn the wheels in the direction opposite the turn. That is oversteer. Oversteer is great for enthusiasts because sliding the back end is a desirable trait, but for mom and her three kids it’s no so much fun when she doesn’t countersteer properly and backs her car into a tree.
If you wish to read more about this, I present chapter 1 of Unsafe At Any Speed: "The Sporty Corvair: The “One-Car” Accident, with the caveat that the Corvair wasn’t any less safe than other rear-engined cars of its era (like the Beetle or the Porsche 356), but due to its rear-engined engineering it was far more prone to “snap oversteer”, which is creeping death for the average driver.