Article: FWD vs RWD vs AWD
 

Comparison between the three systems:

"There is an unending debate going on about the drive systems of the passenger cars. As you already know there are three types of the drive systems: front wheel drive, rear wheel drive and all wheel drive. In this article you can find the answers to common questions such as:

• Why most passenger cars build today have front wheel drive systems?
• Why most of the race cars are made with rear wheel drive layouts?
• If all wheel drive has so many advantages over two wheel drive systems why is it so rare?
"

read more HERE


Post comments either here or on the comments in the page

Wow.... So much misinformation, poor spelling, and even worse grammar.

You should write for Sport Compact National :knock_tee

Sorry, but I have to be blunt with this one. That article was awful. Next time do some research and use a spell checker.

scott

you read it already, its been 2 minutes... damn .... can you be more specific ?


[edit]
by the way, it was already spell checked.

It's such a pity that no 1920 Mini Coopers have survived. They would make such attractive museum pieces. Those Minis were so many decades ahead of their own time.

Breaking traction can be a very bad thing. It makes braking much harder to control.

yeah im gonna rephrase that part a little

You've never been out on a real race track, have you? I have. You would be amazed at how a fwd car can be set up to handle. On the race track, a fwd car can offer a lot of advantage over a rear wheel drive car when it comes to hard acceleration coming out of a corner.

What's that? A new type of olympic skating routine for cars?

article is writen by a friend of mine, he has been on a track, both his shelby turbo fwd and his friends rwd, from what i know formula 1 is RWD and they are the ultimate race track cars.

You should really try to include a picture of a 1920 Mini Cooper. I'm sure if you look hard enough you'll be able to find one on the web somewhere.

Oh? You mean you are speculating about the drivetrain layout of Formula 1 cars? You don't know for sure? :smilie_au

Shorter fron overhang? Or rear overhang?

And how does the current BMW Mini fit into this theory? It's got one huge overhang front and rear, right?

there was never a 1920 mini cooper, the guy was prolly thinkin of some other car, removed.

The reference to the 1920 Mini, or the whole article?

here it starts again, ing annoying already, we also mispelled breaking and wrote it as braking, dont forget to post about it too...

now, this is small or large overhang?

http://www.suburbanaccents.com/MINI%...EVEST-065f.jpg

i smell bullshit

That's pretty short overhang. Must be a rear-wheel drive car, right? :smilie_au

The article says that short overhang is a benefit of rear-wheel drive. Could you show us some more pictures of rear-wheel drive cars with even shorter overhangs than that car above?

We all know just how badly those Minis, new and old, with their overhags do at those tight parking lot slalom courses, right? :smilie_au

http://www.automotoresya.com/Imagene...%20328%20i.jpg

compare that to fwd cars.




they are easier to manouver on parkng lots because the front end is not as long in front of the wheels(turning circle you can call it), we are not talking about the mini specifically, did we mention the mini specifically in parking lots ? NO, then why do you mention mini in parking lots ? listen im going for a smoke. brb

Well, yes, you should.

The article needs work, a lot of work. As Scottyp says, it's full of disinformation, otherwise known as the bullshit you say you are smelling.

This particular article you pointed us to is not written from any basis of fact - it sounds more like it is a collection of stereotypes and personal biases gathered in various donut shop parking lots written up as fact, but fact it is not.

The "friend" who wrote the article should go hang out at a road course race track where real road racers, not street posers, hang out to get the real story about the handling characteristics and capabilities of different types of drivetrain layouts.

Send him out to Mosport on the April 30/May 1 weekend for the club racing on that weekend. A grand total of $15 will get him in for both days. For that money he will see a wide variety of different race cars with different drivetrain layouts. He can watch their handling characteristics as they run side by side around the road course through various types of corners, and get a much better picture of what is really happening. Also, the paddock is an open paddock, so he will be able to get a first-hand education from the drivers and builders themselves.

The beginning paragraph is repeated.

FWD Section

The CV joints are just integral parts of the CV Shaft.

That’s where the front biased weight distribution comes in handy. Since the constant velocity joints are transferring power to the front and the transmission and the engine are also located in the front. The vehicle has front biased weight distribution. Due to the presence of the constant velocity joints the vehicle is able to transfer power at different angels. Therefore aided by the weight bias the font wheel drive vehicle would provide better traction during the stop and go driving.

That part just doesn't make any sense (grammatically)

However I will point out that you guys failed to acknowledge that it is easier at the assembly stages of a unibody car to install a FWD drivetrain which would already be assembled with most of the front suspension. This lowers production costs.

The constant velocity joints are amazing devices and they do their job, but they increase the amount of work for the front wheels. Since the braking, acceleration and turning are accomplished by the same pair of wheels.

Since....? that second part isn't a complete sentence.

Continuing, there is an odd comparison of turning circles. This isn't really fair since there are a lot more factors than just engine configuration. There are longitudinally-mounted engines in FWD cars. A lot of this "limiting" is due to thrust angles and the outer CV joints.

RWD Section

That’s why the BMW sets a performance bench mark in several classes with its 50/50 weight distribution. Back to the rear wheel drive cornering, the RWD vehicle does not only over steer, but over steer on demand. When the driver needs to reduce the vehicle’s turning radius he can simply press the throttle pedal, and break the rear loose, which will start spinning towards the outside of a turn.

1) Most cars tend to understeer. This is usually exagerrated when you apply throttle mid-corner.
2) Not all cars are powerful enough to break the rear wheels loose with generous throttle applications.
3) Stop attending/watching drifting.

The overhangs, etc were already discussed in this thread.

AWD section

Although, we can see more and more car manufactures switching their drive train layouts to rear wheel drive or all wheel drive. Cars like Chrysler 300C and Ford had been using front wheel drive systems since late 1980s, and now they are all going back to the era of muscle cars and rear wheel drive.

The Chrysler 300C was designed originally to be a RWD car. Underneath its massive flanks lies the previous-generation E-class with a Hemi V8 up front. Ford on the other hand has ALWAYS had a rear-wheel-drive sedan with their Panther-Chassis cars. Either way, this doesn't adress the problems of FWD/RWD.

Well, here's another rear-wheel drive car. Does this constitute short overhangs compared to that fwd Mini or even a typical Honda coupe?

http://www.mustangphotos.com/photopo...500_21-med.jpg

Overhangs is not a function of front- or rear-wheel drive. It is an issue of packaging. If anything, front-wheel drive cars with their typically transverse-mounted engines offer a greater opportunity to more easily move engine and cooling accessory components further back in the car, but any vehicle of any drivetrain layout can be designed to minimize presence in front of the front wheels or behind the back wheels.

Also, overhang may be an issue in parking lots, but modest overhang has very little effect on handling unless you have a whole lot of lead suspended at the far edge of that hang-over.

how you can begin to explain the benefits of each layout without mentioning anything about slip angles is beyond me

Its funny how the points you said had no real basis(except the mini thing), and now that we are done with that, you change topic completley and start saying the article sounds biased, and how it comes from donut shops.

It seems like you have a problem with us rather than the stuff we are putting forth, the fact is that RWD is the #1 choice in most professional courses(exluding rally), F1, Nascar, GT all use RWD for good reasons, FWD cannot outperform those cars in tracks, please dont talk about parking lots, even there fwd cannot do the things rwd can.

Im not being biased, just stating the facts. And the fact is FWD is not build for high end performance.


[edit]

Try not to edit because then i have to go to back page and check if anything changed and , post in new post, its gonna be easier.

I don't have a problem with "us" except for the minsinformation that "us" is putting forward. It simply is not based on fact.

The F1 spec specifies RWD for reasons of consistency and tradition. So does NASCAR, plus for NASCAR there is no performance and handling advantage for FWD cars on simple ovals. It's not that RWD is "better", but that it is the rule, the teams and series admin are accustomed to it, and there is no compelling reason to go to a different drivetrain layout rule.

GT has both FWD and RWD cars. Rally-racing has FWD, RWD, and AWD classes. FWD can be bult to competitive high-end performance specs as proven by GT and rally racing.

And about parking lot racing, Minis RULED autocross for many years, with even unmodified Minis usually beating out most comers. For equivalent power-to-weight ratio cars, FWD does have an advantage in putting the power down and pulling around corners. Straight-line drag pulls may be a different story, but the driving environment for most of us is much different.

please dont talk to me about the mustang, personally I think its pretty looking garbage

OVERHANGS:
Ferrari:
http://www.powersys.com/auto_show200...Pic%203-pt.jpg

Carrera gt:
https://www.fast-autos.net/gallery/a...agt4.sized.jpg
https://www.fast-autos.net/gallery/a...agt5.sized.jpg

two companies who are extremley handling focused. RWD, short overhangs.

front wheel drive cars cant really do much about the accessories, to move all of those accessories back they would sacrifice too much in cramming everything... lets take the neon as an example:

[img][http://www.autoseekandsell.com/userimages/Picture%20021.JPG[/img]
pretty short overhand

and now lets look at the engine:
http://www.slateracing.com/assets/images/NeonEngine.jpg
you ever tried working on this engine ? its a ing nightmare, there is no ing room to do since they tried to cram everything a bit backwards.

Now you're confusing ease of working on an engine with performance capabilities. Apples and oranges.

Also, those "short" overhangs on teh cars you just presented are huge compared to the FWD mini. How do they further your hypothesis that RWD allows for shorter overhang? It sounds like you are speaking more personal bias than fact here sonny.

Okay, now you're getting into styling being a critical factor in a vehicle's dynamics. You have lost what little credibility you had before I read that horrid article.

Furthermore, you go as far as pointing out the difficulties of working on a neon's engine. Why didn't you post something simple like a Quad4, or a Honda D/B-series? That's the same as if I asked you to change the spark plugs on the Boxster or an F-body with the LT1. There are cars that are harder to work on. That has NOTHING to do with FWD or RWD.

These articles are filled with "false facts" that (as it was said before) add up to talk heard inside a Tim Hortons in Woodbridge.

they dont allow FWD cars in GTs:
http://www.world-challenge.com/carfacts.html
they only allow them in TC, which has a much lower power bracket, which proves again that FWD is no good on high end performance, any of the races can start allowing FWD but its pointless, how are you gonna put so much hp on the front wheels?

LOOK:

nobody said that FWD is bad period, its good for your family sedan, but its bad for hiigh end performance, thats the whole idea, you have to understand. i dont understand whats the argument about, if i would want to argue with you about which setup is better i would of made a thread about that.

:retard:

FWD more advantageous over RWD when accelerating out of a corner. You were joking right?

Styling.... the overhang of a vehicle is much more than the styling of a vehicle, think about where the subframe sits if the engine is in front of the wheels, the tranny, its all weight, companies dont just have big overhangs in fwd cars because it looks pretty, there is something there. And it adds up to weight.

Scott summed it up pretty well. That article is useless

HEHEHEHE i never noticed he posted that :smilie_au

Nope. Watch it on a race track, equivalent power to weight ratio cars.

And for real thrills, watch the two side by side on the race track in the wet.

I've got somewhere around a thousand days or more experience doing just that. DO YOU?

Not like the RWD Mini you showed us, right?

And as for styling, have you ever looked behind the shells of some cars? The 1980's Grand Prix and Cutless RWD cars have literally a foot of empty space between the radiator and the grill, all to help promote the long-nose short-deck styling on those cars.

Overhang is often just a matter of styling, trying to balance a car's looks or trying to make it look bigger than what it is. It has very little to do these days with FWD vs RWD drivetrain space requirements.

Canada's GT Touring Championship allows FWD cars. The Firehawk street-stock endurance series of a few years ago had everything under the sun. SCCA sports car racing classes permit FWD. The FWD classes in them are VERY competitive with the RWD cars.

To arbitrarily say that FWD doesn't make for good race cars is actually a rather ignorant statement that says more about what you don't know vs what you do know. Both have their advantages in a race car. If you had any exposure to real sports car racing, you would know that, but there is precious little real sports car racing going on down at Timmies.

You did a great job of proving my point for me.

In terms of traction:

RWD>>>>FWD

Now which car will exhibit less slippage particularly in the wet, the RWD car of course. Under acceleration weight shifts to the rear.

Additionally when people talk about the handling characteristics of 911's, notice how often you hear "slow in, fast out" when referring to how to go through curves?

You are thinking huge cars that are not performance oriented, the article is performance oriented, why are we talking 1980s grand prix and cutless ? those cars were just stupid big boxes,


ok im sick of arguing with you, here is an article i found by BMW:

http://www.corollaperformance.com/TechInfo/RWD.html

have fun.

How about the Buick Grand National and the fact that the 80's G-bodies were actually quite similar to their NASCAR counterparts.

Under heavy acceleration in the wet, the RWD car is much more prone to spinning out with little chance of recovery.

Porsche 911s are a completely different animal in that they are not the traditional front-engine rear-drive of other cars, so their handling characteristics are quite different too.

I don't know if you have ever driven one, but I have. Unlike most cars, they are particularly susceptible to snap-spins if you come into a corner fast and lift throttle while in it. Slow-in fast-out for a Porsche is a matter of vehicular survival forced upon you by the handling dynamics of the car, which when compared to many other cars are actually quite atrocious and very unforgiving. There is no warning provided by a 911 before spinning, it just goes on you.

the nascar counterparts dont weight the same as the old grand nationals, those cars are not really the cars they "represent" anymore, its just the fiberglass.

Yes, and in that article...