Front-wheel drive rules! Tell Me I'm Wrong
Forget your 'wrong wheel drive' prejudice - done right a driven front axle can match a rear one for fun
Or would it just be better back to front? Discuss
The reason? Lurking in that nose and tasked with putting 270 turbocharged horses - and more importantly, 243lb ft of torque - to the road is a Torsen limited-slip diff. Testing out just how much grip there was on offer (or not as the case may be, thanks in this case to plenty of rain and new Tarmac), and what a proper mechanical diff can do to a car's dynamics, the conditions were perfect.
Back to front
Coming from rear-driven machinery, it's quite surprising how much you have to adjust your driving style - never has slow in, fast out been more appropriate. The diff won't help you if you go in too hot, so be sensible with entry speed then nail the gas to get the diff locked up and find the traction. When you get it right it really is arm-round-a-lamppost stuff. And, more importantly, it's massive fun.
Original GP Mini was a diff-equipped hoot
Hook-up
It's not just the RCZ R that can cause an involuntary upward curling movement at the corners of your mouth either. The Mk1 MINI Works GP was exactly the same. And the Renaultsport Megane R26.R.
In fact, I had a similar experience a few years back in the roll-caged Megane. This time it was a boiling hot day at a billiard table-flat Bedford Autodrome, with super-sticky Toyo R888s doing their best to battle physics. The end result was the same. Just like the Peugeot, you can drive it neatly and tidily and carry plenty of speed, or you can hoon around like you're wearing incendiary undercrackers. You'll still have a great laugh.
FWD cars? Yeah, boring, all of them...
Electronic systems are getting better too. I'd always opt for a proper diff in the driveline, but increasingly ECU-based traction systems acting on the brakes are helping front-wheel drive hot hatches find grip and not destroy joy (there's a marketing slogan in there somewhere...). Take the Ford Fiesta ST's black magic understeer control.
It possesses an uncanny ability to find traction given the hardware it's packing, and even if for a fleeting moment you can feel it's holding you back marginally rather than working with you, it's not at the expense of entering a fast right, rear wheel in the air and totally broadside. How is that not fun?
Is it more so than in a rear-wheel drive car, though? Well, that's not really the point. The issue is that it's fun in a completely different way; it takes a totally different style of driving to extract the best lap time and/or the maximum amount of entertainment from a front-driver like any of the cars mentioned above. We're PHers. These challenges are what we live for, no?
Tell me I'm wrong...
te bumpy rough and oily roads should maybe be the better option although of course 4WD is fine but even then a lot of the time that is not exactly needed. "The issue is that it's fun in a completely different way"
Whilst I can have loads of fun in a front wheel drive car, I prefer the fun of a rear wheel drive car.
Joe
I agree that you can have a different type of fun in FWD, so far the most fun I have had in a car was in a FWD one (more due to lack of experience and talent). RWD simply offers a purer experience - steering feel is uncorrupted, you can change the direction of the car with the steering wheel OR throttle and you can whip the tail out more controllably.
I see FWD as White Lightning or Buckfast, RWD as a Château Haut-Brion or a 30 year old Bowmore single malt.
Both get you pissed but I know what I'd enjoy more!
You're wrong......you can get the arse out on a FWD but it's a lot harder to do, you can't do a long smoky drift, it's a lot more difficult to steer using the accelerator pedal, understeer everywhere without clever drivers aids if you push too hard. I'm not saying you can't have fun in a FWD but it's too much like hard work.
For the most part they would be anything with an LSD.
And therein lies the main issue; there simply isn't the money for car manufacturers to add a diff to their mass-market FWD cars. 99.9% of people don't care for one, and probably 80% of people wouldn't even know the difference one makes.
So, what you're left with is that those FWD cars which are good to drive - and there are plenty - are relatively specialist in nature, and almost certainly likely to be at the top of the range.
There is also little doubt that a RWD is more entertaining due to the inherent - and not embellished (i.e. LSD) - dynamics. You can have a brilliant time in a bog standard BMW 316 whereas you'd struggle to level the same argument against the equivalent model in any car that uses FWD as its drivetrain platform.
Yes, some cars drive better than others with FWD. Step forward Ford. But, for pure driving enjoyment, with no drivetrain or chassis tweaks allowed, RWD will always win.
As has also been alluded to above, there is also a reason why RWD flourishes in motorsport. But that's a different argument.
Depends what you want really... I'm still after an Exige/Elise, but not because of the driveline configuration - because i love the idea of something light, fast and able to have fun in at normal speeds. Modern cars are always heavy, regardless of driveline.
I've kept my Mk2 RS for 4 years so far - normally I've changed every year. Goes to show how much i rate it considering i do around 3-4 track days a year AND its my daily driver. I've been to track days with PHers, in their E46s stripped out and ready to race and simply overtaken as they've disappeared up their own ass in a spin on a damp or wet track... Does that make me less of a driver because i don't spin on a greasy surface as readily? Does it make it any less fun?
Always going to be a hot topic on here - it seems PH has lost the art of attracting petrol heads - instead attracting individuals who take Jeremy Clarkson at face value and become a walking idiot, spewing hate speeches for drivelines they often have no real world experience of (especially a well sorted steer) and being entirely unpetrolheaded.
The vast majority of RWD cars have rubbish feeling steering, but in my experience all FWD cars do (and yes, I've driven things like Integras and Minis).
Very different but both fun, but my preference is RWD, from a mid engine, the balance is in the weight bias.
In terms of fun, I'd rank it perhaps third most fun on the day - drifting Caterhams (which never stops being big, big fun), just pipping it to second, being the singleseater.
That and the XKR, which surprised most of us by being far more fun than the "old man's GT" ought to have been, was the lesson for the day - make your own opinions and don't judge.
A fellow TVR nut had a hot Clio as his 'sensible' car and reckoned that on quite a few roads, in British weather, the TVR would not see which way it went (and I don't mean understeer followed by being hidden in a ditch or embedded into a hedge) and that pretty much sums it up.
Both have their merits but one you can attack the road with, one you enjoy the road!
All depends on what the car is built for. I agree RWD is the better in two exact cars but that doesn't mean it's any less fun to throw around.
My next car will be RWD though :-)
Try hanging the arse out on a 114i and tell me how you get on.
My old Integra Type R had a very mobile rear axle. All it needed was a gentle lift or a dab of brakes with some lock on and it would start to move.
Neither is more fun than anything else, they're just different. Hard to argue that FWD is a compromise though, brought about solely to increase cabin space. But then, it's not like one particular very well known sports car manufacturer haven't spent years optimising a seemingly unfavourable drivetrain layout is it?
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