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Why FWD? 850 1995

for the masses, fwd is easier to drive than rwd (imho) as there really isn't power inducing oversteer and understeer is inherent. torque steer is a big problem with high powered fwd (none obviously for rwd). about the only car manufacturer that has no torque steer whatsoever is cadillac, drove my father's 93 sts, probably because it's so heavy. (apparently alfa romeo has a good setup too, but i haven't tried it as they're not back in u.s. yet.) even though there is more inherently more weight up front on most production cars (exclude mid-engine), it's also true that when accelerating, the weight of car shifts to the back, so the front end lifts and u lose traction; hence some say u put 200lb bag of sand in the back of trunk of a rwd and also that rwd hardly ever get stuck or start slipping in snow/ice...my 850 went slipping up this slight incline on a sideroad in tahoe once. it was a stop sign and i stopped incorrectly near the top while it was still an incline...even had snow tires, tracs, and winter mode (3rd gear start), i still slipped backward...abs/tracs went off like crazy. in any case, you don't have to put the extra weight of drive-shafts in the back of the car and the rear suspension can be relatively simple...the camry (at least the 94 model) has a simple lower arm and two tiny links one in front of the arm and in the back of the arm. that's it.






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New Why FWD? [850]
posted by  Andrew Woods  on Mon Feb 4 12:58 CST 2002 >
  • New Why FWD? [850]
    posted by  davidm subscriber  on Mon Feb 4 13:48 CST 2002 >


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