JDR76

LOL...I was always pretty disappointed I couldn't burn out in my RX in the daycare parking lot picking up my kids...

Toys4RJill

Oh wow. I am so glad you posted that. It's one of the burning questions everyone seems to want an answer for.

Toys4RJill

Yeah so damn sad.

What I am amazed is that some individuals seem to always have to remind everyone that they won't but a FWD car and they have moved on to RWD. It seems like they are overcompensating for something. We get it. They don't like FWD Toyotas.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Оr maybe these individuals are just driving enthusiasts. Clearly, people that buy Lexus SUVs are not enthusiasts and are perfectly happy with stylish minivans.

mmarshall

Well, I had my fill of RWD cars long ago....even with electronic traction aids, I'm not impressed with them in the winter. I'll probably be FWD or AWD for the rest of my life.

SW17LS

Rear biased AWD is obviously a-okay for me, IMHO it's the best compromise. Great winter traction, and day to day has the RWD feel. I do want a longitudinal setup though vs a transverse setup.

mmarshall

I'll agree there, as long as you have the torque-vectoring available up front to help get you out of a jam. (here in the D.C. area,of course, it seems to be feast or famine with snow, with wildly varying amounts from one year to the next).

Too many people, though (and I know you're not one of them), think that AWD is invincible in the snow....or that they can't get stuck. Not so......it still has to be driven with common sense, though my former Outback, driven sensibly, would easily handle anything nature could throw at it. Little wonder it is the official car of the U.S. Ski Team.

EZZ

I completely disagree with you. Minivans are waaay more utilitarian and better

MattyG

Very true. You can have the most sophisticated RWD, double wishbone unequal length suspension with a north-south drive train and love every minute of it for most of the year. But in a deep winter, even with the best winter/snow tires - it will never match a FWD car or an AWD vehicle for day to day tasks.

Not necessarily. A premium RWD platform, properly engineered feels better in terms of ride and also handling. But I would say that a vehicle like say, the Mazda CX9 with its FWD biased transverse drive train does very well with its AWD tech. It's an ideal sporty vehicle for an all rounder. So the gap is closing with torsional stiffness and chassis engineering.

There is some wonderful tech that will make FWD vehicles more desireable even though the RWD platforms are better. That being said, who doesn't recall those snappy Acuras of the 1990's. Integras and then TL's and TSX's.

Och

iTrader: (3)

There isn't much difference between modern RWD vs FWD in snow provided they both equipped with similar set of tires. Of course with similar tires AWD will fare even better, except when it comes to braking - the added weight of AWD can actually make things worse.

That being said, I've never had a problem here in NE with RWD + snow tires, and what can possibly be more fun than doing some donuts in snow with RWD car?

mmarshall

I'll respect your view on that (and your experience)....but my experience, over the years, has been markedly different. All else equal (which, of course, it rarely is) FWD is clearly superior...and AWD much superior. Tires can also make a difference. I once had an old 80s vintage Mazda FWD with Michelin XZX tires, that had a rubber compound that was so hard it wore like a tank (I put nearly 100,000 miles on the rears....the fronts wore out at 80,000). Unbelievable durability.....but rain/snow traction was not impressive, even with FWD.

Weight is not necessarily an enemy of braking.......particularly on slippery surfaces, where, in many cases, the more weight you have pushing down on a tire, the more traction you will have.

MattyG

Absolutely, lol. My GS430 gets driven with a very reasonable attitude, and it happily dives into corners in a prairie winter and leaves most tailgating yahoos in their FWD vehicles ticked off running wide in a corner or their traction control system kicks in before mine does.

But I would still support a FWD platform for winter. I don't know how bad NY winters are but they can't be any worse than the worst prairie winters in Canada and northern Canada, which I've driven through in a wide variety of vehicles.

Experience is the best teacher

SW17LS

FWD vehicles are easier to get going from a stop in the snow, but actually can be far more dangerous to steer because your directional wheels and power wheels are the same. When you have a loss of steering traction, you have a loss of throttle traction and vice versa.

RWD with snow tires is actually much safer to drive in the snow.

Amd weight is is always the enemy of braking. Physics is physics.

Och

iTrader: (3)

mmarshall, I'm afraid your experience is a bit... outdated. Sure, early FWD vehicles were superior to older RWD cars in bad weather, but that doesn't apply to modern vehicles at all. In fact, with 50/50 weight distribution of many RWD cars, coupled with snow tires, stability control and e-lsd I trust them even more than FWD to be more stable on snowy roads.

On slippery road, the inertia of a heavy vehicle is going to compromise braking distance. There's a good reason why bigger, heavier vehicles have longer braking distances, no matter what type of surface.

mmarshall

Physics itself also says that, on a slippery surface, more weight on a tire, all else equal, means more traction.

Weight-transfer under heavy braking loads also comes into play. That is one reason why rear-engined Porsches have such short stopping distances. The forward weight-transfer under braking places the maximum weight near the center of the car, making all four tires do roughly an equal share of the braking load. In a FWD car, the rear wheels do very little of the braking.....and can fishtail easily on a slick surface if the brake-proportioning valve is not set up correctly.