GreyHound

iTrader: (1)

Hey Guys : just a quick question. Is the new ES350, Rear wheel drive?
I just wanted to know if they had changed it from the previous ES.
Thanks !

ng123ray

the new ES350 is Front wheel drive.

PureDrifter

iTrader: (10)

ALL ES's are FWD as they share the same basic chassis as the Toyota Avalon and Camry.

GreyHound

iTrader: (1)

Cool, I appreciate it. Didn't know it shared a platform with the Avalon. Learn something new everyday .

PureDrifter

iTrader: (10)

well, the Avalon used a modified Camry chassis up until ~2005 after which it was on its own chassis.

so basically the ES shared a platform with the Camry and Avalon up until 2005. After 2005 it only shared its platform with the Camry.

Threxx

The 05 Avalon is still on an extended version of the 07 Camry/ES chasis, though in this case you might actually say that the Camry uses a shorted Avalon chassis since the Avalon came out with Toyota's newest chassis first. The RX and highlander still use the previous gen chassis but will be moving to the new version when they get their all new design in 08.

Chassis sharing for cars of a simular nature isn't as bad as everyone acts like - especially these days. It helps cut design and tooling costs which allows them to focus that money somewhere else that's more important.

You'd be blown away if you realized that Nissan/Infinity creates almost every single one of their unibody cars and SUVs from one of two chassis designs... one that's front wheel drive and one that's rear wheel drive. They're modded in terms of dimensions quite a bit from application to application and some use more bracing that others - but the basic design still applies.

It's really kind of neat because dimension modification of an existing chassis was something that wasn't even possible 15 years ago and now almost every manufacturer does it to some extent or another.