so y don't they make cars RWD instead of FWD?

 

It all boils down to money. Cheap bastards. Cars with FWD cost less...Even though some of them are relatively expensive. For example, the new '02 ES300 (FWD) fully loaded costs about $38,000 which is nearly the same price as the GS300 (RWD)...go figure.

 

yah most likely the thing is money. I would say 90%. The other 10% could be that FWD cars are easier to manuver in daily-driving situations, so that's why most family sedans, even more upscale ones, are FWD (Avalon and 3.5 RL for example)

 

In rear wheel drive, when you lift off the throttle you DO have the same weight transfer, and engine braking to the rear wheels, but.. in All Wheel Drive you also have engine braking to the front wheels. There is lots of weight on the front tires at this point as well the engine braking effect is greater.

This means you have the same characteristics of RWD causing lift-off oversteer but also the added fact that the fronts want to slow down. This just encourages the rears to overtake them more!

Minor Reason (but still significant)

The AWD layout, will as standard favor understeer, so to engineer driveability into the car they have to tune the chassis for slightly more oversteer than you would need in RWD.
When AWD rally cars first came out, they were nearly absolute dogs to drive. You would squirt them up the straight (admittedly very quickly due to traction), then slow right down for the bends and doodle round (due to collosal understeer), then squirt up the straight again. They were SOOO fast up the straight, they could happily sacrifice the bends. This made the cars horrible to drive and took away a certain level of skill until everybody was in AWD and therefore on an equal footing.

 

Only part of the reason is cost. Admittedly a big part. Generally, you can make a car for less and sell it for less if it is designed as FWD. But FWD has other attractions to car mgfrs, primarily space. They don't have to find room for all those drivetrain components that go to the back of the car, which means more space inside the car can be used for people. Old American cars (and some newer ones that are still RWD) used to have this big hump in the middle of the floor that ran from front to back and took up a lot of floor space. It had to be there to make room for the transmission, and driveshaft. (The rear differential was back there, too, but was either stealing space from the trunk or was under the back seat.)

When a car called the Oldsmobile Toronado came out in (I think) 1967, it was FWD, which was essentially unheard of here in the US. The floor was absolutely flat and, especially in the front, produced what felt like an amazing amount of room. That, plus the fact that it was a big luxury yacht from GM's near luxury mfgr (Cadillac being the top of the heap then, to which Olds buyers could aspire), made it a sensation and they sold a buttload of 'em.

What you have to remember is that cars are just transportation to most folks. They want them to look good, ride smoothly and (sometimes) be "sporty". Even many of the real sports sedans are bought by people who want better build quality, luxury and/or a status symbol. The people who actually care how a car performs in terms of it's acceleration, braking, cornering and "feel" (beyond the minimum required to get them to work and home again), who actually go out for a drive to exercise their car's capabilities as opposed to watching the scenery, are far fewer. And include most of us here at CL. And on the BMW and Mercedes and Porsche boards. But for most people, FWD is fine. It gives them more room, a mechanically simpler (and therefore cheaper) car and it does the job.

Have we confused you or did all of this help somewhat??

 

I don't know about Jolee, but I'm confused

J/K Great explanations I might add...

 

i understood a few things... mainly about how fwd is generally cheaper than rwd. hahaha. =)

 

Except during repair time. CV joints and boots wear and will cost some $$ to fix. RWD, not much goes wrong with it. Change the oil in the rear end and the rear end should last a long time. Plus with RWD, you can get a limit slip differential. I am not FWD has that.

And swapping gears in rwd is a snap. Not sure about fwd.

 

no, No, NO!

FWD vehicles are less expensive for the manufacturers to build/assemble. That does not mean that they will sell them to you for less.

That will only happen if and when the general public becomes wise enough to truly understand the short-comings of FWD. Additionally those short-comings generally do not apply to anyone who drives in a reasonably warm climate year round.

Even some of the AWD vehicles, the RX300, the MDX, and the ML320 for instance, are predominantly FWD, most of the engine torque biased toward the front, Thus all of these vehicles are subject to the same wintertime driving problems as would be a normal FWD.

The BMW X5 is the only one, to my knowledge, of the "new" SUV AWD series that is truly biased toward RWD.