Monday, February 24, 2014

Is a front-wheel drive car considered a true sports car?




z4d


Title says it all.


Answer
FWD sports car?!?! Not in my world.

Firstly, you can't effectively put more than 300 or so horsepower through a FWD car or you start to run into problems.

Second, it's difficult to hang out the rear end of a FWD car. They just want to under-steer themselves into the bush or worse.

Thank you; but I prefer the steering at one end of the car and the driving wheels at the other end.

Are front wheel sports cars more fun to drive than rear wheel drive sports cars?




Jeffersons


Yeah, but the take off in a front wheel sports car is like getting on a roller coaster. You can feel that pull.


Answer
First, there have been very (very!) few FWD cars where you could even have a debate about "is it a sports car." So in order to have this question in the first place you would have to assume the existance of the FWD sports car. There are certainly some possible examples and pretenders, but real sports cars?

Let's pass on that for a moment and look at why sports cars bypass FWD: sports cars are, by definition, about sport, And motorsport is about performance. From an engineering perspective there is one reason and one reason only to make a car FWD - and that is, assuming the engine is in the front of the car, it is much cheaper to make it FWD. Every other reason about drive wheels are reasons not to have FWD (though, you can almost make an argument that FWD is more forgiving of panic induced resonses by unskilled drivers... so maybe two reasons for FWD if you include that).

The more you accelerate in a FWD car the less grip you have to your drive wheels. Given limits of grip and what a tire can do, you will experience understeer on corner exit when applying the power. These two issues alone mean that FWD is simply slower than other configurations... and as for pulling? I suppose if you were to add a bunch of trailers behind it that it would be somewhat similar experience to a rollercoaster, but still not really.

So, with all of that said: while you can find a particular FWD car that might be "more fun" than certain RWD cars, as a generalization, the gap between them is so great it's simple to just say "no, FWD 'sports' cars are not more fun than RWD sports cars." I've had fun driving a number of Mini Coopers before, and think Mazda has some decent FWD packages out there (though again, not sure any of these are actually sports cars)... but compared to a Porsche 911? A Ferrari 430 Scud? Not close. But you don't even have to go to those exptremes, they do not measure up to a Mazda Miata.

So again, in short: No.




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