Now you see, it IS true. Not a single car on that list wouldn't handle better as a RWD car.
FWD cars are an abomination and any enthusiast should recognize that. They are fine for your granny to get her milk in, but as a performance car? No way!
Talking about "great FWD" is basically a European sop for "our governments hate us, they penalize us for even having cars, so we'll pretend these little FWD toys are cool."
You can get back to me when Ferrari builds a FWD car.
Steve
Go and drive a Honda DC2 Integra Type R, a Renaultsport Clio 182 Trophy or an original Mini Cooper and then say that again. I'll happily provide some bbq sauce for you so the text is a little more paletable.
I know you live in the States where they like to convince you that RWD=Good handling but then it's not surprising as it's about the only half decent feature when the vehicle being propelled weighs two tonnes, has 100bhp and suspension from a tractor designed in 1904.
As we're talking about handling here and not traction (I'd be the first to admit that you can't ever get the same degree of traction from FWD car as weight transfer works against you) there is no difference at all between how a car handles whether it be rear, front or all wheel drive. If you took a car and changed it's drive between the 3 different configurations the turn in and maximum lateral grip levels would all be the same as well as the apparent all important 'steering feel'. What makes the significant difference is weight distribution. Some FWD cars like the Alfa Romeo 147 and 156 GTA have a lot of mass up front and not much at the back, hence their moment of rotation is skewed and hence they under steer like a pig. Take a Clio or an Integra however and they have a nice light engine placed fairly far back in the engine bay and hence have near perfect weight balance....hence they handle well. A lot of US made FWD cars have stupid FWD configurations that aren't thought out at all. I think it's either a BUICK or an Oldsmobile that has some stupidly big V8 transversely mounted in the front with FWD. Of course it's going to handle badly because the engine weighs a tonne, there's no hefty rear differential to offset it and GM probably paid the engineers that designed it with Wallmart tokens and gave them a broken Mechano set to make it with.
As for putting the power down, modern suspension geometry and limited slip differentials allow large amounts of power to be put down with no effect on the steering at all. Some are so good at what they do that in the case of the Integra you can get power on oversteer. YES you read that right. POWER ON oversteer on the exit of a corner. This is due to the lightness of the car and the way the diff works. There are very very few cars in the world that handle as well as a DC2 Type R and that includes rear and four wheel drive vehicles.
If you actually took the time to drive one of the three cars mentioned above you'd see what I mean.The sublime adjustablity on turn in, the beautifully tactile steering and stunning out right grip. About a year ago EVO did a group test with a Zonda, Carrera GT, 360 CS and a RenaultSport Clio Trophy. All of the road testers agreed that it was easily as much fun as the supercars and even more impressively it was so good in the corners that given a twisty bit of road, they struggled to keep up with it in the hypercars! It's so easy to drive and handles so predictably that you can extract every last ounce of the chassis, whereas the supercars, whilst on a track are stunning, are simply too edgy and hard to control on the road and you can only use about 8/10ths of their talents.
All I say is this....if RWD was so much considerably better than FWD, how come, in the World Touring Car Series, all the front wheel drive cars set identical times to those set by the RWD BMWs?.
Oh....and as for a FWD Ferrari. Ask and ye shall receive:
The 1987 FWD
Lancia Thema 8.23 Ferrari.