Random Thoughts... [Automotive Edition]

Here we go again...FWD has better initial traction in snow because of the weight on the front wheels. Apart from that, I've never made any claims about FWD superiority in regular driving conditions.

How does a FWD car with 1963lbs over the drive wheels somehow magically have better initial traction over a RWD car with 2009lbs over the drive axle?

The larger swaybars make the car handle corners more flat and gives more feeling as to what is happening. Sure, it can potentially oversteer, but it does it in a way that let's you feel it better and correct it if you don't want it to oversteer. With the stock suspension and stock swaybars it feels like a boat - it has what's called a tall tire feel, with the whole car wallowing in the corner and the rear doing whatever it wants to do.

Ummm... no, antirollbars don't give you more feeling. Also, tall tire feel aka tire squirm doesn't feel like the rear end is doing whatever it wants.

Spectre, god-forbid that it does happen to you, but if you ever find yourself on the wrong side of the law, you should definitely hire this guy.

[video=youtube;tBLTW-KLdHA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tBLTW-KLdHA[/video]

Amusingly, my criminal defense lawyer does look like that. Totally different personality, though.
 
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I swear I saw a Peugeot 205 GTI at a nearby dealership on my way home, never even knew any of those made it here. Going to have to check it out sometime!

Canada got a bunch of stuff that the rest of north america never got, iirc. Skodas, too. And ladas right?

There are a few deluxe equipped Skodas around here which were destined for Canada but apparently didn't find buyers and needed to be flogged somewhere else. Chrome, rev counter, catalytic converter and the works. :D
 
Spectre, god-forbid that it does happen to you, but if you ever find yourself on the wrong side of the law, you should definitely hire this guy.

[video=youtube;tBLTW-KLdHA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tBLTW-KLdHA[/video]

 
How does a FWD car with 1963lbs over the drive wheels somehow magically have better initial traction over a RWD car with 2009lbs over the drive axle?
Doesn't matter where the drive is if you've got the wrong tires for the weather. FWD is the safe option for most people since it'll just plow instead of spinning out like rwd does.
RWD is more fun when you want to play, commuting to work and back it makes little difference when you've got the right rubber under the car.
 
Canada got a bunch of stuff that the rest of north america never got, iirc. Skodas, too. And ladas right?

There are a few deluxe equipped Skodas around here which were destined for Canada but apparently didn't find buyers and needed to be flogged somewhere else. Chrome, rev counter, catalytic converter and the works. :D

I've never actually seen any Skodas here, but I have seen quite a few Ladas :D
 
I know that the US had Peugeout's for a while....I've never seen one though.
 
I see 505s once in awhile.
 
There's a dead 405 in my building and a 505 wagon at my mechanic's.
 
There's a dead 405 in my building and a 505 wagon at my mechanic's.

There's some other kind of 405 in the US market other than dead or on fire? :p

Doesn't matter where the drive is if you've got the wrong tires for the weather. FWD is the safe option for most people since it'll just plow instead of spinning out like rwd does.
RWD is more fun when you want to play, commuting to work and back it makes little difference when you've got the right rubber under the car.

Everything being equal, proper tires on both or bad tires on both, the lighter FWD cannot generate more traction than the heavier RWD though - which is my point. FWD's so called advantage is mostly illusory and comes at the cost of handling and traction everywhere else.
 
I have seen a Volt or two every day for the last few weeks. Oddly, I have seen a lot of GT-Rs as well.
 
Everything being equal, proper tires on both or bad tires on both, the lighter FWD cannot generate more traction than the heavier RWD though - which is my point. FWD's so called advantage is mostly illusory and comes at the cost of handling and traction everywhere else.
I even dove two different cars with the same set of tires(Nokian Hakkapeliitta 4), the other car was a heavy rwd barge the other one was a light fwd. As I said, in the winter commuting to work it makes little difference. I could bet that my lighter car will still have less weight over the front wheels than that old boat had over the rear wheels.
Funny thing about handling in the winter, it exaggerates everything. During the winter most accidents happen due to too much speed for the tires to handle, accidents that would happen no matter where the power goes to.
 
FWD is the safe option for most people since it'll just plow instead of spinning out like rwd does.
That's not entirely accurate, under/oversteer depend on a lot more than just the drivetrain. A CRX will be much less prone to understeer than a Lincoln Towncar. Only actual advantage of FWD is packaging and that only benefits the company making it.
 
There's some other kind of 405 in the US market other than dead or on fire? :p

Behold!

http://img580.imageshack.**/img580/8648/dsc00231og.jpg
http://img402.imageshack.**/img402/3048/dsc00232ho.jpg

...granted I took those 3 years ago. By now it's probably no longer running.
 
Spectre: uphill start on a snowy/icy road; heavy RWD vs light FWD (or just RWD vs. FWD) with no electronic aids on either.

I can't even count the number of times I saw a RWD car (mostly BMWs and Infiniti G35s) fishtail (and fail to go forward) on a snowy uphill start while I started just fine in my FWD econobox. ;)
 
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