FWD Sports Car?
- Thread starter TVC
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That depends on the FWD. Sure, the best FWDs might not be as good as the best RWDs, but then there are plenty of FWD cars out there that handle better than probably 90% of the rear-drives on the market. If we're taking driving feel into account then it just muddies the water more than ever given that there are some FWDs (DC2 Type R, for example) which are supposed to offer virtually unrivaled feel through every control. And if someone told me that a FWD Lotus Elan had better "feel" than a RWD Saturn Sky, it wouldn't surprise me.
And regarding definitions (this now not aimed at you PB), there may be several but they all follow along some fairly common lines - lightweight, designed for performance, usually no more than two seats, often open topped - and I'm pretty happy with that being the accepted definition. Not one of the ones posted so far have included "rear-wheel drive" in the definition. A FWD Elan offers, hypothetically, 99% of the thrills of a Miata. You get only two seats, the wind in your hair, the feeling of going quickly even when you're going slowly, great handling, great looks...
I absolutely fail to see, given that the Miata and the Elan (and the Barchetta, and the Copen etc) provide such a similar driving experience, that the FWD ones aren't sports cars simply because of their drivetrain. It actually makes no sense whatsoever.
Actually, do you know what I like most about people saying the Elan isn't a sports car solely because it's FWD? That it comes from Lotus. Whose business since they've existed has been making sports cars. It's what they do. It's something they're better at than virtually every other car company out there. And yet the Elan, which meeting every definition of a sports car including the fact that it's built by a sports car company, is somehow not one.
Guys, April Fool's day is a fair way off yet...
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So... you have to resort to stacking the deck with your hypothetical ultimate opinion-maker by giving him a Toyota Corolla to finish this argument? What if the guy owns a three-wheeled Morgan and his wife drives a Lincoln Town Car?
Your hypothetical "sports car" definition would be Three wheels, two cylinders and front-wheel drive. Unfortunately for the rest of us delusional people, his answer would be gospel. Though do note: the classic definition doesn't even state how many wheels a sports car should have.
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It doesn't matter which layout can handle better, or which is more "fun" (and yes, rear-wheel drive is usually more fun than anything else)... at the end of the day, a sports car is a sports car is a sports car, no matter how good or how incredibly horrible it might be. Unfortunately, you're assuming that the primary consideration that makes it one or the other is which wheels are driven. Not a valid definition, sorry.
Since a vast lot of sports cars fall afoul of the classic definition, many people resort to using the catch-all "performance car" to refer to any machine built to handle, accelerate and brake well that don't meet the requirements of the classic definition. There are still such things as sports cars, but they are no longer the be-all and end-all of performance... or fun... there are sports sedans, grand tourers and sports compacts that have many sports cars beat on either part.
If we're referring to "fun"... while I've had lots of fun in front-wheel drive cars, yes, the best fun I've ever had in a car was with a rear-wheel drive car... but that's because it was a Miata. Because it was a Mazda. Because the Mazda Miata has the most sublime suspension ever designed. (obviously not a Mazda-fanboyish post by the owner of another Mazda...
)Suspension uber alles. Drivetrain next. Power last. I don't care if a car is front-wheel drive, four-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive... if it doesn't handle, it's no fun. And yes, front-wheel drive cars can handle. They can't go dorifto, but you're misinformed if you think you can't get them all crossed-up into a turn.
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Keef
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I don't get why you guys keep saying "classic" definition. Dictionary definition is more precise. I've a feeling that the hypothetical man I'm speaking of knows precisely what the classic definition of a sports car is, and that is this:
As a matter of fact, look, there he is sitting in the background holding man's best friend. Or will you argue that point too?
He would also probably agree that this is a sports car:
And these:
He might even go for the ones with *gasp* roofs:
And a few with the engine not in the front:
And then there's his wife's car.
The old man knows what a sports car is. So somebody get a hold of this dude so we can make sense of all this.
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Since when does a companies choice to take advantage of, at the time current, automotive consumer trends have anything to do with whether or not theyre designing a sports car? The fact that the car exhibits sports car features is nothing more than the company keeping to its traditional "touch," adding to marketability.
If I were an engineer designing a sports car and having everything in mind including motorsports, I would have every reason to make it FR/MR and no reasons to make it FF. To the untrained mind all the ingredients are there for a fun car in a well thought out FF: responsive, quick steering rack providing good feel, light, etc and at the end of the day these are among the most important ingredients for a pleasurable driving experience and is whats going to sell cars for that particular group of consumers(among other things of course). For a trained mind, on the other hand, the mind of a "driver" (of course there are plenty driving enthusiasts out there who dont necessarily have the ability of a professional racecar driver) the whole deal is a totally different experience. It is then all a matter of the dynamics and balance of the car. Things that can only be understood by properly driving the car to the limits of adhesion, if youre the right person. This seems to be the aspect of the sport car that people here seem to be either totally ignoring or just unaware of. After all, a sports car is the embodiment of a racing car for the road which is, ultimately, its timeless appeal. A mindset that engineers/designers such as Colin Chapman had. And yeah, many still do.
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Um, considering how few cars were front wheel drive in the middle of the last century when the so called "classical" definition sports cars were first coming out, I wouldn't be surprised to see if the bias is towards rear wheel drive vehicles.
However, the dictionary definition makes no distinction.
Todays cars are mostly FWD so, YES, there can be FWD sports cars.
Just as SUVs first became really popular in the 90s when they were primarily truck based and of body on frame construction. Doesn't exclude future SUVs from being unibody, does it? In fact quite a few of them are, as there are ride/handling benefit from that type of construction.
A sportscar can have any type of drivetrain. PERIOD.
However, the dictionary definition makes no distinction.
Todays cars are mostly FWD so, YES, there can be FWD sports cars.
Just as SUVs first became really popular in the 90s when they were primarily truck based and of body on frame construction. Doesn't exclude future SUVs from being unibody, does it? In fact quite a few of them are, as there are ride/handling benefit from that type of construction.
A sportscar can have any type of drivetrain. PERIOD.
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And then there's his wife's car.
Which just happens not to be this:
or this:
and which isn't relevant to the discussion... and wasn't even brought up till you brought it up.
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Again, stacking the deck. Simply by giving him only two examples of car, one of which is a sportscar, the other of which is not only not a sportscar, but has steering deader than a door nail.
According to the dictionary, nearly no sports car fits the dictionary definition of sports car anymore. They're all twenty sizes too large. Everyone is following a trend. A trend of giving consumers more space, more AC and more cubby holes to store their iPods. When a consideration for your high-class exotic is how many golf-bags can fit in the trunk, that's marketability.
When you build a backbone-framed car with ugly fiberglass panels, full double-wishbones, an ultra-stiff chassis, and an engine with perfectly equal length drive shafts... you're not going for marketability. You're trying to make the best car you can within the design envelope.
When you add AC, a heater, leather seats and a trunk big enough for more than one golf bag, you're going for marketability.
"Trained Mind"? "Limits of Adhesion"? "Designed for Racing"? Kind of a high minded argument to bring late into this argument.
We're not ignoring them.
The reason many designers and engineers like FWD isn't just the packaging. You could get even better packaging with a rear-engined car than with anything else on the road today. That's what made the Beetle so popular... good space for a small footprint.
No, the reason they like FWD is it's very predictable at the limits of adhesion.
As for the "designed for racing part":
Went racing, did well in racing.
Went racing. Dominated at Indy.
Went rallying. Won. Against rear-wheel drive cars.
Okay, so maybe it's more due to regulations structure... but I don't see people complaining about jWRC.
If I were an engineer, and I were designing a car for a specific purpose, the choice of drivetrains would be to suit that purpose. Many engineers and racers have dabbled in FWD specifically because of the dynamic advantages at the limit of adhesion, which are the same as the advantages of AWD... which is the ability to stay on the power in corners in an oversteering situation, allowing you quicker corner exit in said situation. This is great for loose surfaces or low-grip surfaces... rallying, tarmac rallying, hillclimb... hell... public roads.
RWD, however, is superior to FWD and AWD in that you can power out of an understeering situation. This is great for high grip situations: touring cars, formula cars, medium-high speed tracks. Provided, however, that understeer is of the steady-state type, not the corner-entry type you get from taking too much speed into a corner... nor the GT4 understeer type of "I have no rear tires, I must understeer" that relies solely on weight balance calculations, and not comprehensive tire adhesion models.
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Horses for courses. high-performance FWD cars are often praised by motoring journalists (not just your namby-pamby journalism graduates, but also those with racing experience and/or professional racing careers) simply because on public roads with uncertain grip, a front-wheel drive car can keep up with or leave behind a RWD car of similar power and weight.
If I were designing a car for sale to the public to be driven quickly over unfamiliar terrain and for club-racing and hillclimbs, I'd pick FWD in a heartbeat. I can make it lighter, smaller and more agile.
For slaloms and autocrosses? I'd make it MR.
If I were designing a car for sale to the public to be driven quickly on the autobahn and on modern racetracks, one with four doors and a large engine, I'd make it FR. Despite FWD's advancements, mid-sized and larger FWD cars simply aren't as good as similar rear-drivers.
If I were designing a car with 500-600 turbocharged hp with extreme performance in mind, I'd make it AWD. RWD simply can't control that much power without really sticky (short-lived) tires or traction control (which I don't like).
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Conjuring the spirit of Colin Chapman? As I remember, his only injunction was "simplify, then add lightness." (and FWD is nothing if not light) Not "rear wheel drive or bust."
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EDIT: Last note... y'know... about the engineering part... Peugeot went and tried to use their CC body-style for WRC... and that's the closest any modern rally car has come to actually... y'know... looking like a real sports car. Worked out horribly. Too many compromises in body construction... not enough space to package the suspension properly... they had to drop it after that.
WRC is the reason that Subaru developed a real hatchback (not just a sedan with a rear hatch pasted on) for their latest Impreza. The hatchback gives you a stiffer structure than a sedan, a better center of balance, and more space to package the heavy-duty suspension rally cars need to be competitive.
Funny, isn't it? A sports-car body style has no chance of being competitive at top-level rallying!
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I absolutely agree with this, but like I said before
Not everyone wants a Caterham r500 or an Exige. And all those things are a big reason why new cars are less and less related to true sports cars.
You mean how it wants to go straight when you step on the gass?
Most of those vintage motorsports examples you used are all examples where the general speeds are very low, governed by the regulations of those days. The car at Indi was powerful but going around an oval on those tires really wouldnt require much turning. Let alone handle well
The same is true about the JWRC the budgets are much lower and as a matter of fact front wheel drive cars are an obviously smarter choice than rear wheel drive in that category.
And since when can you not stay in power when over steering in FR cars? The advantage with awd is that you have the front wheels also providing “steerable” power. In an outright drift a 4wd car of the same weight and tire size and compound will be quicker and so will the ff car since it will only be sliding entering the corner. This is in a paved surface of course. Also, in an awd car you can keep the car sideways which isn’t always true for an ff even on gravel roads. Give it too much thrtottle and it will eventually straighten out. That’s just what happens when the rear wheels don’t provide any power. Loose surface or not.
In a category such as jwrc where both budget and speeds are much lower, having an ff layout has no disadvantages as opposed to fr (I think theyre actually all ff now). The disadvantage an ff competitor would gain in a tarmac event is small, if existent at all. You can see in btcc/wtcc ff cars show no disadvantage at all but remember they also don’t run longer than 16-18 lap sprints and have no more than 300 hp from their 2L engines (not sure the exact engine capacity). Try doing the same in Australian Super Cars and the single thought of touching the throttle will send you straight into the wall. Now is when we begin to see the differences.
If im thinking the same type of hill climb as you, always paved mountain roads, then I don’t think you would ever want to slide in any corner. Ff or not. Not to mention theyre not dominated by ff cars by any stretch of the imagination.
Now, what someone may think, well if in categories such as btcc with 300hp and theyre matched, then on production car levels it should be as well.
The thing is that most people don’t have 9 in wide slicks and the overall suspension package those cars have (including altered suspension geometry)
If the car under steers for reasons other than the driver, than “powering out” is no way of fixing it unless you just drift the corner which will be slower and just an absolutely absurd “option” to resort to. And gassing out as you should (smoothly and progressively) will simply shift weight towards the rear and make under steering worse. Resorting to lossing rear traction in an under steering fr car is no solution or ever has been a solution and thus it is no "advantage".
Aaah those low grip situations again.
Rallying and wrc regulations? Picking anything but awd would be silly. Hill Climbs (paved and clean)? I don’t think it matters how wider or narrow a paved road is, it doesn’t change how a car behaves. And an fr will have more rear grip going uphill. A disadvantage for the ff. And as far as I know there arent any successful ff hill climbers. Club racing? What kind of club racing? Theres everything from Spec Miata to other unlimited class scca events. And really the only ones I’m aware of being ff under scca club events is that vw diesel cup.
Maybe I should’ve specified paved as opposed to just “motorspots.” It seems that your basing most of your argument on lose surface/low grip conditions. I don’t think the people who designed the tommy Kaira ZZ-S or the Lotus Elise were at all concerned with its implications in rally.
In any motorsports category there will always be a limitation on weight so that pretty much throws “having more agility than rival” out the window. And if the races last more than a set of tires youre screwd unless it’s a series such as the vw cup where theyre all ff (Those are also sprint races).
I agree.
Overworking the front tires and incredibly front heavy?
Im going to assume you don’t mean in straight line acceleration. In high speed cornering, rwd is fine, it’s the driver that would have a tough time. But given the same tires, awd will have no advantage whatsoever on the potential of the tires. It will just makes the drivers job a bit easier (given a driver that can correctly controll an fr with that much power).
And it was up to me I wouldn’t make an “extreme performance” car with that much power unless it followed along the lines of a caparo t1. Potential hp will always be there for the customer to extract either way.
Hmm a front wheel drive lotus 7...rotate the engine 90 degrees and somehow integrate a transaxle. I don’t know what he was thinking when he decided to go with the later.
Again youre basing a lot of this on rallying. No one ever said sports car were supposed to be any good for offroading.
I don’t know much about the politics of the hatchback sti but didn’t Subaru drop out of the wrc in 2007? Doesn’t make sense why they would redesign the model if they weren’t going to compete.
Besides being shorter in wheel base I don’t see how a car being a hatch has better weight centralization than a sedan of the same length which not to mention teams do their best to improve it regardless. Same with packaging the suspension. The longer stroke shocks arent wider than the wheel wells and they protrude down towards the ground and not the other way.
I realize this has gone beyond the argument of others like keef who state that outright performance has little to do with whether or not it is a sports car.
HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!!
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Not everyone wants RWD or AWD... the point being? Since when does what people want determine whether a banana is a banana? If it tastes like mango but belongs to the banana plant family, it's still a banana.
Wrong. The Miller cars aren't "powerful" compared to cars of today. Miller liked the FWD configuration because it provided an advantage specifically in cornering.
Much lower than what? jWRC cars at the top level are manufacturer sponsored and supported efforts. In other words, there's slightly less money than for AWD WRC cars and a lot more money than in club-level racing. If we go by that logic, RWD is completely inferior in rallying because only privateers and historical racers use them.
Not if you're trying to hit the fastest line instead of going for style points with drift judges.
So... you're agreeing with me?
Again... jWRC is low-budget? Only compared to WRC. I wouldn't consider a bespoke factory racer cheap... unless you're comparing it to another factory racer.
Actually... wrong. Touring car level races already show a difference between FWD and FR cars. It's just that rules balancing handicaps FR cars at the touring car level to keep racing interesting, otherwise BMWs would win, every time. And that pesky rule that allows diesels turbochargers... or, in series where gasoline engines get turbos, bigger and better turbochargers.
I may be arguing the side of FF here, but let's keep things real.
Of course, touring cars have tons more grip and aero-grip than regular street cars.
That's funny. I could've sworn quite a few of the stages in the local hillclimb were won by a Civic. (oops... edit... mistake... the championship has been won three times in a row by a guy in a CRX... against guys in EVOs and WRXs). The beauty of FF/AWD is that you can provoke a controllable slide, or easily correct one... though, yes, the fastest line is often not the sliding one, though it helps on hairpins.
In other words, your standard BMW 3-series isn't set up to pirouette like a ballerina in the corners, like a 3-series touring car. It's set up to understeer like a pig when you push the limits of adhesion. (I have, and it does)
Reducing steady-state understeer through judicious use of the throttle is a perfectly fine racing technique... sorry if I oversimplified for you.
And road cars don't have 9-inch slicks, right?
Let me laugh at that statement as I sit behind yet another SUV sliding backwards towards me on a steep parking ramp. 30 degrees of incline doesn't equal 100% weight transfer.
Know why a Porsche accelerates faster than most rear wheel drive sports cars of the same power? Because it has the weight where it actually helps. In the back. The only way to get that much weight over the rear axle is to have an extreme ramp angle, which doesn't happen except in EXTREME!!! (Dude!) hillclimbs. In regular practice, on a 10-30 degree incline, the weight of the engine is pressing down on the wheels right behind it... which just happen to be... the front wheels.
The only time I've ever had traction issues going up ramps or hills? In front-engined rear wheel drive vehicles. It never fails. Makes me glad for LSDs, actually.
Where did I put my notes again? Oh... refer to above. I'm ignoring top-level hillclimbing because those racers are formula cars. And Formula cars, being MR and on slicks, don't really help the argument one way or another.... though, I will say: if it's a racecar on slicks, MR is the default choice... slicks can cancel out the traction advantage of AWD, and the lack of weight restrictions on hillclimbers gives AWD cars no leeway.
Wow... you're missing out on a zillion sub-categories... I don't have my latest copy of the SCCA magazine, SportsCar, but as I recall, there are over a dozen categories, subcategories and sub-sub-categories you can race FF in... either exclusively or against rear-drivers. Up to the touring car level, in fact... if you're so inclined... but you'd be hard pressed to even be competitive there as a privateer.
Define loose surfaces? You know how slippery an actual road is compared to a race track?
If a race lasts more than one set of tires, anything but a four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering car will be screwed. Of course, a four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering car is often screwed because the weight limitations are often too low to allow them to be competitive.
To get the balance right, you'd have to move the engine far back into the body... which would negate the advantages in packaging that a FWD platform gives. I've driven good FWD midsizers, but they're often the smaller-engined models.
The same, strangely, also applies to midsized RWD cars. The sweetest 5-series to drive? The 520d? Awesome rear-biased balance. Light on its toes. The 3 liter and up models feel ponderous compared to it.
The car's fine... it's just the driver who suffers? Oh-kay... ...so it's not the car's fault if it's uncontrollable. Someone tell that to Ferrari. Maybe it'll make them feel better about the last F1 season.
So... just because a RWD can't do it... don't do it? I suppose this allows me to use the argument: "Since 400 hp can't be done on a FWD car, we shouldn't make them."? Rubbish. If a car makes a ton of power, and unless it's on a marble-smooth surface and on slicks, AWD is the way to go... whether you... or I... like it or not.
Let's see... where does creating your own custom mounting and gearbox fit into the Super 7 program? It was designed to be built cheaply from available running gear (all from then-current RWD Fords... there were no front-wheel drive Fords...) at the time... and this was developed before the Mini came out. I wouldn't actually expect any less.
Nowadays, if I were to do the same, I'd do it with an engine from a front-wheel drive car and make it MR... oh... wait... that's what Lotus is doing right now.
Of course, they did the same with the M100 Elan. Took a relatively cheap, existing drivetrain and put it into a sports car that, from all accounts, despite being completely unwilling to playfully slide through a turn, gave handling performance that shamed many rear drivers of the time. That the basic Lotus philosophy: lightness, simplicity, agility... was present in the Super 7, the original Elan, the M100 and the Elise... seems lost on some people.
Last I checked, rally stages happened on roads... on a mixture of dirt, gravel, mud, snow and tarmac. If you want to go off-road, the only true racing vehicles you can use are trucks and truck-based buggies. If you want to cover huge amounts of ground at high speed... nothing quite beats a Paris-Dakar spaceframe Pajero or Touareg buggy.
So where do the shocks go when you get full compression, you think? Back up into the body. Less space in the body over the wheel wells, less space for the shocks to compress into... less body control over the big jumps the WRC is famous for. Anyone can make a street car stiff as beejesus and have it work on a flat track... but for bouncing off curbs, dips and other stuff you might actually find on a real road... more suspension travel is always a good thing... which is why Subarus make such great cross-country cars.
Unfortunately, Subaru sedans, while having more suspension travel than other road cars, couldn't package enough of it in WRC trim to stay competitve. Furthermore, the sedans were too long, and couldn't turn as quickly as the hatchbacks. A coupe would have no space for the suspension (as shown by Peugeot), so that was out... a hatchback has enough space to package enough suspension to give huge amounts of wheel travel... oh... come on... if you don't know anything about rallying, why do you question the fact that none of these cars were as competitive as their manufacturers hoped against the hatchbacks which now dominate?
I'm not the one who claimed that a race engineer's default choice has to be rear-wheel drive. I'll be happy to drop this line of argument. Using the "built for racing" argument doesn't benefit many road-cars today, if that's what it takes to classify sports cars... for, the last time I looked, there are very few cars that are actually built to race. The Porsche GT3RS has a racing trim... the BMW 3-series touring cars, the Miata (available in Spec Miata trim), the Ford Fiesta...
If we use the argument "built for racing"... the Ford Fiesta is more of a sports car than a Nissan 350Z...
Actually... I can buy a turnkey version of my sedan already purpose rebuilt to SCCA Touring Car specs. With one seat and just two working doors. And it's low to the ground... and lightweight. And, by golly, is that a sports car, or what?
Same, same.
Most of those vintage motorsports examples you used are all examples where the general speeds are very low, governed by the regulations of those days. The car at Indi was powerful but going around an oval on those tires really wouldnt require much turning. Let alone handle well
Wrong. The Miller cars aren't "powerful" compared to cars of today. Miller liked the FWD configuration because it provided an advantage specifically in cornering.
Much lower than what? jWRC cars at the top level are manufacturer sponsored and supported efforts. In other words, there's slightly less money than for AWD WRC cars and a lot more money than in club-level racing. If we go by that logic, RWD is completely inferior in rallying because only privateers and historical racers use them.
Not if you're trying to hit the fastest line instead of going for style points with drift judges.
So... you're agreeing with me?
Again... jWRC is low-budget? Only compared to WRC. I wouldn't consider a bespoke factory racer cheap... unless you're comparing it to another factory racer.
Actually... wrong. Touring car level races already show a difference between FWD and FR cars. It's just that rules balancing handicaps FR cars at the touring car level to keep racing interesting, otherwise BMWs would win, every time. And that pesky rule that allows diesels turbochargers... or, in series where gasoline engines get turbos, bigger and better turbochargers.
I may be arguing the side of FF here, but let's keep things real.
Of course, touring cars have tons more grip and aero-grip than regular street cars.
That's funny. I could've sworn quite a few of the stages in the local hillclimb were won by a Civic. (oops... edit... mistake... the championship has been won three times in a row by a guy in a CRX... against guys in EVOs and WRXs). The beauty of FF/AWD is that you can provoke a controllable slide, or easily correct one... though, yes, the fastest line is often not the sliding one, though it helps on hairpins.
In other words, your standard BMW 3-series isn't set up to pirouette like a ballerina in the corners, like a 3-series touring car. It's set up to understeer like a pig when you push the limits of adhesion. (I have, and it does)
Reducing steady-state understeer through judicious use of the throttle is a perfectly fine racing technique... sorry if I oversimplified for you.
And road cars don't have 9-inch slicks, right?
Let me laugh at that statement as I sit behind yet another SUV sliding backwards towards me on a steep parking ramp. 30 degrees of incline doesn't equal 100% weight transfer.
Know why a Porsche accelerates faster than most rear wheel drive sports cars of the same power? Because it has the weight where it actually helps. In the back. The only way to get that much weight over the rear axle is to have an extreme ramp angle, which doesn't happen except in EXTREME!!! (Dude!) hillclimbs. In regular practice, on a 10-30 degree incline, the weight of the engine is pressing down on the wheels right behind it... which just happen to be... the front wheels.
The only time I've ever had traction issues going up ramps or hills? In front-engined rear wheel drive vehicles. It never fails. Makes me glad for LSDs, actually.
Where did I put my notes again? Oh... refer to above. I'm ignoring top-level hillclimbing because those racers are formula cars. And Formula cars, being MR and on slicks, don't really help the argument one way or another.... though, I will say: if it's a racecar on slicks, MR is the default choice... slicks can cancel out the traction advantage of AWD, and the lack of weight restrictions on hillclimbers gives AWD cars no leeway.
Wow... you're missing out on a zillion sub-categories... I don't have my latest copy of the SCCA magazine, SportsCar, but as I recall, there are over a dozen categories, subcategories and sub-sub-categories you can race FF in... either exclusively or against rear-drivers. Up to the touring car level, in fact... if you're so inclined... but you'd be hard pressed to even be competitive there as a privateer.
Define loose surfaces? You know how slippery an actual road is compared to a race track?
If a race lasts more than one set of tires, anything but a four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering car will be screwed. Of course, a four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering car is often screwed because the weight limitations are often too low to allow them to be competitive.
To get the balance right, you'd have to move the engine far back into the body... which would negate the advantages in packaging that a FWD platform gives. I've driven good FWD midsizers, but they're often the smaller-engined models.
The same, strangely, also applies to midsized RWD cars. The sweetest 5-series to drive? The 520d? Awesome rear-biased balance. Light on its toes. The 3 liter and up models feel ponderous compared to it.
The car's fine... it's just the driver who suffers? Oh-kay...
...so it's not the car's fault if it's uncontrollable. Someone tell that to Ferrari. Maybe it'll make them feel better about the last F1 season.So... just because a RWD can't do it... don't do it? I suppose this allows me to use the argument: "Since 400 hp can't be done on a FWD car, we shouldn't make them."? Rubbish. If a car makes a ton of power, and unless it's on a marble-smooth surface and on slicks, AWD is the way to go... whether you... or I... like it or not.
Let's see... where does creating your own custom mounting and gearbox fit into the Super 7 program? It was designed to be built cheaply from available running gear (all from then-current RWD Fords... there were no front-wheel drive Fords...) at the time... and this was developed before the Mini came out. I wouldn't actually expect any less.
Nowadays, if I were to do the same, I'd do it with an engine from a front-wheel drive car and make it MR... oh... wait... that's what Lotus is doing right now.
Of course, they did the same with the M100 Elan. Took a relatively cheap, existing drivetrain and put it into a sports car that, from all accounts, despite being completely unwilling to playfully slide through a turn, gave handling performance that shamed many rear drivers of the time. That the basic Lotus philosophy: lightness, simplicity, agility... was present in the Super 7, the original Elan, the M100 and the Elise... seems lost on some people.
Again youre basing a lot of this on rallying. No one ever said sports car were supposed to be any good for offroading.
Last I checked, rally stages happened on roads... on a mixture of dirt, gravel, mud, snow and tarmac. If you want to go off-road, the only true racing vehicles you can use are trucks and truck-based buggies. If you want to cover huge amounts of ground at high speed... nothing quite beats a Paris-Dakar spaceframe Pajero or Touareg buggy.
So where do the shocks go when you get full compression, you think? Back up into the body. Less space in the body over the wheel wells, less space for the shocks to compress into... less body control over the big jumps the WRC is famous for. Anyone can make a street car stiff as beejesus and have it work on a flat track... but for bouncing off curbs, dips and other stuff you might actually find on a real road... more suspension travel is always a good thing... which is why Subarus make such great cross-country cars.
Unfortunately, Subaru sedans, while having more suspension travel than other road cars, couldn't package enough of it in WRC trim to stay competitve. Furthermore, the sedans were too long, and couldn't turn as quickly as the hatchbacks. A coupe would have no space for the suspension (as shown by Peugeot), so that was out... a hatchback has enough space to package enough suspension to give huge amounts of wheel travel... oh... come on... if you don't know anything about rallying, why do you question the fact that none of these cars were as competitive as their manufacturers hoped against the hatchbacks which now dominate?
I'm not the one who claimed that a race engineer's default choice has to be rear-wheel drive. I'll be happy to drop this line of argument. Using the "built for racing" argument doesn't benefit many road-cars today, if that's what it takes to classify sports cars... for, the last time I looked, there are very few cars that are actually built to race. The Porsche GT3RS has a racing trim... the BMW 3-series touring cars, the Miata (available in Spec Miata trim), the Ford Fiesta...
If we use the argument "built for racing"... the Ford Fiesta is more of a sports car than a Nissan 350Z...
Actually... I can buy a turnkey version of my sedan already purpose rebuilt to SCCA Touring Car specs. With one seat and just two working doors. And it's low to the ground... and lightweight. And, by golly, is that a sports car, or what?
Same, same.
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I feel a Dodge Avenger head-to-head FWD/RWD comparo article coming on. However...
Why does a car designed to be fun on the road have to be involved in motorsports?
Even if it did, there are multiple single-make motorsports out there and events specifically for FWD cars. Hell, there's a 24 hour race just for 2CVs. That's motorsports and, despite many tangible flaws, a 2CV seems to be very competitve in that event...
Back to the MX-5, the blueprint of the sportscar... exactly what motorsports is the MX-5 actually any good at? It's not allowed in a great many series because it's a convertible and those that do allow open-air motoring tend to have a few (hundred) more ponies. It's too slow. Beautifully balanced, but too slow and balanced doesn't count for squat in motorsports. But it does do terribly well in the varying one-make series (Spec Miata, MaX5 and so on) - nothing but an MX-5 has won one of those series for years...
So even the number one sportscar is only used in motorsports when everything else is the same as it. Motorsports is thus not a consideration for a sportscar.
Why does a car designed to be fun on the road have to be involved in motorsports?
Even if it did, there are multiple single-make motorsports out there and events specifically for FWD cars. Hell, there's a 24 hour race just for 2CVs. That's motorsports and, despite many tangible flaws, a 2CV seems to be very competitve in that event...
Back to the MX-5, the blueprint of the sportscar... exactly what motorsports is the MX-5 actually any good at? It's not allowed in a great many series because it's a convertible and those that do allow open-air motoring tend to have a few (hundred) more ponies. It's too slow. Beautifully balanced, but too slow and balanced doesn't count for squat in motorsports. But it does do terribly well in the varying one-make series (Spec Miata, MaX5 and so on) - nothing but an MX-5 has won one of those series for years...
So even the number one sportscar is only used in motorsports when everything else is the same as it. Motorsports is thus not a consideration for a sportscar.
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Some great posts Niky 👍
Re: The Elan, do any of you seriously think the guys at Lotus sat down and thought, "right! Let's make an economy car! We'll just make it really light, quick and give it a folding roof!" and sketched up this?
Of course they didn't. They said "let's make a sports car". Hell, they even called it the Elan, which coincidentally was the name of one of the most famous British sports cars ever. I can't even see any room for dispute on this one. The Elan S2 is a sports car. It just happens to be FWD. And if it's possible for the Elan to be a sports car, then it follows that it's possible for other FWDs to be too.
Re: The Elan, do any of you seriously think the guys at Lotus sat down and thought, "right! Let's make an economy car! We'll just make it really light, quick and give it a folding roof!" and sketched up this?
Of course they didn't. They said "let's make a sports car". Hell, they even called it the Elan, which coincidentally was the name of one of the most famous British sports cars ever. I can't even see any room for dispute on this one. The Elan S2 is a sports car. It just happens to be FWD. And if it's possible for the Elan to be a sports car, then it follows that it's possible for other FWDs to be too.
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You mean how it wants to go straight when you step on the gass?
I've heard MX-5's do that too though.....
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I agree with that. I guess thats just my personal preference of machinery (caterham, lotus, ginetta etc)
Regarding Nikys reply: Theres just so much more I can reply to that but it would have little to do with this thread. To me a true sports cars nature is to be rwd. Whether or not there are FF cars that handle any better is irrelevant.
Theres a difference between driver error and what a car tends to do by nature.
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What a car does by nature?
You mean the car swings its tail out on a corner because its the nature of the car. The inputs of the driver have nothing to do with that. Physics. Limits of adhesion. Driver too cheap to buy new tires. Too much acceleration in the corner. Too big a steering angle. ALL THE CARS FAULT.
You just lost all credibility.
A car is designed to do what a driver makes it do. Not the other way round.
Although the technology in quite a few newer cars is making the driver less and less relevant.
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Most factory cars are designed to understeer. My Civic was one of them. Because of my alignment settings and the way I drove the car, it rarely understeered, in fact it usually oversteered because I tended to still be braking when I should have already been on the throttle, my subconscious brain keeping me from going faster. A Miata has a very neutral feel, where the car's reaction depended solely on what you made it do.
My 240sx understeers if you simply turn the wheel, but with weight transfer you can make it oversteer. It's nature is to understeer.
Not to mention most of the things you listed were examples of driver error. So no, not the car's fault. I don't know where you got that after he specifically mentioned driver error and the car not being at fault in those situations.
I think you just lost all credibility by attempting to disagree and in turn giving examples of exactly what he was talking about.
Keef
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Plus, I don't think you should make personal attacks against a person who you don't know. I'm not teaming up on you here, but you seem to think Speed Junkie has never driven a car before. I think otherwise, as I've been beaten by him a time or two. We all have differing opinions about many things, but this thread is about machines, not people.
So how about we have a friendly argument and keep the person stuff out of it.
So how about we have a friendly argument and keep the person stuff out of it.
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Pretty sure Neandarthal makes exactly the same point, and he was just being sarcastic.
Speed Junkie seems to suggest that a Miata understeering is the drivers fault, but a FWD car does the same because it's in its nature.
But from following the thread, Speed Junkie might have been pushing his point in the wrong way.
smacks of elitism, and is very far removed from
which, while I don't necessarily agree with, is a perfectly acceptable opinion.
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Wrong. If that car is designed to understeer, then it does what it was designed to do in the corner. If the driver goes in too hot, or misjudges the line, or has bad tires, or any of the other things that really contribute to understeering, then you blame the operator, not the car.
You yourself have basically stated that pretty much all cars have understeer designed in. So its essentially a standard feature.
"The standard feature caused the car to.... XYZ." Sounds kinda dumb, no?
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Which is the reason I responded in detail. Though not for the fact that I thought that it smacks of elitism, but because it was worded like it was a foregone conclusion... which it isn't.
And perfectly acceptable to me, also. As long as we keep this as personal opinion and do not invoke the imagined opinions of other people which may or may not support our arguments.
I've actually looked for opinions by the legends regarding front-wheel drive... and have found precious few. Colin Chapman may have noted that FWD has an advantage in certain situations, but not having a direct quote from him or a copy of the book cited, I can't cite secondhand reporting as gospel. Jackie Stewart supposedly owned a Mini... but again, I can't cite any quotes by the man himself about FWD except one from the 50's or 60's in which he's said that he's "still willing to give it a chance..." because at the time, FWD was new. He did state that FWD technology at the time was in its infancy, and that they'd had decades to develop RWD. Nobody who's reprinted online has seen fit to ask the follow up question now that we're in the 21st Century, so we don't know what his opinion is, today.
I've found some hilarious ones, though.
Most guys claim that FWD is inferior because it's less challenging... or because you have no cure for understeer (what're the brakes for, then, dummy?)... but one guy went so far as to claim that "it's only those Grassroots Motorsports guys who can actually control such a tricky car..." implying that high performance front-wheel drive cars were so unstable that you'd essentially have to be an experienced racer to drive one fast!
Most of it smacks of a desperation to prove a negative based on bias instead of experience... which is a perfectly horrid way to form an opinion. I like to keep an open mind. I'm willing to accept that Toyota may someday make "fun" cars again... or that such cars may already be here in the form of the iQ... I'm willing to accept that Mercedes may beat BMW someday in the "Ultimate Driving Machine" stakes (in fact, I think they just might have with the C63) or that Audi may actually make a car that handles (RS4).
In my experience, the vast lot of common front wheel drive cars are crap in terms of performance. Yes, I said it. Crap. But in my experience, also, a lot of rear-wheel drive and AWD cars don't drive much different. But when you get it right, whatever the drivetrain, the results can be magic.
And even if you don't get it right... at the local 2008 Car-of-the-year tests one day, there were three cars that got a proper thrashing from a local drifter who came by to do photo and video shoots during the test. One was an Impreza, the other a Lancer (though that one wasn't much fun... too long wheelbase for the small skidpad).
The third? A Picanto. Terrible steering feel. Terrible grip. No power. Even with the modest power, terrible on-throttle understeer. He drove the tires bald. Sometimes "fun" is in the eye of the beholder.
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It's not so much whether there is such a thing as a FWD sports car, but actually more along the lines what is a "sporty car" vs a "sports car". I'll use my own car vs my uncle's car as an example.
My car - DC2 Honda Integra
Uncle's - Supra (no pic)
My car is FWD. Has a 1.8L V-tec engine. It's got great handling, excellent response and is relatively easy to maneuver and to hit the limit in. It can be tuned to deliver sports car like performance engine-wise but unfortunately due to its FWD layout, it will never deliver handling performance that of AWD and RWD cars. Sad to say, it can only be considered a "sporty car" as it can only satisfy one of the many criterion needed for sports car certification.
My uncle's Supra is RWD with a 3.0L 2JZGTE twin turbo charged beast of a car. It's meant to crush kill and destroy practically anything in its way. It also helps that it's block can withstand 600hp without rebuilding the bottom end - basically bolts on (lots of them). His Supra, though limited to 280hp from factory, is a sports car. It has two seats only. Does not accommodate much else other than a hot shorty in the passenger and golf clubs with an overnight bag in the rear. It handles pretty good if you tune it right. The aforementioned 600hp will not help (while these are nigh super car like numbers it doesn't have the handling or grip prowess enough to put it down on the tarmac - which is what holds it back from super car status), but there is potential for more as the car allows you to be more versatile with setups as RWD has many physics based advantages over FWD.
That being said, its worth noting that in recent years access to faster road going normal cars has become rampant what with Golf GTis growing turbos, Evos, STIs, Focus RS and even cars like the Lotus Carlton, but with all their wizardry behind their performance they've only managed to make a regular car sportier rather than producing an all out sports car.
I could be wrong and it wouldn't be the first time, but heck what's a forum thread without opinions. Having just read page 13 i feel some what silly having posted this as an additional response, but then i figure i took time out to contribute might as well keep it up until i get flamed. :S
My car - DC2 Honda Integra
Uncle's - Supra (no pic)
My car is FWD. Has a 1.8L V-tec engine. It's got great handling, excellent response and is relatively easy to maneuver and to hit the limit in. It can be tuned to deliver sports car like performance engine-wise but unfortunately due to its FWD layout, it will never deliver handling performance that of AWD and RWD cars. Sad to say, it can only be considered a "sporty car" as it can only satisfy one of the many criterion needed for sports car certification.
My uncle's Supra is RWD with a 3.0L 2JZGTE twin turbo charged beast of a car. It's meant to crush kill and destroy practically anything in its way. It also helps that it's block can withstand 600hp without rebuilding the bottom end - basically bolts on (lots of them). His Supra, though limited to 280hp from factory, is a sports car. It has two seats only. Does not accommodate much else other than a hot shorty in the passenger and golf clubs with an overnight bag in the rear. It handles pretty good if you tune it right. The aforementioned 600hp will not help (while these are nigh super car like numbers it doesn't have the handling or grip prowess enough to put it down on the tarmac - which is what holds it back from super car status), but there is potential for more as the car allows you to be more versatile with setups as RWD has many physics based advantages over FWD.
That being said, its worth noting that in recent years access to faster road going normal cars has become rampant what with Golf GTis growing turbos, Evos, STIs, Focus RS and even cars like the Lotus Carlton, but with all their wizardry behind their performance they've only managed to make a regular car sportier rather than producing an all out sports car.
I could be wrong and it wouldn't be the first time, but heck what's a forum thread without opinions. Having just read page 13 i feel some what silly having posted this as an additional response, but then i figure i took time out to contribute might as well keep it up until i get flamed. :S
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Some of these arguments about sports cars being something else (FWD, hot hatches, compacts, etc) are kinda lame.
In 60 years time, when pretty much all cars are hybrids or electric, are we not going to have any sportscars because the prevailing attitude is that the car must be rear wheel drive, gasoline engined and a dedicated 2 seater?
In 60 years time, when pretty much all cars are hybrids or electric, are we not going to have any sportscars because the prevailing attitude is that the car must be rear wheel drive, gasoline engined and a dedicated 2 seater?
Keef
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- GTP Keef
Never said it had to have a gas engine, but you have a point.
Yes, if there aren't any cars that qualify as sports cars then we will indeed not have any sports cars.
Not a sports car:
Sports car argument aside, I'd like to have a little off-topic CRZ rant. Honda is retarded. Do they really think they're gonna bring in the young, hip tuner crowd with a hybrid? No. No matter how much money I might ever make, I would never even consider owning one of these. It's stupid. Now, if they'd have given this the engine out of the Civic Si, in the CRZ's more compact, presumably lighter body, and with an interior as versatile, flexible, practical, functional, clever, and cavernous as the CRX we all love, then we might have a deal. Then we'd have a real modern CRX that would sell like freaking hotcakes.
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