Have you ever gone sideways in a FWD car?
Because I have, and I'm still alive (and it was a lot of fun to boot).
Sort of. Not intentionally though. Turns out, what looks like a light dusting of dirt/gravel at a quick glance can actually be quite thick and viciously slippery. I tried to take a slightly-more-than-90-degree corner onto a freeway onramp at about 35 MPH and it went fine right up until I hit the dirt that'd gotten tracked onto a portion of the corner. Instinctively, not having time to remember what trailing-throttler oversteer is, I hit the brakes to try and bring rein things in, only for the car to whip sideways as you'd expect. Then the back end hit pavement and the car straightened out pretty easily due the low speed - not a moment too soon either.
Getting that car to go sideways normally would probably require rippping the parking brake from 50-60 MPH and I don't trust my skills or my car enough to pull that. My skills because I would most likely over- or undercorrect and my car because I don't know yet quite how it would react to such a maneuver - spin completely out of control? Just plow straight on like it does when you try it at lower speeds? Press X or Z twice? Given that I have a head full of racing theory but no practice and questionable reactions, I might cause any one of those outcomes unintentionally.
My source on FWD is Winning: A Race Driver's Handbook, specifically page 67 and its discussion of understeer vs. oversteer. Although there is an interesting point by Carroll Smith: for a car to accelerate while still turning, there must be excess tractive capacity to the drive wheels, so some anount of corner entry understeer must be present. Of course, that might also be the biggest weakness of FWD - between steeing and acceleration, the front tires tend to get overloaded.
But all that is really beside the point if you're not going to be actually racing. Lap times only matter if they pay the bills and all that. And that leads to the less-quantifiable advantage of RWD, is just plain fun. I love my car, but I'll never try to convince anyone that it handles well. I have no doubt it'd be better with a bit of power oversteer.
Speaking of, if you're ever in southcentral Alaska and want to see why FWD sucks, try taking Fishhook-Willow Road up the east side of Hatcher Pass. On the way down, pay attention at that really sharp hairpin corner with the 10MPH adivory speed sign. A FWD car will start to plow wide if you even look at the gas pedal on the exit from that corner.
Here you are stocking shelves, when really, your true calling as an engineer for Lotus (you know, only the company with arguably one of the best track records of understanding the hard-to-pin-down idea of
good handling) is being ignored. You figured it out; they lied.
And just because I can't not mention it: DC2 Integra, and
Audi's FWD TT-RS.
Well seriously, what possible way is there to bypass the physical limits of a car's tires and make a FWD car not understeer? 'Cause that's the major problem with FWD - the front tires just plain can't handle steering and acceleration at the same time unless the car is well below its cornering limits.
I've been laughing for 15 minutes straight!
