Quote:
Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr
Of course. Well, considering Volkswagen used to be praised for the mild off-road capability of the Beetle and its derivatives exactly due to the weight bias and the rear-engined RWD layout, as it was (and still is) quite a valuable asset in rural areas and even in the outskirts of larger cities, it's quite easy to figure out why so many folks who get a front-engined FWD only do so due to the absence of a modern family-oriented rear-engined RWD econobox. Even though 4WD could be seen as ideal, and it's not rocket-science to implement even to relatively small vehicles, both the purchase and maintenance costs become an issue harder to address than the handling of a modern RWD with all the electronic nannies which are becoming mandatory even in third-world places.
A few days ago I had a talk with a taxi driver, and pointing out the Porsche 911 retaining its traditional layout while most econoboxes went front-engined and FWD, we got to agree RWD econoboxes would still be desirable, even if their weight bias would be around 50-50 instead of 40-60.
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Ya, 4WD/AWD (aka, turns four wheels) is ideal for snow and ice. But the thing is it's so much more expensive right now, at least on new cars. And the older ones get worse fuel mileage with it. Plus it's another part to wear out. And it only helps with acceleration and does little in the way of cornering or braking.
I guess a lot of what vehicle you'd prefer depends on where in the snow it's being driven and who's driving. For very slow speeds a lot of weight bias over the drive wheels, front or rear, is great. The Super Beetle and MK2 Golf were great around town. I'd put chains on them and leave them on all winter sometimes and let my wife drive around town like that as much as she pleased. But at faster speeds the heavy end tends to go straight while the other end goes wherever the wheels are pointed. Heavy front and it understeers. Heavy rear and it oversteers. This is why I'm assuming most vehicles will be close to 50:50 biased from now on.
Who's driving has a lot to do with what's "best". I'm assuming @JSH is a professional commercial driver, so I completely understand why he'd want a rear biased RWD vehicle. He knows how to drive one. You got to first, not drive so fast in the first place. If the tail starts to swing out you need to make smooth changes in throttle, brake and steering. That way you don't suddenly have the tail flying out in front of you. And when it does start to slide you still have enough leeway to control it.
But take any modern day teenager (with few exceptions) and they don't know squat about how to drive slow in the snow. All these TV commercials, excuse me... Google ads, have them thinking they can drive in the snow as fast as you can on dry pavement. If the tail starts to slide then they think they can be Lightning McKing and drift like maniacs. Next thing you know they're spinning down the road or over correct and spinning down the road again. FWD helps thwart those expectations.
One time a kid passed me in a Jeep along the rim of the Black Canyon. He then lost control on the ice and flipped it right in the middle of the road and killed himself. He didn't even leave the road, not even hitting a guardrail. That probably wouldn't have happened in a FWD sedan.
Speaking of the rim of the Black Canyon and Jeeps, one time I went skiing in Leadville with a friend who drove a Jeep. It had one of the worst automatic transmission setups I had ever seen. There was only one selection for both 1st and 2nd. When it reached 20mph, IIRC, it would then step down into 1st. It was snowpacked and the guy loved to terrorize me by shifting into 1st/2nd coming into a corner and when the Jeep went automatically into 1st it would swing the rear end around like it got hit with a wrecking ball. He thought it was hilarious. I never went skiing with him ever again.
One day in Texas I was in a terrible ice storm. And I, you know, the guy who has lived in the Colorado Mountains mostly above 10,000ft above sea level with some form of snow to see year round, yes I refused to go over 25 mph on that stuff in Texas. Maybe because in my 40hp, non-turbo Golf diesel I could spin the tires in 5th gear, and that was with new tires. Yet some 14 trucks and SUVs decided to pass me. And every last one of them was flipped over off the side of the road down further ahead. Would they have driven that fast had they been in FWD cars? Having better acceleration traction gives the illusion that it's less slick than it really is. Then couple that with the tendency to oversteer and drivers that don't have the experience and this is what happens.
One night, here in Colorado Monarch pass was closed due to avalanches so I took the long way around. The road was dry until I came to a left hand corner at the top of a hill that I could see had black ice from the wind spitting snow onto the pavement. It was the first patch of black ice I had seen that night and it covered the whole corner and continued down the other side of the hill. The limit was 65mph but I was already going 55 just in case and slowed down as quick as I could on the dry pavement when I saw it. When I came onto the dry ice, even with the studded snow tires and now below 30mph, the Avalon did try to understeer a little, but thankfully I was able to keep slowing down enough until I could steer it the way I needed to keep it from going off the edge of the road. Remember front weight bias responds favorably to deceleration. I'm not sure I could have made it in a rear biased vehicle since those don't respond as well to both decelerating and steering at the same time (decelerating makes them oversteer more) although having more control over the steering wheels could have helped me turn sharper at a higher speed as long as the rear bias wasn't like the Super Beetle's. Sure enough, there were several vehicles off the road on the other side of the hill; many rolled over. As far as I could tell all were SUV's and pickups.
One time I took a sports team in a 72 passeneger school bus to Grandby. It was sheer ice between there and Silverthorne. At times the rear would try to come around even with chains down when coming down hills. Letting it accelerate slightly would help get the rear to go back into place.
One thing I hated about old automatics like the AWD Chevy Astro and 4x4 Dodge Durango I had is climbing steep grades. It always gets to a point when the transmission decides it's time to downshift and when it does the whole tail end starts going all over the place. Of course that was partially my fault. By preemptively downshifting beforehand the transmission wouldn't downshift while pressing on the accelerator.
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