Rear-wheel drive is once again in ascendance.

[Via Kaus]

That's not such good news in the Northern regions. Front wheel drive is superior to rear-wheel in snow handling, and all-wheel drive tends to make drivers overconfident.

John,
it's not the vehicles that make people over confident. It's their own arrogance, their supposed knowledge of all things automotive.

WAY down south here, every few years we have one hell of an ice storm, or a good sized snow. Ice and snow the road crews really can't do much about.

Every TV station runs stories of some newly arrived northerner, with a car, truck, or 4x4 in a ditch. The dialogue is always the same.

"We thought if we got to the main roads we'd be OK. I sure thought front wheel drive/ 4 wheel drive/ all wheel drive, would hold on that ice!! We never have the roads this covered over in (enter states name from north of Mason-Dixon Line here)"

The fallacy lies in their lie. Sometimes the roads do get closed, they are slick when it snows, and front wheel or 4 wheel is BETTER than rear wheel, but drivers still have to know how to drive when the roads are marginal.

In all my born days I've never seen a driverless vehicle, plowing into something or someone. Driverless vehicles usually just sit there. So the problem probably lies with that loose nut behind the wheel.

LOL. I know what you mean Steve. I recall once about 20 years ago I was slowly (35 mph max) making my way home in a rare upstate South Carolina snow storm when a car northern license plates blew past me. In about a mile and a half there he sat, sideways, in the median. :)

You see most of our SC snow storms, for some reason, usually start out as sleet and freezing rain and then the snow comes in and covers the slicker stuff over. Mr "I was born in (insert northern state here) and I can drive in this so get out of my way you ignorant redneck" didn't realize the white fluffy stuff hide a more dangerous frozen surprise.

From the article: "In 1982, 46.6 percent of Canadian passenger cars featured front-wheel-drive. By 2001, that number increased to 94.8."

This means that BMW (all models), Mercedes-Benz (all but the A-class), Corvette, Camaro, Trans-Am, Mustang, Toyota MR2 and Supra, Acura NSX, Honda S-2000, most Volvo models, Lexus LS, Aston Martin (all models), Ferrari (all models), Lotus (all models except the second Elan), Ford Crown Vic, Nissan Z, Lincoln, Porsche (all models), Mazda Miata and RX7, etc TOTAL sales were less than 5.2% of the market? Doesn't seem correct.

Personally, I want the safety benefits of being able to stop and steer during the dry and wet paved road driving that makes up 99% of my total. Front drive cars do not do as well in this respect.

I have noted that here in rochester, NY, it seems to take about two weeks after the first serious snow, for drivers to regain their 'snow legs.' And I mean people who've lived here all their lives, and should know full well what's coming...

Me, I'm that questionable traction mode, the moment I see more than two flakes stick to the road, but then, I first learned to drive in the late winter, and did mucho bicycling before that. (the point being that you *learn* caution and defensive 'driving,' when everything, even mopeds, outweigh you...) And for the record, of the five vehicles I've owned so far, all have been front-wheel Chrysler products...

Personaly I like the rear wheel skid. I've put it to use, I was raised with rear wheel drive, but I think that front wheel is better. It doesn't suit me, cuz I take tighter turns than I should, while expecting a fishtail skid, not just in rain, but in even a dominant rain.

I think that rear wheel trained drivers are better drivers, but it's good that FWD cars, especially with front end engines make for a more generaly safe car, built for the masses.

It took me 4 or five significant (well kinda significant) accidents in a unpopulated area while learning how to drive my rear wheel car, to understand how cars worked.

Maybe I'm just a semi-rural kid who was taught how to break his car while he was learning how to protect his car, and everyone else involved.

I will always chose a rear wheel, unless it's ugly, but FWD, as long as their are Front end engines are god, and in fact, even with a rear engine car, the physics still, KINDA favor FWD's.

I just hope there is still a decent car available with a rear wheel drive.

Over here in northern Europe the winter "surprises" the drivers every year and there is a surge of crashes. Sigh, the infinite stupidity. Then everything resumes pretty normally. (In recent times even the trains have had problems as we rely on some crud manufactured/designed in Italy or Germany and not proper winter gear.)

Nowadays when you do your driving licence, you have a mandatory extra course for "driving when it's slippery" (for lack of better term). There's a track which has ice (in the summer an oil-water-mixture) that you drive with an instructor and you learn to control the sliding and brake and steer right when losing control. (If you hadn't learnt it before by yourself.)

I grew up driving in upstate New York and have now spent over a decade driving in Virginia, where it does occasionally snow in winter.

It's pretty clear that northerners do know how to deal with snow better--which is what you'd expect. Yeah, they lose some edge between winters (in other words, the period between June and August), but they generally know the basics--go slower, keep more separation distance, turn corners slower, etc. When it snows down here, I always see a lot of vehicles in the ditch or in fender-benders (certainly more than I saw up north), usually because people Just. Don't. Slow. Down. Of course, up north the snow stays on the ground all winter, so you only have to "re-learn" once each season (and you have less time to forget), whereas here, the snow might hit two or three times over a few months, and people tend to forget the rules in between the storms.

As for the subject, I have primarily driven FWD my life and can generally navigate snow pretty well. I have tried RWD in snow and found that it is really difficult. The two ends of the vehicle tend to want to go in different directions, and basic things like pulling away from the curb over the hump of snow left by a plow can be extremely hard.

The anecdotal claims that Yankees caught in southern snowstorms are idiots are just that--anecdotes. You ignore all the southern state license plates of cars you see in the ditch and remember the one from up north because that's the unusual one. But it's not typical.

True Bill there are more Southern plates in the ditch during a Southern snowstorm, but then there are more Southern plates on the road in the South. DUH.

My point was that I can't count the times I've been told by some misplaced Northerner that "youse guys just don't know how to drive in snow, ice, etc." So it is "entertaining" when he's proven wrong to some degree at least.

As for anecdotes, I remember another time when I worked at a car dealership and a man on vacation from "up north" left his car to be repaired. We fixed it and parked it at the back of the lot. Big ice storm hit that night and later the next day the guy shows up to get his car (main roads had been scrapped by then). One of the service guys told him we couldn't get his car (or any of the others on that part of the lot) out because of the half-inch thick solid sheet of ice covering the back parking lot. The customer proceeds to curse and shout how stupid we were etc. and demanded his key. He was given the key and he proceeded to TRY to retrieve his car, only to give a pretty good “Icecapades” demonstration. He then left in his rental car without saying another word to us stupid rednecks.

While living in Alaska (Fairbanks area) both my wife and I had front-wheel-drive cars. I'd grown up in a place (Sacramento) where it never once snowed since I'd gotten my driver's license, and my only snow-driving experience before Alaska was one time crossing the Sierra on chains for a job.

In Alaska the only time I had a serious control problem while driving, resulting in damage, my car wasn't scathed -- someone else swerved to avoid me in my left-skidding 180 and hit a power pole. After that first winter we started putting studded tires on our vehicles in winter. No more accidents.

I don't know whether that would have been true had either of us had RWD, but every time it snowed I always saw 4WD vehicles in the ditches.

Of course, most of the winter in/around Fairbanks it's so cold that the only place icy roads are really slick is where traffic sits at a red light, their engine heat melting the surface of the ice.

My 180° skid happened on a relatively warm day, temp in the twenties-above-zero as I was trying to stop for a red light.

Reading around, I get the feeling that the rear wheel drive advocates think it's better because rear wheel handles slightly better in curves, it's cooler when you're accelerating, and you spread the division of labor between your front and rear tires FWIW. They dismiss the benefits of front wheel drive like better handling in slippery conditions, more interior space, lower vehicle weight, and cheaper manufacturing.

Bill,
when it snows/ sleets/ ices here, the rednecks stay home. That is WHY we see, and remember the plates from up north down 'ere in dat ditch.

I should have included in my rant, that both days it rains in SOCAL, people lose their minds on the road too.

Karl: I don't agree with your summary. RWD has better accident avoidance capability on both dry and wet roads. FWD, 4WD, and RWD all have similar "handling abilities" in snow, (poor) but econobox RWD has a disadvantage in ability to accelerate on snow (Porsche 911 owners get to laugh here. Their RWD cars outperform FWD on snow as well as dry and wet roads.)

FWD only has more interior space compared to RWD cars without independent rear suspension. I admit that FWD has a slight weight advantage, but I will gladly trade lower manufacturing cost of FWD for the lower maintenance cost to RWD. I've spent a lot more money replacing half shafts in my few FWD cars than on the driveshaft parts of my many RWD cars.

Finally, I like the tighter turning radius capability with RWD. I can park my girlfriend's RWD E300 Bank Vault far easier than my much smaller FWD Saturn SW1.

Dan, I doubt I have much experience in the matter, but I didn't notice any real difference in handling between the few FWD and RWD cars I drove, except that front wheel drive handles much better in snow. Independent rear wheel suspension doesn't eliminate the driveshaft. Many vehicles have the driveshaft passing through the passenger compartment. But that space is often wasted in a FWD car as well.

As far as maintenance costs go, I seem to recall that FWD cars from the big Japanese carmakers (Toyota, Honda, Nissan) still are the lowest in the market relative to their original sales price and still retain the most of their value. RWD may be better, but they weren't building them.

Ultimately, I just don't see a signficant difference between front wheel and rear wheel drive. I don't drive in a parameter space that makes those relevant.

FWD cars work fine in most driving conditions and for most drivers. However, if you get into a track situation where you really start to push a FWD car then eventually you get to a point where the tires just can't cope with all the energies being imparted upon the suspension. What you end up with is a huge understeer problem while attempting to power out of a turn. Also, FWD drive cars reach a certain amount of power input from the engine and you start to get a real bad wheel hop and torque steering problem under wide open throttle acceleration. RWD is analogous to performance because the jobs of steering the car and powering the car are split between the 2 sets of tires. Also, the fact that the power is pushing a RWD car the driver can adjust the cars center of mass with the right foot. This gives some measure of control on the attitude of the nose of the car through a turn and thereby allows one to carry more momentum through the turn. I find being in a torquey RWD car plowing through a S curve to be absolutely exhilarating.

In terms of repairs most manufacturers make the servicing of the half shafts relatively easy. In fact repair shops only charge a lot for half shaft/cv joint replacement because it only sounds like a complicated and difficult service. The hardest part is breaking the large 185 ft/lbs carrier nut that holds the shaft onto the hub. Otherwise, I can do a Honda Civic in about an hour because the suspension on that car easily swings out of the way to access the shafts. Now when the rear axle on my Ford Mustang got bent that was a nightmare. The whole axle had to be dropped and dismantled. The axle tube was then heated up and bent back into place and the rear end rebuilt to the tune of $1400. I'd much rather deal with a CV joint repair over a axle bearing problem any day of the week. On the flip side the transmissions and differentials in FWD cars are more sophisticated and thus can translate into higher servicing costs. Hell on many FWD models you have to pull the engine just to get the transmission out. So I guess there is a give and take to the situation.

My next car will probably be a Subara WRX STI. Yes it looks like a completely riced out car with its enormous spoiler on the back. But underneath the rice box exterior is a tried and true race car. This is an all wheel drive car but what is nice is there is a knob that lets one select the power distribution between the front and rear wheels. Wanna get good slick weather traction then put the power to the front. Wanna WTF own someone on a twisty asphalt/gravel course then kick the power to the rear. It is hust to cool in my opinion to pass a car up like that in ones life time.