FWD or RWD - Which is BEST?

Which is better Front Wheel Drive or Rear Wheel Drive? We look at the FWD vs RWD debate from every angle! We look at Cars like the Civic Type R, the Austin Mini, the Toyota MR2 Spyder, and the Camaro ZL1 1LE. We compare Nurburgring laps, Sales Numbers, and Performance between Transversely mounted engines and Longitudinally mounted engines. We even look at motorsport like F1, Indycar, NASCAR, and Formula Drift.

Versus put two automotive giants toe to toe and Joey Rassool tallies up points to see who is the victor. Anything from heritage, performance, and even availability are taken into consideration.

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Donut Media is at the center of digital media for the next generation of automotive and motorsports enthusiasts. We are drivers, drifters, and car enthusiasts who love to tell stories.

[vaillante]

AWD : "Perfectly balanced as all thing should be"
Maintenance, economy : lmao no

[shabbarhassan]

These other hosts are really good to watch when they don't try to be James or Nolan

[avijitkumar]

If you let your head talk FWD wins, if you let your heart talk RWD

[lunarmemo]

I think this is the best way you can decide between the two options:
If you are young and with no children, the RWD is an option you would like.
Once you have kids and need to consider safety during snow and rain, plus fuel economy, the FWD option is one that you need.

[kadeewtf]

"any engine into any car"


be right back, gonna hemi swap a peel p50

[atlfan]

"I'm not launching at EVERY red light"

Really means.. "Sometimes a car is in front of me at a light so I can't launch"

[cristopherflores]

This was like comparing a longboard and a skateboard clearly the skateboard is gonna be more fun to drive at the end of the day so that deserves a point

[oblo]

“No manufacturer is building rwd cars for daily use”
BMW: hol’up

[commonname]

Did anyone else notice when he was scoring after the availability category he said fwd has some catching up to do when it had more points

[JettaMasta]

It's like mom trying to explain to you that the Prius is better than the 86 while standing in the Toyota dealership after you've saved up enough money, and told all your friends from school that you already know how to change the clutch, suspension and short shifter on the 86.

[SuperMaxCarp]

Ryosuke Takahashi would also add that the RWD has the advantage on the uphill because it does not have the burden to power the car and also steer it.

[austinhuff]

The fact that RWD was physically easier to fix should’ve brought them up to at least a tie.

[allenbryllecorpuz]

Donut Media: FWD vs. RWD which is better


AWD: am I a joke to you

[IStrummIbanez]

“Which means FWD is our winner!” Me: woooaaahhhh ok, lets check these comments

[jessicallewellyn]

this one seems a little off, for starters I've replaced more cv's and transaxles then any rwd transmission parts on my cars, and i've owned more rwd cars. probably the most interesting comparison was an 02' mustang and my 01' continental. both had the 4.6L ford motor but the continental went through 4 cv joints and a transaxle @140k mi vs the mustang that was driven harder and still has the factory trans, diff and everything between @210k mi. Also, living in a snow state with a rwd is way more fun because every snow day is a drift day. i don't think this answer is as simple as we all want it to be.

[kameronferguson]

I just want to point out the Level of track records a rwd car has so the fact that it didn't get 5 points there is kinda bs

[brandonyu]

He said “front wheel drive cars have some catching up to do” after he scored the first category.

[pavlelutovac]

"Letting the numbers do the talking."
*proceeds to personally rate every category*

[mikecurry]

I'm honestly really surprised that they didn't mention the static friction in the corners. Friction is basically a resource in the corners. You only have so much of it. If you're "using" some of that friction to put power down to the road, you have less of it left over to keep your car pointed where you're steering

[barefootalien]

I've owned all three drivetrains in various versions, and for me there's no comparison at all.

FWD is cheap to make, but a catastrophe for maintenance because so much is stuffed into the engine compartment and lots of big angles the power has to navigate.

AWD is great if you genuinely _need_ to put down more power than one pair of tires can manage... but for most drivers in most conditions, that's very, very rare.

RWD is the easiest to maintain by far, and _when built well_ is excellent in the snow, far, far better than FWD or AWD for most drivers in most conditions. The problem is that RWD gets a bad rap for mostly American-designed cars that are RWD despite having 70/30-ish weight distribution. The "grip advantage" in poor conditions that FWD gets is _entirely_ based on that terrible weight distribution that so many people have just come to expect as 'inevitable'.

Here's the basic problem: In FWD, you are sending power and control to the same place. If you need more power than your traction can put down, you definitionally have no control, and vice versa. However, since only the front wheels break free, and the rear wheels are more important for staying in an envelope of _recoverability, _ for an unskilled driver, this makes FWD sort of self-limiting (unless you don't listen to your tire expert and put the new tires on the front instead of the rear where they should be).

In AWD, you are sending power to all four wheels, which _sounds_ great, and when you genuinely need maximum possible power to the ground, it is. But it also means that you inherit the problems of _both_ FWD _and_ RWD, which can make them unpredictable in the hands of an amateur when things get dicey.

In RWD, you use one set of wheels to steer, and one set for power. It's the ideal, in my opinion (if we're talking about pure FWD, RWD, 50/50 AWD).

I know, I know, Subaru fanboys will be upset, but here's the thing... the best winter car I ever owned was _not_ my Imprezza with perfect power distribution. I know, shocking, right? I was shocked too! On paper, 25% power to each wheel for four-wheel burnouts is _obviously_ the best. But in real life, so much.

My favorite cars of all three power options (without fancy stuff to get in the way), and my experience with them in poor conditions is as follows:

FWD: Nissan Sentra. This car could pretty much either go, or not go. If it couldn't go, it would very quickly get into trouble. Once you break the front tires free, the car starts to yaw with the camber of the road. Thrust steer can help with this _somewhat_ but ultimately it just felt like the rear was being dragged around like a useless lump. Throwing it around to play, it just... didn't. Like most FWD cars it suffered from crippling levels of understeer. With the handbrake I could get the rear to kick out a little, but not much. Really kind of boring, for all that it was zippy on dry ground.

AWD: Subaru Imprezza. This car could go pretty much no matter what. It could leave several inches of ruts in the snow with the undercarriage components, literally still going while using the front bumper as a plow. Great, right? Well... I'd say "good". Here's the problem. If you're on level ground, it's practically miraculous. Up hills it's obviously the best option. But road camber? There were many times when I'd start up in extremely slick conditions with parked cars to my right, and as all four wheels would break free, I'd just slowly start sliding to the right along the slope of the road camber. Thrust steering isn't as much of an option as it is for FWD, because the rear has a tendency to kick out. So you either make it without side-swiping, or you don't, and have to creep out very slowly without losing grip. Playing with it in the snow was always a little bit disappointing. As long as I stayed on the power, I could retain control, but it always slid further sideways than I wished it would, and the counter-intuitive way in which it wanted _more_ power to thrust-steer into recovery, and taking your foot off the gas would just as counter-intuitively make it completely lose its rear-end and spin made it kind of unpredictable in the snow. Yeah, it could go... but like I always used to tell confused FWD car owners when insisting on putting a pair of new tires on the rear, "If you can't get enough traction to go, you also can't die. If you put the good tires on the front, and _can_ get going, only to spin out, that's much worse than just being stuck." This car _always_ had enough grip to get going... but is that always a good thing? I'm not so sure.

RWD: Toyota MR2 (Mk 2). This was _the best_ winter car I ever owned. No, it couldn't go through snow deep enough to be half way up the bumper, but on normal streets, with crushed-down snow, or thinner layers after plowing, this car had the single quality that I think makes a well-balanced RWD car superior: predictability. Now, admittedly, I had some _very_ nice tires on it (I was a tire sales manager at the time, after all!): V-rated BFG KDWS all-season sports tires, big wide boys on the back (IIRC, 245/45R18, front 215/55R18), but this car never, ever got stuck. It also never slid sideways, or wandered due to road camber or side hills. It just did what I wanted it to do. If I wanted to stay planted, I'd keep the throttle mild and it'd track perfectly. If I wanted to do a slow, graceful snowy power-slide or drift, it was like it could read my mind. IIRC, it had about a 45/55 front/rear weight distribution, and when sideways, had zero tendency to change angle on its own. It didn't have the power to be a drift car, and it had _way_ too much grip with those tires; I could throw it around normal street corners at stoplights at 45 mph and not even a chirp from the tires, and highway onramps marked for 35, I could take at 90+ with no issue at all. When it did start to let go, it did so gracefully and predictably, giving me plenty of warning and never threatening to do anything scary or unpredictable.

So, my take on the three pure-form drivetrains with no gizmos is: FWD is cheap, simple, and relatively safe, but not as good as the hype. AWD is expensive and could get an inexperienced driver into more trouble than they know how to handle (as evidenced by the number of SUVs I see in ditches in the winter). RWD is optimal... but only with a good weight distribution, either 50/50 or a bit heavier to the back, but since _most_ RWD cars still have more weight in the front, it gets a bad reputation not for where the power goes, but for the layout of the car. Mid-engine RWD is amazing!

When you start to mix things up, though, I actually think a primarily RWD car that _can_ send power to the front wheels when required, with traction control, is better by far. My Volvo XC90 just never lost its footing. Never. Turns out, computers are really good at micro-adjustments to ensure wheels never spin, and never lose grip. That thing was just _planted, _ no exceptions, in the snow.

My _worst_ ever winter car? A Chevy Prism. Auto trans, all kinds of ways for power to build up then release like a rubber band, to demolish grip, extremely poor weight distribution, underpowered... ugh.

Oh, of course, my Suzuki Samurai, in 4-Low with hubs locked was a beast and a half... except for that time when the wind hit the rag top and flipped me around like a Hot Wheel being smacked by a toddler, heh. Nothing to do there but hold on and hope... and then effortlessly crawl up out of the snow-filled ditch when the dust had settled. xD