^ +1

Top Gear USA (not as good as UK) just tackled this subject last night...The Bentley segment is awesome...makes we want one badly, its a GD tank!

http://www.history.com/shows/top-gea...ta-ice-driving

 

Saying that is very controversial and may get you banned.

 

I also disagree with the quality of the writing. Handling in snow may not be improved but lap times are frequently improved by the ability to out Power down sooner and more of it than a FWD or RWD Car. FWD has tq steer issues and a tire can't put power down and turn at the same time. Steady state corner grip is tire dependent.

I do agree that stupid drivers end up driving way too fast due to the hype.

 

what a bunch of bs

 

They're talking specifically about driving in the snow... And even more specifically... Braking or turning in the snow... Your first step is appropriate tires and in this very specific case... Awd does not help or hurt you if all you care about is braking performance in the snow.

Considering I've spent less than 1% of my live driving in the snow... **** his couch.

I've spent more time losing roll races because the 2wd car I'm driving isn't getting traction.

Dumb premise for an article.

Furthermore who co-drives any 24 hr race that anyone cares about? There is always 4+ drivers. Sounds like the guy raced chump cars and now he's a vehicle expert!

 

"Sure-footed all-wheel-drive handling." That's the kind of lingo you're likely to hear in car ads and marketing material, and it has prompted me to shout at televisions, print ads, and the occasional car-company rep: All-wheel drive doesn't help handling!

So thats why the Gt-R is behind the Viper Acr and Corvette Zr1 on the nurburgring and faster than a Koenigsegg ccx/ccr or a Ferrari Enzo. Or the Australian Nemo Evo(AWD) the fastest time attack car in the world! If AWD doesnt help in handling I dont know what does.

 

You seem to confuse handling with exit acceleration. And who uses Nurburgring as a handling comparison? Everyone knows it's a power track

Points though for Evo both the Nemo and the Cyber for being two beastly time attack cars.

 

My snotty remarks aside, the reason you see so many 4WD and AWD cars in the ditch in snowy weather (and in Fargo, we see snowy weather) has nothing to do with whether 4WD or AWD is "better", it has everything to do with overconfident drivers thinking "I got 4WD!" right before they go over the side.

That and the fact that a just because a car has 4WD/AWD, does mean it stops any faster than any other car.

 

Wait a second. Where is this guy wrong again? I mean his writing style is a bit flamboyant but what he says is true. 4 tires with the ability to spin as opposed to 2 tires with the ability to spin have everything to do with accelerating. Nothing to do with stopping, which tends to be important in the snow. And stopping usually comes down to tires.

 

Why AWD?

Back when, all cars were RWD. The engineers managed to get some of these cars to handle very well. I used to have two Trans Ams in my garage, a '78 and a '79 and these vehicles handled as well on ANY tire as an Evo on the OEM tire.

In winter these cars were near helpless. I'd run Goodyear Eagle snow tires on four corners, the same snow tire the highway patrol ran on their cars, but I would still have to mount chains for a couple of day after a big snow. Snow chains would produce enough traction to engage the posi-traction rear differential and sometimes overpower the steering.

Then along came FWD. At first the engineers didn't have the brakes figured out and in a panic stop FWD cars would always swap ends. This was fun to see if you weren't involved. But then they got the brake bias fixed so that the rear brakes always locked first.

FWD fixed the winter traction problem because the weight of the engine, usually the weight of 60% or more of the vehicle, rested on the front wheels.

Most FWD vehicles had small engines. There was a reason for this. Weight shift on heavy acceleration would unload the front wheels and they would spin. I used to look at FWD DSMs on used car lots and without exception the rear tires would be good and the fronts bald. The solution to this problem was to either go to AWD or go back to RWD. Since the car companies had so much money invested in FWD systems it was natural for their higher performance cars to have an optional add on system that would drive the rear tires.

At the same time great things were happening in the tire world. Snow tires used to be hard with big lugs. They worked best in mud or soft, newly fallen snow. On packed snow they were useless. Then came these soft silicon rubber tires with thousands of sipes. They didn't even look like snow tires but where they worked was on packed snow, the usual condition of roads in winter. Combine sipes with tread blocks and drive in all winter conditions.

Getting a car to handle is an engineering job that can be performed on any drive system, it only takes time. The Evo now approaches or exceeds what RWD cars were capable of back in the seventies.

 

I think a lot of this discussion comes down to driving skills. It seems like the article was comparing daily driving not so much racing. Granted he talking about his racing experiences. Most of us know and will agree that awd is a different beast when racing, but this articles target seems to be targeting more towards the average joe.

For example you could have a person with a very high skill level of driving and put him in a fwd with close to worn out tires and he/she may drive better than the 16 year old teenage kid with an awd or even 4x4 suv/truck. As an experienced driver you may know how to get yourself out of spin-out situations whereas the less experienced driver will not.

From working in the tire industry, I absolutely agree with the statement that tires are extremely important. A good set of tires goes a long way and tires are one of those things that you get what you pay fore (although some companies charge wayyy to much for some of their products, but a lot of that is R&D time, advertising, etc... However material costs of skyrocketed in the last few years.)

I think many of today's car companies market their vehicles to have superior awd systems and make the average buyer, whom is clueless about vehicles, think that they can and will be better at driving just for buying the awd vehicle.

Truth be told we all know that awd helps on take off, but when it comes to braking if you are going to slide on snow in a fwd vehicle, then the awd vehicle will do the same. It doesn't matter how many wheel drives you have it still only has 4 contact patches for braking, so this is where the tire will make a difference and of course other variables; vehicle weight, weight proportioning, etc...

I think it really comes down the driver skill 1st off before we discuss which type of drive system is more superior. We all know the pros and cons to every system for the most part and no one can say that between awd, fwd, rwd that any of them are flawless, they all have their weakness and strengths.