Kevin Pai

Hi there folks. I am an amateur when it comes to cars and racing so please forgive me if I do ask stupid questions from time to time. After doing some intensive research on all-wheel drive systems, (Reading AWD dynamics from the "www.rallycars.com" website, Eliot Lim's comprehensive AWD FAQ, and an AWD article from Sports Compact Car magazine and any thing else I could get my hands on) I realized how awesome AWD is! Heck, it rules! The 1996 season of the Super Touring championships is proof when the Audi Quattros dominated in all their events. (oh thats another question. Is STW short for Super Touring Championships? And does it have anything to do with the BTCC?) But one thing remains on my mind that hasn't been discussed in any of these articles. That is, what is, or are there any weakness and/or disadvantages of the all-wheel drive system? I read and hear alot of the positives, lets hear about some of the negatives now. (if there any) I remember somebody saying that top speed is limited on an AWD car as compared to FWD and RWD cars. <p>Kevin Pai<br>waitin' on that new S4...sigh<br>

Ray Calvo

Otherwise, AWD is clear winner over FWD in all perfomrance categories and will rpobably give you better tier life by distributing load better over 4 tires (unless you rotate frequently).

ChuckH

But a return plus 50% or more on resale! :-)

Cameron

... because you're just asking the front wheels to do too much. While most "serious" race cars, at least in the prototype and headline arena, will remain RWD for most of my lifetime (my guess, of course).<p>The disadvantages of AWD are weight, complexity, and added bottlenecks in torque transfer (more apparent in Haldex systems as opposed to TorSen).<p>Personally? I don't know much about FWD since I've never driven an Integra, or a FWD A4, or any FWD car for any significant period of time except for a short time driving a FWD B5 Passat V6 which failed to impress. I've always liked AWD and RWD cars, and always liked rear- and mid-engined cars. While I don't know of any AWD mid-engined cars aside from the Bugatti EB110GTRS, there are quite a few very well balanced rear-engined all-wheel-drive cars including the 996 variants and those show cars GM keeps making into Opels that never get produced.<p>I'd say AWD and RWD are certainly the "performance" setups, weight distribution, overall weight, suspension, etc. being the other obvious determining factors. But in the rain, it's tough to imagine something better than an AWD sports car.<p>Cameron

JimV

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ErikR

I'm an AWD nut, but AWD with a 50:50 FR split is less than optimal for dry roads (40/60 or 30/70). So you get a bit sluggish feel to the car. The other splits make the car feel more like a RWD car, but with real traction.<p>The only other disadvantage is that you don't get to drive two cars, summer and winter, like the BMW folks.