Quote:
Originally Posted by Laird Scooby
It's a fallacy that FWD is better in snow and ice, propogated and perpetuated by the media to help sell FWD cars. It wasn't until Ford had a big interest in Volvo they produced a FWD car and let's face it, there's plenty of snow and ice in Sweden in the winter!
It's simple physics and weight transfer that makes RWD cars better in snow, as you accelerate, weight is transferred to the back of the car, when you brake it goes to the front.
Using those weight transfers, it's easy to see that in a FWD car, you will begin to lose traction on the front wheels as you accelerate. Also if you brake and the front wheels lock, you lose all steering, can't use the gears to slow down as you've already lost traction on the driving wheels and also you can't put your foot down to flick the back end round like you can with a RWD car.
I remember in the late 70s/early 80s seeing a journalist on the local ITV news trying to prove FWD was better in snow and ice. She tried driving up a hill forwards. It didn't hapen, she got a few yards up and sat there with the wheels spinning. Then she announced the trick was to reverse up! 
Turned her car round and reversed up with more or less no problems. However the basic fact was the driving wheels were now at the rear of the car propelling the car up the hill. This effectively made it RWD but she still tried insisting FWD was better, even if you had to reverse up hills! 
There are many other reasons why RWD is much better in snow and ice so don't let anyone tell you otherwise!  |
Well, at one stage I had a 2.0 Capri Laser as a company car, useless in the snow, on that day I drove it a few yards and had to change to the Mini which was much better.
And, I remember sitting behind a Police Rover 3500 that could not get up a hill in the snow, slowly drove past him in the Mini. They did not look pleased!