Aug 10 2018

Advantages and Disadvantages: Rear Wheel Drive vs. Front Wheel Drive

Many people do not base their car purchase on which wheels drive the vehicle. However, after the purchase, they may realize that have purchased the wrong car.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of both of these? Keep reading to know more.

Front Wheel Drive

As the name suggests, the power from the engine goes to the front wheels. Rear wheels work only for the sake of balance while front wheels do all the work like steering and handling the engine power. You can see yourself engine mounted at the front in front wheel drive cars.

• Advantages

1. Because of their location at the front both the engine and drivetrain form a compact package.  Fewer components are required to connect the two. As a result, weight is reduced which in turn improves fuel economy. The overall production cost of front wheel drive cars is considerably less.  It is a major reason that most cars are equipped with FWD.
2. Front wheel drive cars come with more interior space for passengers and luggage as all the components are located at the front.
3. The weight of engine and drivetrain are concentrated toward the front end of the car. This results in more traction for vehicle in wet conditions.

• Disadvantages

1. Due to the overburdening of front wheels front wheel wear out quickly.
2. In wet conditions, a heavy front provides adequate starting traction but an FWD is inferior to an RWD in all other conditions.
3. Sometimes engine power tends to compromise steering because both are handled by front wheels.  

Rear Wheel Drive

In real wheel driers cars, the engine can be placed either at the front or the rear. But front engine-rear wheel drive cars are the most common and that is why we are going to discuss them here.  

• Advantages:

1. Weight is evenly distributed with the engine at the front and drivetrain at the back. There are several advantages to this “weight distribution”.
2. A rear wheel drive car accelerates faster than a front wheel drive car since the weight is transferred at the back when there is a forward shift in momentum.
3. The engine department is freed from the drivetrain that now sits at the rear. It translates to more space that can be used to accommodate larger engines.

• Disadvantages:

1. Additional hardware is used to connect the front engine with the rear drivetrain that results in more weight. It also increases production costs. Thus RWD cars are more expensive than FWD cars.
2. The presence of the transmission tunnel reduces interior space.
3. Rear wheel drive cars are more prone to become tail happy when cornering at high speeds. As a result, they oversteer and the rear end of the car skids.