That's how I always thought of cars when I was driving the Accord and the Lumina.
and you're right, RWD sucks on snow. Especially with huge bald tires and a torque-y engine.
Sigh, looks like I might be heading towards FWD for the next car :(
- Thread starter B_Fire-3
- Start date
That's how I always thought of cars when I was driving the Accord and the Lumina.
and you're right, RWD sucks on snow. Especially with huge bald tires and a torque-y engine.
Also, incidentally... I don't really like the '93 Vipers. I wouldn't buy anything earlier than a '97 or '98 personally, and the one I drive is a '99. They made a lot of improvements over the years.
But.. Playboy? They made that craptastic and universally-panned Superman game Game of the Year.
But.. Playboy? They made that craptastic and universally-panned Superman game Game of the Year.
hey phil, anyone considering a sti or dodge viper isnt the same kind of person who wants a front wheel drive car.. get it? front wheel drive is crap, you basically repeated what i said, ys its better for the average idiot, and wont lose control like rwd in the rain if you put your foot to the floor. either way you slice it though, an idiot is an idiot and they will run their fwd car off the road too...
\of COURSE awd is superior, especially in bad weather... no one is arguing with you.. but who the hell wants all 4 wheels driving all day... extra tire ware , reduced gas mileage, more ware and tear on the vehicle , extra tranfer case, axles. ect.. awd has its place.. and it dam sure aint for the average grocery getter... if somone is lookin at viprs and sti's... i doubt there is a fwd car on the market they would want... and as we all know, if you put ay kind of REAL power to the front wheels... good luck keeping it in a straight line or put your foot down hard through a corner and try to hold onto the wheel before it drives you off the road... fwd is crap, but yea if your just using a car as transportation and nothing else, than by all means get fwd, but im sorry you can control rwd way better in the snow and rain if you lose control somehow.. (if you know what your doing). as we all know most idiots when they get outa control think the bst thing to do is press the brake pedal to the floor... world is full of idiots
\of COURSE awd is superior, especially in bad weather... no one is arguing with you.. but who the hell wants all 4 wheels driving all day... extra tire ware , reduced gas mileage, more ware and tear on the vehicle , extra tranfer case, axles. ect.. awd has its place.. and it dam sure aint for the average grocery getter... if somone is lookin at viprs and sti's... i doubt there is a fwd car on the market they would want... and as we all know, if you put ay kind of REAL power to the front wheels... good luck keeping it in a straight line or put your foot down hard through a corner and try to hold onto the wheel before it drives you off the road... fwd is crap, but yea if your just using a car as transportation and nothing else, than by all means get fwd, but im sorry you can control rwd way better in the snow and rain if you lose control somehow.. (if you know what your doing). as we all know most idiots when they get outa control think the bst thing to do is press the brake pedal to the floor... world is full of idiots
The OP already acquired (and then wrecked) the FWD car he was eyeing. Since the wreck he has also had his mommy purchase him another one (AWD). He's also banned. I think we can let the thread die now.
transformer_99
Experimental Member
I think you guys are missing the point of that rating system. Those reports may look on the surface like a highly summarized consumer report like you're buying a dvd player or stereo system. Each category is summarized with a rating of 1-10 of very much the same data you get from a thorough testing article from Csaba Csere of Car & Driver, you just don't see the wordy and lengthy article. Heck, even the report card you see there may very well be based upon his collection of data in the articles C&D produces.
But consider the early 90's, when these 2 vehicles were introduced and very comparable as what were classified as sports cars. Performance of an 8L engine vs a 1.3L engine, 10-7 differential in rating is a win for a 1.3L engine, especially when you consider a 5.7L beats the 1.3L with an 8-7 score. So what makes the rest of that final tally of ratings something that the RX7 simply overtook the Viper ? And after the final tally, the Viper that edged an RX7, which spotted the Viper 6X the engine displacement in performance, the Viper found itself like Al Gore in 2000, he wasn't the President and looking for a recount.
Steering and handling, both got 8's, ride quality were both 2's. Wouldn't you expect the more expensive of the 2 to fare better than breaking even ? I read posts that say the tires are better on the Viper, you wouldn't know it from the ride and handling ? And it simply supports the contentions I've been making, a lighter and nimbler car doesn't require the tires the Viper does, yet the handling is indiscernable between a car that costs $ 30-40K vs a $ 65-80K car ? I'll ask you what you're actually paying for ? While neither's tires are going to be cheap, go price them out, that's where the RX7 picked up some of those 3 points for value in it's class, as well as being a less expensive car. Understand, the Viper already has the max amount of meat on the tires it uses, you can always put the next better tire on the RX7 and the grip/handling may even improve ?
The RX7 picked up 2 of the 3 it lost in performance on fuel economy rating. It picked up 2 more in controls/materials. So if a vehicle costing as much more as the Viper how can the controls/materials be 2 rating points inferior ? Again what are you paying for ? Value in class, there was another 3 points. Another point in quietness. The Viper's a brute for sure, the RX7 not much more refined, but the 2 rating points it picked up most importantly were in controls/materials. Anyway you slice it, MT, Playboy, Consumer Guides all came to the same conclusions, the RX7 was better than both a Vette and Viper at that time as an all around car. I could go on and find more articles written by Professionals that arrive at the same conclusions. How many do I have to link/research ? I have a better idea, produce one article from a neutral source that supports your contentions that these 3 are wrong ?
Phil Ayesho
Superior Member
You make a good point... but miss mine...
It is incorrect to say FWD is crap.
The last thing you want to do is talk medicore drivers into buying cars they can't handle.
I am merely suggesting that different drive schemes be categorized by what they are GOOD for. Not a blanket statement that they are good for nothing.
Certainly, most perfomance car enthusiats are not gonna want a FWD car.
That is a given...
Well, actually, for RWD cars to outdo AWD cars they require much larger tires in the rear - to get that traction... those tires are not cheap.
Also- due to directionally biased tires, and differing tire sizes, most high performance cars can not rotate their tires for improved wear and life...
But AWD cars can at least swap fronts for rear to even out wear and get more life.
My AWD TT gets about 28 mpg on the highway as long as I keep it out of sport mode.
I completely agree.
Almost true... expert FWD drivers will tell you that the drive wheels will PULL you thru the turn, you simply have to turn the wheel more. It is changing transmission speed in the middle of the turn which induces torque steer effects. For most folks, a little more throttle will actually stabilize a FWD car in a turn.
RWD, on the other hand, suffers form the fact that the drive thrust is TANGENT to the curve at all times... the thrust you are laying down is literally driving the rear of the car on a different line.
You compensate by ALLOWING the rear to skid out a little bit and try to steer and throttle your way out of it... but when the ass tries to come around in front, you have to steer WITH it... widening your turn.
That is certainly exhillarating... but its also dangerous.
I haveta kinda disagree...
YEs, you can DO more about a skid in a RWD car than in a FWD car...
BUT then, you have so much more opportunity...
and the key exception is the "if you know what your doing" part.
My experience is that most guys think they are much better drivers than they are.
But I am not advocating FWD-- just pointing out it is a good solution for most regular drivers.
By the same token... RWD dominates because back in the day they had no effective way to drive wheels that could steer.
We have a hundred year bias for a drive scheme that was an accomodation to an engineering limitation. RWD is cheaper to design and cheaper to build.
Audi's racing history is a pretty good lesson in how the most ideal solution is for every patch of tire on the ground to share the job of thrust. Just as every patch of tire shares the job of braking and cornering.
When you RWD guys floor it,,, sure, all the weight is thrown on your rear axel giving you excellent traction.... straight ahead.
But under moderate throttle, most of the weight is on the front wheels, just like in my TT...
But my car puts 60% of the thrust under that weight all the time...
What that means is that when I am going from 50, to 60, as I change lanes, I get better acceleration with less throttle.
Now- in the Audi R8- because the engine is in the middle... they put 60% of the power to the rear wheels... beacuse their test show it performed better.
I got to drive an R8 at the track... and I have to say I loved the way that car handled.
And I will admit I am considering a mod to my TT that will put 60% to the rear wheels... just for better flat out acceleration...
But having driven both RWD and AWD performance cars... I think its down to personal taste...
The AWDs are simply more stable yet feel plenty fast for me.
The RWDs are more thrilling... and scary...
Given my skill level... and the people depending on me NOT to get fucked up in a wreck... and my propensity to push things a little...
I just feel a lot safer and get a lot more genuine pleasure out of the AWD TT.
Of course... I did get the one with the biggest engine they could shoehorn in there, and the best performance options...
...Not that I would ever throw down against a viper...
I agree with Phil that FWD is fine for your average inexperienced driver.
If you know how to handle a car, like to power around a corner or accelerate quickly, go with RWD.
If you need to go off-roading or drive on snow, go with AWD
If you're going to drag race RWD or AWD
but FWD is fine when you're not doing any of that. It gives the car handling characteristics more like what most inexperienced drivers would intuitively expect. and under normal driving circumstances, at legal speeds, with the performance-deficient cars that FWD is usually found in... the deficiencies of FWD are probably not going to factor in.
If you know how to handle a car, like to power around a corner or accelerate quickly, go with RWD.
If you need to go off-roading or drive on snow, go with AWD
If you're going to drag race RWD or AWD
but FWD is fine when you're not doing any of that. It gives the car handling characteristics more like what most inexperienced drivers would intuitively expect. and under normal driving circumstances, at legal speeds, with the performance-deficient cars that FWD is usually found in... the deficiencies of FWD are probably not going to factor in.
transformer_99
Experimental Member
Let's keep this going, from page 6 and in reference to the Viper:
tuned and engineered by actual professionals.
The linky for the Bonneville 2nd gen RX7 was a Mazdasports web page referencing a Racing Beat, Inc. design.
http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/dis...tageCommon§ionParameter=heritage04&bhcp=1
Photo Gallery
Yes, I'm certain they would take exception to a "person who has self-admitted that he doesn't build his own computers (essentially these things snap together these days) because it would crash every 10 minutes:
but I would no sooner do that than I would build my own computer from scratch. Sure, it's cheaper, but then after it's done it's going to lock up every ten minutes. It won't have any software pre-installed. It will probably be made from cheaper materials. It won't have any tech support.
with a flippant remark on the order of tuned and engineered by actual professionals that implies Racing Beat, Inc (RBI) are unofficial/unprofessionals with no credibility, use inferior materials and don't support what they manufacture ?
I'm certain this RBI group are a bunch of "hacks" and shade tree/parking lot mechanics that lucked into 530 hp by trial and error, turning a screw or two on the carburetor, advancing the timing, putting octane booster in the gasoline and other tricks/gimmicks. Their gallery goes back to the 70''s, that would be years before Dodge engineers and other staff even hatched up the concept of a Viper. Racing Beat won an IMSA GTU 24 Hours of Daytona their first time out with a 1979 RX7. By 1982, with a GTU class vehicle they were winning GTO events 10 years in a row. I guess they are not professionals by any sense of the word. By implication, Mazda engineers when they sat down and designed any one of the 3 generations of RX7, they weren't professionals either in their tuning & engineering ?
tuned and engineered by actual professionals.
The linky for the Bonneville 2nd gen RX7 was a Mazdasports web page referencing a Racing Beat, Inc. design.
http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/dis...tageCommon§ionParameter=heritage04&bhcp=1
Photo Gallery
Yes, I'm certain they would take exception to a "person who has self-admitted that he doesn't build his own computers (essentially these things snap together these days) because it would crash every 10 minutes:
but I would no sooner do that than I would build my own computer from scratch. Sure, it's cheaper, but then after it's done it's going to lock up every ten minutes. It won't have any software pre-installed. It will probably be made from cheaper materials. It won't have any tech support.
with a flippant remark on the order of tuned and engineered by actual professionals that implies Racing Beat, Inc (RBI) are unofficial/unprofessionals with no credibility, use inferior materials and don't support what they manufacture ?
I'm certain this RBI group are a bunch of "hacks" and shade tree/parking lot mechanics that lucked into 530 hp by trial and error, turning a screw or two on the carburetor, advancing the timing, putting octane booster in the gasoline and other tricks/gimmicks. Their gallery goes back to the 70''s, that would be years before Dodge engineers and other staff even hatched up the concept of a Viper. Racing Beat won an IMSA GTU 24 Hours of Daytona their first time out with a 1979 RX7. By 1982, with a GTU class vehicle they were winning GTO events 10 years in a row. I guess they are not professionals by any sense of the word. By implication, Mazda engineers when they sat down and designed any one of the 3 generations of RX7, they weren't professionals either in their tuning & engineering ?
Wow, that was a really long post that completely missed the point.
Are YOU implying that every tuner-enthusiast moron/Paul Walker-wannabe out there driving some riced-out economy car with spinning rims and neon lights on it has had their ride tuned and engineered by the Mazdasports team?
No, I think not. They've been tuned by themselves because if they can't afford to get a real car then they probably can't afford to hire real engineers, like the Mazdasports team, to tune their vehicle. They order parts online or get them from auctions or junkyards etc. and then work on their cars in their driveways. Or maybe they pay more amateur local tuner shops to work on their cars for them.
I was not implying at all that somehow the engineers at Dodge are more professional than those at Mazdasports. I'm sure they're both good and talented people, without any salient discrepancy in their amount of skill. The difference comes in when someone buys a factory-tuned Viper because they know they are badass right out of the box, and then someone else buys an RX-7 because they've seen videos of how fast they can go when tuned by the talented guys over at Mazdaspeed. They then try to emulate that by tuning their cars with substantially less talented guys (themselves or the guy at the local garage) and probably end up with less of a car.
Further, even though I'm sure the engineering skill that went into the car at Bonneville was substantial, that car was tuned for one thing: to set a speed record. I wouldn't want to drive that one either, even if it was crazy fast. It would probably make a shitty daily driver and likely would break down frequently, if it was even street legal at all.
[edit] replace "Mazdasports" with "RBI" above. too lazy to go back and fix it myself. Never heard of RBI but whatever, I'm sure they're talented guys, too.
Are YOU implying that every tuner-enthusiast moron/Paul Walker-wannabe out there driving some riced-out economy car with spinning rims and neon lights on it has had their ride tuned and engineered by the Mazdasports team?
No, I think not. They've been tuned by themselves because if they can't afford to get a real car then they probably can't afford to hire real engineers, like the Mazdasports team, to tune their vehicle. They order parts online or get them from auctions or junkyards etc. and then work on their cars in their driveways. Or maybe they pay more amateur local tuner shops to work on their cars for them.
I was not implying at all that somehow the engineers at Dodge are more professional than those at Mazdasports. I'm sure they're both good and talented people, without any salient discrepancy in their amount of skill. The difference comes in when someone buys a factory-tuned Viper because they know they are badass right out of the box, and then someone else buys an RX-7 because they've seen videos of how fast they can go when tuned by the talented guys over at Mazdaspeed. They then try to emulate that by tuning their cars with substantially less talented guys (themselves or the guy at the local garage) and probably end up with less of a car.
Further, even though I'm sure the engineering skill that went into the car at Bonneville was substantial, that car was tuned for one thing: to set a speed record. I wouldn't want to drive that one either, even if it was crazy fast. It would probably make a shitty daily driver and likely would break down frequently, if it was even street legal at all.
[edit] replace "Mazdasports" with "RBI" above. too lazy to go back and fix it myself. Never heard of RBI but whatever, I'm sure they're talented guys, too.
no, I'm sure that they are. But again, you are missing the point.
If the very professional engineers at Mazda spent so long tuning and engineering the RX-7, and then someone buys one with the sole intent of getting it home and promptly fucking with that tuning and engineering.. then it doesn't matter how skilled or professional those engineers at Mazda are. Their careful work has been fucked with and compromised.
Also, the RX-7 isn't designed as a halo car or to be a super badass performance car, it's a mass market car designed to have broad appeal. and it does. It does exactly what it was designed to do. It sells for cheap, it picks up the groceries, it handles "sportily," it gets decent gas mileage, all at the same time. Kudos to those Mazda engineers.
The fool has spoken. All turn away and ignor... oh wait nevermind. You're way ahead of me, guys.
Just a thought:
It's no fun arguing with the severely retarded. You can't sound clever responding to some of the impossibly stupid things they say, regardless of what intelligent or witty twist you put on it. If you take something so abysmally stupid that it defies comprehension, and try to respond to that with a clever comeback, you're just going to make yourself look dumb by extension. The ONLY way to avoid looking bad when someone utters such idiocy is to ignore it completely, lest ye be tainted by it yourself.
Arguing with people who are just modestly dumb can be fun. You can make jokes that go over their heads and laugh about it, you run logic circles around them and watch while they desperately try to keep up.
But the severely retarded... they won't even be able to begin to follow the trap that you are creating for them. They won't play along. They just spout inane incoherent and irrelevant nonsense. If you try to communicate back on their level, eventually you're going to be reduced to responses of "you're stupid"- because that's all that they're going to understand and there is no flow to the conversation to create more elaborate or developed responses.
When you do that, you end up looking almost as dumb as they do. So, even though it doesn't win you any points to do so, to avoid putting yourself in the red, the only wise course of action is to ignore them outright.
It's no fun arguing with the severely retarded. You can't sound clever responding to some of the impossibly stupid things they say, regardless of what intelligent or witty twist you put on it. If you take something so abysmally stupid that it defies comprehension, and try to respond to that with a clever comeback, you're just going to make yourself look dumb by extension. The ONLY way to avoid looking bad when someone utters such idiocy is to ignore it completely, lest ye be tainted by it yourself.
Arguing with people who are just modestly dumb can be fun. You can make jokes that go over their heads and laugh about it, you run logic circles around them and watch while they desperately try to keep up.
But the severely retarded... they won't even be able to begin to follow the trap that you are creating for them. They won't play along. They just spout inane incoherent and irrelevant nonsense. If you try to communicate back on their level, eventually you're going to be reduced to responses of "you're stupid"- because that's all that they're going to understand and there is no flow to the conversation to create more elaborate or developed responses.
When you do that, you end up looking almost as dumb as they do. So, even though it doesn't win you any points to do so, to avoid putting yourself in the red, the only wise course of action is to ignore them outright.
D_Gunther Snotpole
Account Disabled
I promise that it is indeed the wisest course of action, I don't promise that's what I'll choose to do.
D_Gunther Snotpole
Account Disabled
FUCK. That's the third time I've been pwnt this week.
Here's my retaliation:
Aninote.com - Hazelgod just got OWNED!
Here's my retaliation:
Aninote.com - Hazelgod just got OWNED!
