I’m curious what rear-engined cars offer in the 40s-60s time period where many of the in-game bodies have that option.
Basically, what about them is worth the effort of laboring to fix the almost inevitably gigantic over/understeer problems that drag all their stats down, and on a lesser scale, the smaller engine bays in some body types?
They’re cheaper to make, which brings some advantages especially in the budget demographics.
They’re also lighter so they usually use up less fuel compared to front engined cars with the same type of engine.
One thing that really doesn’t help them when it comes to engine size is that they tend to be limited to short engines. In real-life they went around that issue by using mostly 2 cylinder inline engines as well as boxer-4 engines, but we do not have either of those in game currently.
Historically, aren’t most rear-engine cars air-cooled? Since there are no air-cooled engines in Automation, there seems to always be an even worse issue with engine weight, unless you are using really small engines (and as @TrackpadUser points out, some of the more compact engine designs are not (currently) available).
There were plenty of inline 4 rear engines cars too, like Simca 1000, Renault 4CV, Renault 8, Fiat 600, Fiat 850.
Some were water cooled too.
Advantage in early RR cars (in Automation) is the better brake performance (more balanced with small and inefficient drum brakes).
They are lighter compared to the more conventional FR layout because they don’t have the transmission shaft. For the same reason they should have a bit more cabin space too.