IIRC the Skyline GTR’s AWD system turns RWD in cornering and goes back to 30:70 on corner.
There’s a reason why rear wheel drive is still considered the ideal drive for a sports car/race car.
My humble opinion on AWD:
Advantages:
- Power distribution can be manipulated
- If you have enough power to break traction a lot, it’s faster off the line
- It’s easier to get unstuck and retain control if you experience certain kinds of slippage
Disadvantages:
- It’s heavier and more complicated
- The heaviness is extra front mass so unless your car is specifically engineered around that the AWD-ness just means adding understeer under power, which is great if you wanna drive fast-ish but you can’t actually drive, so you buy an R8
- People forget about the lift-off oversteer, which is harder to correct past a certain point
Some of these are a bigger deal than others, obviously, depending on who you are. I personally feel that the AWD is only worth it if you go far enough to exploit its characteristics e.g. Evo IX, 918 etc. My jury’s out on Subaru as a whole.
2 Likes
My humble opinion about that Challenger is:
Noooo! Muscle cars should be RWD! A 60-year old tradition of wheelspin and drifting, gone. Why, Dodge, why?
I have nothing against the AWD system itself but it just doesn’t fit in a Challenger.
It looks good tho.
You forgot about the parasitic loss of power. That thing just kills performance.
I ran against a WRX Sti 2005, stock, 280+ hp. Well off the line, sure, it rips all 4, while I tend to stay in one spot and burn the tires. Rolling start in 2nd and we’re dead even, and I barely ticked over 230hp on the dyno. More so, at 3rd (just over 100 kph) and all the way to 260 kph I pull away, and my car is 100 kilos heavier. We also had very similar track times.
1 Like
All the way to 260 km/h? How built is your car?
Lightly, i got a +20hp and +35nm over stock and a flatter torque curve, and the best 0-100 I could ever manage was 6.8, stock is 7.7, and I’d say there’s more to the time in a set of Vredestein Ultrac Sessanta which I was wearing up to this year. Sadly they won’t make them anymore and if Im honest the competition has caught up a few years ago
There’s the build list of my old engine, i’m rebuilding the thing from scratch atm.
1 Like
0-100 is kinda iffy anyway on older cars. Ever done a 1/4 pass?
Also places like Jalopnik and TTAC are claiming that Mazda CEO has no plans to build a bigger sports car/Rotary but after digging around on /o/ I have found this
Which seems more credible than what the journalists are toting… Do you guys think Mazda would give up on it?
Only a 1/8th and that was 2 engines ago, on a 3 liter with 188hp on tap. 9.807 ET
Of course this car it will be made!
And the engine (16X is called. 1.6L, or 800cm3 x 2 cm3), is patented, and it shows that the exhaust (and the turbo) is in the top port, and the admission on the bottom.
And is direct injection.
And they call rotary people insane 
@vmo I hope you’re right. They’ve been toting the 16X for 8 years now with no real results. To be fair those 8 years half is spent trying to re-energize their other line up.
But I bet you if Mazda is serious they will likely beat Toyota to the punch. The Toyota-BMW thingy will likely NSX itself despite there being running prototypes and be launched sometime in 2020.
1 Like
This is what I was trying to refer to earlier when I said AWD had better off-the-line traction and “stability” in the corners.
In all honesty, a FWD car will always be easier to drive and handle in the snow…
But all-wheel drifting is soo fun! I’ve done that with my fam’s Suburban (4x4) around local roundabouts. 
And honestly, I don’t mind getting an AWD Challenger. There will still be RWD-only trims, and all-wheel drifting with a Challenger in the snow sounds Super Awesome!
Drifting in the snow actually sounds boring, if I’m honest. In any case, if you want an AWD V6 Coupe then you’re better off with an Audi A5
For me, it’s all about looking cool (personally I very much like the looks of the Challenger), and the Challenger does happen to be cheaper (by over $5,000), so I’ll stick with it.
There are multiple reasons why it’s cheaper, but if it’s about looking cool in the snow - then yeah, probably your choice.
2 Likes
2 Likes
Mazda is a diferent company.
The philosophy is to make the things different vs the competitors.
thanks to this, and the wankel, the company survived.
That’s not a Mazda. That’s a Mitsubishi 3000GT, if I remember my cars correctly. Scary little monsters.
True but they’re in a big pinch now and their newest CEO seems to think the Miata is enough to set it apart.
To be honest, nothing will ever drive up their name like a true RX-9. Nissan currently has a pretty premium image despite selling utter garbage because of the GTR. Mazda is trying to premium-ize their line up one model by one model but they will really never break the semi premium image until they have a proper Rotary Sportscar that is at least 911 level in performance.
I hope they bring back the RX-8 though, to think they made a 4 door sedan somehow rival a Honda S2000 in handling is nothing short of amazing, and the RX-8 has no true succesor or competiitor today.
@Madrias He was referring to an earlier post 
And yes that is a 3000GT. Scary, yes but not so little at 1800 kg.
Ah. My bad @vmo. Didn’t see it was a reply to an earlier post.
I’m American. Half the cars I see on the streets are probably heavier than 1800 kg, and if I remember the 3000GT correctly, some of them had twin turbos and AWD, so, they’re still scary.
If a car is less than about 3500 lbs, I’d consider it light (depending on what type of car it is, of course.)
For reference, my 1986 Mustang is about 3000 lbs, and my brother’s 1987 Camaro is about 3200 lbs (or about 1450 kg) And a 1967 Mustang GT is about 3400 lbs. My daily, the 2004 Alero is around 3000 lbs.
1 Like