Basically think of the behaviour of a car when driving force is being applied to all four wheels instead of just the front or the back. It will bring the nose of the car back towards neutral, which is to say, if your car is oversteering, it will reduce that oversteer unless all four of your wheels have broken traction (which is another thing entirely), and if it is understeering already… well, you really shouldn’t be applying driving force to those front wheels!
There are certain cars that cleverly mitigate this or manipulate the power distribution, i.e. AWD is merely the means by which they can send power to some wheels and maybe even apply braking force to others, and this includes hybrid systems. That allows you to take extra liberties with certain cars, but of course the tradeoff is that it’s heavier (consider 918: 1650kg or so compared to the LaFerrari and P1 at about 1200kg). Or, even, the Focus RS, which is a very porky 1680kg and has that “drift mode” thing that people engage when they want to add about forty degrees of positive camber to their rear wheels by forcefully applying it to the kerb.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
@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.
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!
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.
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.
And yes that is a 3000GT. Scary, yes but not so little at 1800 kg.