Rear wheel drive

[markeyszoo]

My previous several cars, Nissans, Rovers, Hondas, Renault have all been FWD.

Does it affect modern cars? Any special tips or tricks for the RWD is250. 

[Las Palmas]

All wheel drive is the only drive form better for rally and extreme driving than rear wheel drive.

Going uphill with rwd in snow it is good to have weight in the trunk. I once needed my wife to sit on the spoiler of our Toyota MR2 1^st generation to get the car in garage.

For normal driving it does not matter if car has front- rear- or all-wheel drive.

PS.: Not everybody considers normal driving same way. I have been driving a Lancia Delta EVO2 (awd) and several rwd cars. They all handle different, but with correct set up tyres most modern cars are easy to drive and Lexus is absolutely making good easy to drive cars. But with 149 posts on this forum I am pretty sure you know that already.  😊

[Brechin Slate]

42 minutes ago, markeyszoo said:

My previous several cars, Nissans, Rovers, Hondas, Renault have all been FWD.

Does it affect modern cars? Any special tips or tricks for the RWD is250. 

Here you go. 

https://www.motorists.org/blog/pros-cons-rear-wheel-drive-front-wheel-drive-or-all-wheel-drive/

With a question like that you will always tend to get more opinions than scientific answers.

[markeyszoo]

1 hour ago, Las Palmas said:

All wheel drive is the only drive form better for rally and extreme driving than rear wheel drive.

 

Going uphill with rwd in snow it is good to have weight in the trunk. I once needed my wife to sit on the spoiler of our Toyota MR2 1^st generation to get the car in garage.

 

For normal driving it does not matter if car has front- rear- or all-wheel drive.

 

PS.: Not everybody considers normal driving same way. I have been driving a Lancia Delta EVO2 (awd) and several rwd cars. They all handle different, but with correct set up tyres most modern cars are easy to drive and Lexus is absolutely making good easy to drive cars. But with 149 posts on this forum I am pretty sure you know that already.  😊

 

Only first time this week had reason to use snow ECT, never had that before.

[Las Palmas]

2 hours ago, Brechin Slate said:

Here you go. 

https://www.motorists.org/blog/pros-cons-rear-wheel-drive-front-wheel-drive-or-all-wheel-drive/

With a question like that you will always tend to get more opinions than scientific answers.

No mentioning of engines placed in the rear or in the middle of the car. Paris - Dakar in Saudi desert. These cars are not meant for daily driving.

Still no reason to leave a good rear wheel drive car in garage because weather is not good if driver is good.

[Texas]

Remember a FWD car effectively pulls the car forward by the front wheels and a RWD car pushes it forward via the back wheels, 

From my advanced driver training days I remember being told to Not put the power down Too early in a bend with a RWD car whereas you can with a FWD car, FWD will drag you in direction you are pointing, RWD will push you sideways, you can see lots of examples of this on yooToob!!! Mostly not ending well Ha!

[Mr Vlad]

Personally speaking in a vast majority of cases of normal day to day driving the only difference is turning circle. Once you start to put your foot down then differences become more apparent. 

[Marleez]

On 1/8/2021 at 11:48 PM, markeyszoo said:

Only first time this week had reason to use snow ECT, never had that before.

How was it?

[markeyszoo]

11 hours ago, Marleez said:

How was it?

well i was not slipping and sliding so it seems to work.

 

[Linas.P]

Yes obviously driving wheels affects how the car handles - that is RWD handles better under any circumstances, provided you have skills to back it up. AWD are great for off-road, but for daily driving it has more issues than benefits. I have owned both AWD and RWD IS250 and RWD is far far better.

I guess more to your question - should you change the way you drive the IS250 compared to your previous cars... I would say no under 99% of circumstances, in daily driving conditions even if it is little bit slippery it does not matter. There are some extreme circumstances where FWD behaves differently, but you kind of need to deliberately try to put yourself into such environment.

Obviously, correcting car if you lose control is different, but with experience you get to know both. My only advise - when it starts snowing find some empty car part and try it out. I am not saying drift around... just try braking suddenly, accelerating suddenly, turning sharply, accelerating when turning, braking when turning  etc. This will help you to figure out limits of your current tyres and overall behaviour of the car. Really comes handy when you have unexpected moment or event to avoid such moment to begin with.

Besides Lexus IS250 is balanced for "safe" balance, rear tyres are far too wide, meaning that when it comes to cornering grip it acts like FWD car (understeer before oversteer). On my old car I was trying to balance it back to more neutral by fitting narrower rear tyres(instead of 225/255 I had 225/245), but even then it wasn't enough, I feel it needs wider front tyres to eliminate understeer (probably 235/245).

On top of that Lexus has fitted very intrusive stability control which you could not turn-off (there are some methods which apparently works, but that is different topic). This stability control although annoying at points really prevents you from losing control completely unless you are really deliberately trying. 

As for driving in wintry conditions, the only factor which matters is tyres - it does not matter if it is FWD or RWD... on summer tyres you will slide equally with both. Again as I said, I do not alter my driving based on driving wheels, only based on road conditions and only difference in the end is just how you correct the car when you loose control, but it is always better not to get into that altogether... and I already covered that above.

[Zotto]

 

 

Here a couple of links about difference between FWD and RWD

FWD vs RWD - What's Better? (autolist.com)

Front-Wheel Drive vs. Rear-Wheel Drive | Pros & Cons (autosimple.com)

[Linas.P]

I just started reading and what a ton of BS... obviously I blame the author of article and not you Luigi, but c'mon...

Quote

One of the main advantages that front-wheel-drive cars have over RWD vehicles is their improved traction

Absolutely, opposite... perhaps it with very low power or very old vehicles that is true.. but when you drive modern 200hp+ car that is exactly the advantage of RWD, not FWD.... as FWD has to both power the front wheels and steer the car they actually struggle for traction far more than RWD cars. Again ... on slippery incline RWD as absolutely always better... to the level where one of the tricks in FWD car to get up-hill is to drive in reverse... why? Because you get most traction at the lowest point of the car (that is Rear Wheels), so with FWD you will be better off reversing up the hill... they claim somehow that FWD somehow better for that.. just false.

As well clearly author has not understood what traction means... because traction is literally how much tyre grips the road... yes sure there are more traction if you have more weight on certain wheels, but with weight distribution on modern cars FWD and RWD usually has very similar bias... something like ~54/46... so yes front wheels will have few % more traction if the front and rear tyres are same (as we know that is not the case), but as well because they need to both steer and power the car that negates the advantage.  I mean to the level that in practice on modern cars that is no longer an advantage.

Besides author clearly ignores basic physics and weight shift under most circumstances... There are 2 conditions where traction actually matters - braking and accelerating. When accelerating RWD will have more traction because weight transfers backwards and when braking it does not matter because there always going to be most traction on front wheels and you not accelerating so driving wheels don't matter. So the only argument which can be made is that when simply driving at constant speed the FWD will have more traction, but that again is not where traction actually matters.

After reading just few paragraphs, I can straight away say that whoever was the author... does not know how to drive and just recirculating myths and theories. 

This was the first article... 

Second article is much the same, just makes conflicting claims both within itself and compared to first article e.g. it says that FWD provides more feedback to driver when wheels are slipping, yet both first article and second article claims that overall feedback and steering response is worse on FWD... so how comes it provides better feedback then?

Neither talks about Torque steer either, which is a massive issue on slippery road... 

In summary - it is hard to explain differences via forum, the best solution is this - try for yourself in safe environment and you know exactly how it behaves:

57 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

My only advise - when it starts snowing find some empty car part and try it out. I am not saying drift around... just try braking suddenly, accelerating suddenly, turning sharply, accelerating when turning, braking when turning  etc. This will help you to figure out limits of your current tyres and overall behaviour of the car. Really comes handy when you have unexpected moment or event to avoid such moment to begin with.

 

[noby76]

On 1/8/2021 at 9:43 PM, markeyszoo said:

My previous several cars, Nissans, Rovers, Hondas, Renault have all been FWD.

Does it affect modern cars? Any special tips or tricks for the RWD is250. 

Tips: never put your foot down when in mid corner especially in wet/icy conditions. accelerate into corner back off mid corner then accelerate after the corner..  FWD allows you to keep you foot in mid corner RWD might catch you by surprise.

suspension tuning has come a long way which has more or less evened the playing field where by putting power aside has made FWD cars like Renault Megane RS, Honda Civic Type R out handle well regarded RWD cars on both Track and street..

my 2.4 FWD Honda Accord cornered  just like the IS300 i had before it and in some on the limit conditions i actually preferred the FWD Honda where i could actually keep my foot in where as i had to back off in the I300

[Zotto]

Linas, I had all types of car and I well know the differences between FWD and RWD, but you are quite too biased toward RWD.

In normal use, for power till 250 HP, nowadays FWD car are easier to drive and more intuitive to a not pilot driver. That does not mean that RWD today are dangerous, as various electronic devices help to have a safe driving, but , if you are not driving a high power car FWD behavior is more intuitive.

What a unexperienced driver does when, on  a slippery road on exit from a curve, car tends to go straight? He brakes, and increases steering angle: this is a positive reaction in a FWD car, where in a RWD one  is not the proper maneuver (I do not stay here explaining why as you should know).

So, if an expert driver may have  more fun with RWD, putting car in drift (but only after disengaging electronic helps), a normal user could find this "dangerous".

Even in other examples you have described, having  steering wheels that pull toward the direction you aim to, is easier to manage. 

A different topic is the traction , that, at least when moving from a standstill, is more effective where you have more weight, in our Lexuses weight is usually well balanced , but in some cars, even more when power increases, having weight on front and traction on rear is not a good option.

I am sure may people remember how RWD old BMWs had to be used only in dry weather...

Of course, in modern cars you have no problems till tires have grip , without difference between front or rear traction.

[Linas.P]

Just to get this out of the way first - I generally agree with what you said yourself, what I disagree are the generic articles which combined generic-half-truths around internet and present them as facts applicable for ALL cars. Some things they say can be considered "general tendencies", but others are just outright false. Further, even in isolated cases where they may be true articles don't go into details explain why and how, so just making themselves useless. Neither mentions torque steer, which I tend to think is quite important especially when slippery and ~200hp.

As well I agree that I am biased towards RWD, because it is inherently better in most circumstances when it comes to driving dynamics, handling traction, feeling etc. I have owned several FWD cars and I really hate how they handled. And indeed, when correcting RWD car you need to do what seems counter-intuitive at first, hence it is called counter-steering. This is a basic skill one has to practice if owning RWD car and it becomes very natural very quickly.

"brakes, and increases steering angle" - really? I have so many issues with this statement in isolation. Think about this situation again and tell this is really the best action. I mean I agree that this is what inexperienced driver will do, but is it really positive action on any driving wheels?!

Neither normal, nor expert driver should be putting car in "drift" if they not planning it. When driver looses the grip unintentionally then s*** will hit the fan either way. There are like billion variables, but if car enters slippery turn too fast it will be on the side of the road hugging the tree either way. Questions is just how slippery it was and how much too fast it was going. Yes RWD will be in the ditch backwards, FWD forward, but if driver is really inexperienced  and the speed high enough it will be in the ditch regardless... especially if they follow "brake and turn" action.

When moving away from standstill (and accelerating), you always going to have more grip on rear wheels (unless you reversing). Maybe there are extreme examples where that is not the case, but weight transfer to the rear will always be much stronger force than small difference between weight balance on axles. Hence FWD will always struggle with grip when accelerating, especially from standstill. I know there is one flat-earther in this thread who has different opinion on physics, but lets not go there... 😁

Now... we can invent situation - you are on ice where cars just spins wheels on the spot and theoretically FWD grip will better. Let's assume very biased scenario ... say 60/40% distribution, equal Kerb weight and equal tyres on the rear and front, then yes front wheels will have 20% more grip in front. However, this almost never translates into real life scenario. Lets take for example Honda Accord 2.4i vs Lexus IS250 ... will Honda have more grip? NO... first of all because weight distribution is going to be much closer to 50/50% (Lexus is 52/48... like brexit, Honda is 59/41 - pretty much as bad as it gets), secondly because Honda is overall lighter car (1440kg vs. 1570kg) and finally because Lexus as standard has wider tyres (225/245@17 vs 195). The percentages are just relative from best gripping tyre assuming all else being equal - Honda F87% R56% Lexus F99% R100%. So in the end of the day when comparing two specific cars it turns out that even at standstill FWD not necessary has more grip. Same calculation can be done by OP on his previous "Nissans, Rovers, Hondas, Renault etc" and it is likely the Lexus will have more "grip" relatively speaking, just by virtue of being heavier car and having wider tyres really. 

I mean we can really go into a lot of details (which I don't mind), but we not just discussing it theoretically. OP already has IS250, question is - should he or shouldn't he drive the cars differently in some particular way, especially on slippery roads. I have driven IS250 extremely recklessly and extreme conditions and it is very forgiving car. I think the answer here is - he simply needs to learn the limits of his car.

And here I agree old cars... from like 80's and before were not as forgiving. BMW was in no way special, any ore powerful than average RWD car without traction control + no skill + wannabe race driver and we have bad results. Would results be different on FWD car.... no... results will be exactly the same, just in old days powerful FWD cars did not exist.  

17 hours ago, noby76 said:

Tips: never put your foot down when in mid corner especially in wet/icy conditions.

Well... if you not DK and neither you want to hug the tree, then you should not be doing it in any car AWD, FWD, RWD... This is by no means just specific to RWD.

[Mossypossy]

Add automatic gearbox into the equation. Turned off my traction control, put it into sport mode, floored it on a (safe) wet corner and still did not lose traction.

Don't think I am missing any ponies either. Maybe my idea of flooring it is too subtle. If I wanted to crash I could simply drive into a ditch.

[Linas.P]

I guess that is because you cannot actually turn-off traction control completely on Lexus IS and I assume similar system in GS. When it is "off" it let's you play just for millisecond more and just when it feels like the car is going to lose it, then it suddenly comes back.

But overall I agree - you need to try deliberately or do something very very stupid to lose control on Lexus RWD cars of this generation (extends to IS mk3, GS mk4). I guess exception are IS-F, RC-F and GS-F, but that is for obviously reason - they are generally performance cars and not mean for everyday commuting. If you want to let them loose then yes you actually can.

[noby76]

i think we can all agree FWD car layouts tends to be "safer" for majority of car drivers when compared to RWD layout.. so all this gibberish being spat out by you know who with regards to grip level from standstill, weight distribution will be meaningless to the "average" car driver. lets be honest here. how many times do we have to accelerate very hard from standstill (0 - 60) where by grip and traction has to be called into question?

listen i keep saying this and will say it again suspension tuning technology has closed the majority (not all) of the advantages RWD layout had to about 250 -300 bhp. if in doubt i could bring you a few friends i know with FWD cars who will run circles around that RWD RC200t from standstill acceleration, rolling start acceleration and cornering.

modern performance FWD can just be as fun to drive, can grip just aswell, can corner just like most RWD and most importantly safer for the "average" Joe 

 

[Linas.P]

And modern stability control has closed majority if (not all) RWD disadvantages. So what we are talking about here?! If you leave all stability controls in it's default positions and don't do something completely stupid then your driving wheels won't be reason why you left a road.

FWD cars on average may be safer, but only by virtue of having less power and attracting people who are less likely to push them to the limits. If we take the same driver in the same favourable or unfavourable conditions the driving wheels never going to be major factor for safety in modern cars.

RC200t has **** engine which should not exist... and besides that Lexus are focused on making more luxurious and GT cars, not outright track beast. Sure there will be cars like Renault Megane RS - which is dedicated track-day car, nice around the track but otherwise horrible. But this has nothing to do with RWD and FWD layouts, stop comparing apples to oranges. 

In the end of the day all that makes no difference, because question is not whenever FWD or RWD is better, but how to handle RWD car, or whenever it even requires any extra care when driving.

[noby76]

OP has 205bhp END OF

[Linas.P]

Not sure end of what it is...

...are you saying it is not much to be bothered anyway? In which case it was pointless to argue which layout is "safer".

...or you saying it is loads.... in which case you just make a justification for RWD... 

[Las Palmas]

I am happy with the CT with its FWD. Most people can handle a car with that. Would be fantastic if Lexus could make electric engines to put in the rear wheels. Not that the CT has power that justify that, but as mentioned earlier here: on really steep climbs, FWD drive cars do that climbing best in reverse.

For a skilled driver I believe RWD is better than FWD.

Most of the funny cars I have had were RWD. All of the really funny cars I have had were RWD. Only AWD car I have enjoyed was Lancia Delta EVO2. 1994 is long time ago. Still remember it as the most noisy and uncomfortable car I know.

[Las Palmas]

48 minutes ago, noby76 said:

i think we can all agree FWD car layouts tends to be "safer" for majority of car drivers when compared to RWD layout..

 safer for the "average" Joe 

 

Agree with that part.

Please do not ridicule other members of the forum for having different meanings than you have.

[Linas.P]

I could probably agree with that if we compare fundamental layout, bit with all stability control, suspension tuning, weight balancing (all the development for last 50 years basically) not applied.

Yes if you take pure unassisted RWD it will be less forgiving to drive than FWD, but in practice with all modern technology the difference is so minuscule that overall it does not even make a different when driving.

When driving think about road conditions and not the driving wheels of you car. I have driven in quite extreme conditions and there never been occasion where I would think "if only I had FWD instead of RWD here...", indeed I may have though "if only I had better tyres, generally different car like SUV or at least AWD".

[noby76]

19 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

Agree with that part.

 

Please do not ridicule other members of the forum for having different meanings than you have.

 

no one is being ridiculed here Las Palmas, but we are not talking 500bhp + here where we all know require AWD or RWD to exploit that power. others are getting into intricate details about grip levels when accelerating from standstill and weight distribution which was a bit pointless considering we are not talking about a sports car here. 

others including my self tipped the OP on the dont's as a new RWD car owner..  but everyone coudl see how someone else was making it "RWD" is the best thing since sliced bread when we all know it aint.. 😆