FWD's increased traction in the snow is all that would sway me, but it's not significantly better than the RWD and complexity is greatly increased with FWD. Our Honda Civic, great little car, FWD, does no better in the snow than the 240D. I haven't had the pleasure of driving AWD or 4WD in the snow.

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1983 240D 3.0T 4-speed manual, now sold

1989 Subaru GL Wagon 5-speed Touring Edition

I don't see any increase in complexity with FWD. In fact, in most cases FWD is less complex. There's no drive shaft and the attendant u-joints and bearing hangers, and the final drive is a much simpler spur gear rather than a hypoid bevel gear.
FWD in snow is great if the road is straight and flat. Negotiating an uphill corner while trying to maintain speed is very frustrating and the steeper the hill the more frustrating it gets.
FWD does make for more efficient packaging and lower weight and manufacturing costs.

Because the PRV had a whopping 55 more hp then what was in the early X19's: 130 VS 75HP, talking about sports cars,.

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1979 Black on Black, 300CD (sold), 1990 Black 300SE, Silver 1989 Volvo 780, 1988 300CE (vanished by the hands of a girlfriend), 1992 300CE (Rescue).

I believe that is the primary reason most inexpensive cars use FWD.

It's a very good reason too.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugo90/2952061729/ This car was built to push employees cars stuck in the snow in the Oldsmobile company parking lot.

My grandfather bought a new Toronado when they were introduced. He hated it, sold it after 6 months and went back to driving caddies. I was kind of flaky for a 70s domestic car.

I really like the high HP 66-67s.

Depends on what you want to do,when i lived up north we used to have some really serious small sedan races on frozen lakes and any RWD car was totally useless.Corvairs had enough traction and would accelerate pretty well on ice but when they came to the turn, impossible! AWD is great to get around with but many drivers get in trouble with them in bad conditions because they drive so well but they dont STOP any better than FWD or RWD. Don

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Red Green "This is only temporary,Unless it works!"

97 E300D 157000 miles
87 300TD ?141k? miles

I think he had a '66. There was a funny story involving my dad and my uncle borrowing the car and getting it airborne for a significant distance.

I once read a pretty good article on pro-active AWD such as Audi vs a re-active AWD system found in many other cars. I will be damned if I can find the article now.

Our family's first front wheel drive car was a newish 1982 Chevy Celebrity with a 110 hp 2.8 liter V6. Fitted with 185/80-13 studded snow tires, this car could not be stopped in Winter. I could take it up narrow, snow-covered, s-curved residential side streets that would have left a RWD Impala or Bonneville fishtailing in the slush. Since 1991, I've driven FWD or 4WD and have no interest in looking back.

My SDL is my first RWD car. Given the cheepie tires that are on it my TDI easily out handles it. (Hey I bought it with the crappy tires... and annoyingly they still have a lot of tread left) I've gotten to really like how my Jetta drives... it's very predictable, and the understeer is fairly minimal IMHO. It pulls great around, and coming out of a corner. One of the benefits of having good tires (The winter tires I have on it now have more grip in the dry then the all seasons on the SDL ) I have yet to try and take the SDL around some quick corners, something I mean to correct this coming spring... Hopefully I can convince the guys running the next track day that the badge on the back stands for Sport DeLuxe

But... do any of our cars really have enough power to have RWD make a difference?

-J

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1991 350SDL. 230,000 miles (new motor @ 150,000). Blown head gasket

Tesla Model 3. 205,000 miles. Been to 48 states!
Past: A fleet of VW TDIs.... including a V10,a Dieselgate Passat, and 2 ECOdiesels.
2014 Cadillac ELR
2013 Fiat 500E.

My only experience with FWD is in a 92 Olds Cutlass Ciera and an 86 Chevy Citation.
All in non-snowing areas.
Both caused no extra problems due to the FWD with the exception that certain areas were extremely cramped to work in.
The main item I desliked was the larger turning circle when attempting a U-turn. More so with the Olds than the Citation.

Not my own; but, where I worked I changed the extremely hard to get at Water Pump on a Dodge Caravan. It required removing the Motor Mounting plate attached to a front Cover on the Engine and the removal of that Front Cover in order to get at the Water Pump. You also would have had to do the same thing to change the Timing Belt.

So if someone plans to buy a FWD vehicle I suggest you take a good look at the Engine and see how easy it might be to change parts that are common to wear out.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

This is an interesting comment, because it shows how thing change with time. In the late 1950's and early 1960's there was a lot of debate about which was best. Two of the chief objections to FWD were complexity and cost. Another was the extra tire wear on the front. ( Remember 10,000 miles for a set of tires was the average life expectancy at that time.)

We take CV joints as pretty normal; back then they were cutting edge. Compared to a std U joint, CV joints are complex.

Cheap cars used front engine and RWD--Ford Falcon, Ply Valiant, Dodge Dart, and later the Chevy II. Chevy tried the novel approach of Rear Engine, RWD, and was blown off the sales charts by the humble, but reliable Falcon. Only some low volume "exotic" foreign cars used FWD, and they were not generally cheap.
Today, with the FWD technology well in hand, FWD has become the cheap solution.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags