Well, FWD is popular for a few reasons:

1. FWD offers very good traction and directional control at low speeds on slippery surfaces. This becomes quite valuable when you are trying to climb a narrow, slippery hill lined with parked cars. In the bad old pre-traction control days, when a RWD vehicle began to lose traction climbing such a hill, the road's crown would often cause the back end of the vehicle to drift to the right, often into the waiting fenders of Uncle Fred's '75 Buick LeSabre. With FWD, as the driving wheels could be steered, such gravity-induced lateral drifting could be countered with a twitch of the steering wheel, and compared to a RWD car, the driver could apply more power for a longer duration while maintaining his intended direction of travel. Result? You're up the hill - no shoveling necessary.

Ah, but doesn't traction control negate this FWD advantage? Um, no. Remember that traction control is simply monitoring the availability of tire traction and accordingly metering the amount of power transferred to the driving wheels to prevent excessive wheelspin. Generally speaking, the front-end weight bias of a FWD car (static front end weight distribution is usually in the 60%+ range) forces the front tires to dig more aggressively into a soft/slippery road surface, making the maximum amount of traction available for motive purposes greater than that for a RWD car that may have 50% or less of the vehicle weight over the drive wheels. As such, less torque can be presented to the drive wheels of a RWD car, and maximum wheel speed is diminished, making it tougher to power out of deep snow. This circumstance is one reason that most traction control systems have a defeat switch.

2. Vehicle packaging - Anyone remember compact RWD cars from the Seventies? Passenger space was often compromised by the intrusion of the transmission and driveshaft tunnel and the fore-aft positioning of the rear seat was usually dictated by the need to allow room for the rear axle and differential to bound around during rear suspension cycling. This also impacted trunk space. (Note that I'm referring to those cars that had a live rear axle). With FWD, the entire driveline is packaged in the front of the vehicle, allowing designers a greater opportunity to maximize interior and cargo room within a given exterior size. Result? Well, look at the effective interior and trunk room of a RWD Ford Crown Victoria and compare it to the effective room found within a 2007 Chevy Impala. Not a great deal of difference, despite the much larger exterior dimensions of the Crown Vic. And the Impala V6 offers comparable performance to the larger Crown Vic V8.

3. Production cost - Smaller cars use less raw materials. Most FWD cars have a relatively simple driveline installation in which the engine/transaxle are plugged into the vehicle from underneath in one shot. No longitudinal driveshaft to manufacture and install, etc. Result? Potentially greater profit for the manufacturer.