Daimler-Chrysler Divorce Negotiations Underway

Have driven a rental one. Although it has good torque, it is ponderous,
gives you no feel for the road, the steering is very soft, and handles
badly.

 

i have a fwd mini van and a rwd car and the car is way better in the snow

 

A couple years ago, I got my first 4 wheel drive vehicle. I
recently used the 4 wheel drive to pull myself over some snow,
after one of the rear wheels spun. It sure did the job very
nicely.

--

Christopher A. Young
You can't shout down a troll.
You have to starve them.
..

:
: It is very difficult for me to believe that anyone interested
in the
: ability to travel during limited traction conditions such as
Snow, Ice
: or Mud would even consider buying a vehicle that is not Four
Wheel
: Drive.
:
: In my life, it is either 4X4 or Rear Wheel Drive. A front
drive
: vehicle is totally unacceptable for a person that loves to
drive and
: knows how. There are none parking in my garage and there
won't be in
: the future.
:
: Bruce
:

 

The town car is supposed to be a boat that isolates one from the road.
That's the demographic it's marketed towards. I would hate driving one,
but that doesn't make it a bad car, just one I wouldn't like.

 

You're very much in the minority. Most of us have learned that the
combination of steering and traction in one set of wheels gives
slippery-condition traction benefits that can only be bettered by 4WD. And
if you think that your 300E cannot break loose, boy have you got a surprise
coming.

 

WRONG. You only have more traction in FWD cars where the engine and
transmission are mounted over the front wheels. It's simply because of
weight over the drive wheels.

If you think a FWD car can't have either or both ends break loose, you've
got a surprise coming.

 

I suppose it would be bad optics if they took part of the money they get for
the Chrysler division (assuming they got any money at all) and spent it on
buying the part of McLaren they don't already own.

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns18051.html

John M.
I wonder if Alonso drives a
'94 E320

 

Oh yea, you drive properly, as far as extracting most of what a car
has to offer from it. But you need to be doing that on a private
track, not out in public.

Lets start with a flat floor as close to the ground as possible.

With rear drive, you have to provide for the transmission. You can
have a very long engine compartment and house it there, but you end up
with a very long car. So, following what has been common practice for
decades, you raise a portion of the floor to clear the transmission.
I can't imagine putting the transmission in a long engine compartment
qualifies as being "properly designed" for any aspect other than to
support your idea it can be done. Extra vehicle length, extra weight,
increased turning radius, you name it, they all get worse.

Of course, you can get the transmission out of the passenger
compartment space by mounting the engine transversely. Hey, there's
the ticket. And the motion is already in the right plane, just at the
wrong end of the car for RWD. So lets.... hey! All you need is a
chain and sprocket on each side and run them directly to sprockets on
each rear wheel... just like a motorcycle... right through the
rockers.

But then the rockers are kinda tall, high entry height. But you'd
have an excuse for gull wing doors, that woudl probably leak when
exposed to a heavy dew.

Well, none of this works, so let's accept transmission encroachment
into the passenger compartment space. Now we have the differential to
be concerned with. A fairly large item, and, with a live axle it has
to move. So now we have another deviation from a flat floor. And if
you put in IRS, that's fine, the differential doesn't move, but now
the IRS will encroach substantially, unless you consider something
like semi-trailing arms or swing axles to be "properly designed" rear
suspensions.

All the control you're talking about does is let you increase or
decrease the spin rate after RWD has caused a spin. With FWD, loss of
traction to the drive wheels doesn't cause a spin. There's no need to
control the rear wheels. The car goes straight and they remain under
control.

 

Now that's an interesting idea.

What **is** the value of a car company that is losing money, losing
market share, is non-competitive in the bread and butter midsize
segment (I thought the previous Sebring/Stratus were terrible cars,
very much like the "large" current GM cars, and the new ones aren't
getting good reviews), and basically has a lineup, other than the
pickups and minivans, of niche models? Oh, yea, it has old factories,
an old workforce, huge obligations to retirees, and the only market it
does reasonably well in, North America, is one that every auto maker
in the world wants a piece of.

Could it be they'll have to **pay** someone to take Chrysler?

 

I see, this was your lame attempt at personal attack to try and protray me
as some sort of boy racer. Well, it doesn't change that RWD is better
than FWD, and it can be realized in normal street driving.

I know of no FWD car that has said flat floor. They still have a hump,
it's just slightly smaller. The ride height of the car has zero to do with
which wheels are driven.

You have to provide room for it in FWD drive as well.

Or a very wide one with FWD or a tiny engine.

And yet, that hump is still there in FWD cars. Because in FWD cars the
shifter linkage, exhaust, etc are still run through the center.

Nice strawman.

And have shitty weight distribution because of it, and still have a hump
in the passenger compartment, just a bit smaller of a hump.

You seem to like building absurd senarios and then knocking them down.
Completely and utterly meaningless.

Spoken like someone who has never crawled under a FWD car. I haven't been
under a FWD car that didn't have enough space under there for a
differential. In fact, many front wheel drive cars have a structural beam
for the suspension right where a live axle would be on a rear wheel drive
car and it's nearly as big as one.

The space savings you are mentioning are negligible. Tiny.

Obviously you don't know how to drive. With a rear wheel drive car you can
feel the instability coming on before you've lost all traction and just
lift the throttle a bit and not spin. In addition to that, the front
wheels can steer the car and be used to compensate. That's the beauty of
being able to control all four wheels, if you lose traction on either end
you still have some control to use to get it back and it's intuitive.

However your front driver isn't like that. When it loses traction, you're
just shit out of luck unless you know the counter intuitive things to do. If
you lift the throttle you could just be making matters worse by unloading
your front wheels. If you hit the brakes it gets even worse. Your rear
wheels are just along for the ride and can't help you. And yes, alice, a
front wheel drive car can spin when it loses traction the rear too.

The only difference is, that RWD, like most things that offer the human
operator more control is that there is less tolerance to be operated
stupidly. However the rewards are there for those who know what they are
doing. And like most things made for morons, FWD has serious limitations
when the shit hits the fan or people want to work outside factory
parameters.

 

I take it you meant rear wheels. In any case, lifting the throttle and
decreasing steering input was somewhat intuitive for me. Then again,
counter steering is also intuitive to me as well

 

You just have to get accustomed to it.
Just because it feels that way don't mean it don't handle well.

Years ago my mom had a '79 big Ford LTD. To me it felt the same way you
described and I could never get used to driving it as a young driver.
I eventually totaled it because an oncoming driver on a narrow road blinded
me with their lights. I could not feel what part of the road I was on, went
into a ditch and hit a cement culvert.

 

They could sell it to a group which will take it into bankruptcy,
strip off and sell the minivan division and send the rest to the breakers.
Except that Congress would shit a brick at the union's behest.

 

Dammit... read that over twice and still missed that. Anyway point being
you have to know what you're doing at the limits with FWD.

That reminds me of something I forgot, with RWD in snow, the throttle can be
used to steer

 

Oh, yes, at the cost of loosing driving traction. You do want to go
somewhere don't you? (Not just spin in circles.)

 

I used to rent Lincoln Towncars a decade ago when one company had them
cheap. Could not believe the windnoise. Basically the same lousy front
door weatherstripping design as on my 91 Taurus.

 

Check out Honda Civic and Toyota Avalon. The rest could have flat floors if
car makers wanted to.

 

Again, apparently you don't know how to drive. Use the throttle to enduce
some oversteer and turn quicker than normal. It's fun if you know how to
do it.

 

It will take them many years to recover if it is even possible. Toyota is
eating everyone for lunch. Including Asian competition.

A good combination would be Honda and Chrysler. Honda making the smaller
cars, Chrysler the big cars. And Honda could provide Chrylser with much
needed engine technology for many of their cars.

 

Me? Surely not! (No need... years of your posts establish something
to that effect.)

.... by a highly skilled individual who has a peculiar definition of
normal street driving.

Its a lot smaller. Compare 80 Pinto to 81 Escort. Compare 81 Malibu
to 82 Celebrity.

Actually its a matter that the structure of the car wouldn't be very
good with a completely flat floor and once a very small hump is
created its convenient to use the space.

Baloney. **You** figure out a layout for a RWD car that doesn't cut
interior and trunk room. My examples were just to show you how silly
your assertations were.

This is the second time you've stated the hump with FWD is smaller.
And yet you're still saying RWD doesn't cut interior space.

I'm not the one with the absurd idea that you can package a
transmission and differential under the floor pan/trunk and not cut
interior room.

"Nearly." There you go again.

And its not "nearly"