You have to have literally no mechanical sympathy to do an FWD reverse donut. I have too much mechanical sympathy to do a 1st gear burnout, even in the wet.
It'll do burnouts, but he hasn't ever let me do donuts in it. I hit 110 in it yesterday. Huh? Car's are so much tougher than people give them credit for. You wouldn't believe how much abuse they'll hold up to.
You're right, I have never driven any fwd that I had any sympathy for. I've also never driven a 4 cylinder that I've had any sympathy for.
Well seeing as it is my daily and around $2000 has been spent on it, I would like to keep it in the condtion it is in. On the other hand though. The other excel i used to drive, that used to get hammered, shifting on red line every gear, downshifting so aggresively it locks up the fronts, chucking it into corners at top speed mainly this one, and not giving a shit if i spun it going 110kph and flat spotted the tyres. I can add more but you should get my point.
Holden's sales are on a decline & they've fallen behind Toyota, Hyundai & Mitsubishi in sales with Ford gaining on them. The Commodore is Holden's best selling car by a significant margin. Safe to say General Motors have well & truly f^cked up.
It kinda sucks to see it go, but honestly I'm not that impressed with the new "upgrades" over the years, I've not seen anything very special as of late. The LS3 was somewhat interesting, but not that much more impressive than the older engine. Maybe a supercharged edition somewhat like the Hellcat (with less power obviously) would make me more interested. I will admit that I've cared a whole lot less about new cars in the last few years, so my opinion may not be very useful.
Tall FWD cars (Base model RAV4) are fun as heck because they can do super long burnouts. Never done an FWD donut, RWD is still king. An i4 RWD car can be plenty of fun, even my non turbo 240 with like 115hp can be drifted if you try hard enough.
FWD is only superior in the eyes of the closed minded. There's a reason why the Integra Type R was one of the best handling FWD cars of the 90s, not one of the best handling cars. Typical nose-heavy Fail Wheel Drive characteristics made sure of that. Imagine if all 4 wheels spun instead of the fronts, it'd almost compete with the R-34 Skyline. They don't launch properly, they're prone to understeer and torque steer no matter what you do (it's physics), and they have a usable horsepower cap of about 325-350 before both the aforementioned problems become exponentially worse.
My friend's focus is fun to romp around with, but it gets annoying really quick if you're trying to actually get anywhere quickly. I've played cat and mouse with that thing in a parking garage with the Crown vic and it just can't compete. Can't put the power to the ground and actually get anywhere.
You just watched one destroy a skyline. I mean destroy. "Fail wheel drive". Kind of a joke honestly. I honestly blame car journalists for not knowing SHIT about how vehicle dynamics actually work. I met plenty of people from road and track mag who couldn't change the suspension on their One car, but are fit to tell absurd fallacies about cars, most of it stemming from a undeserved sense of elitism. They can't be made to launch? They can't hold up to a PROPERLY tuned rwd? It's just cool to hate on fwd cars i get it, but if your citing "physics" as a reason fwd cars can't be fast and competitive when set up right, you understand neither tuning or physics. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go dispute a cogent argument that has plenty of supporting evidence with nothing more than good old conventional wisdom.
I only see someone struggling to keep a Fail Wheel Drive Civic under control and the R33 skidding slightly.
Excellent. Let's watch a cheap fwd car driven well take the fight to the big kids but than find 100 reasons it wasn't legit or good enough. So in general the thought process is something like this "wow that little prepped econo box just destroyed (insert any car worth 5 to 10 times as much)! Oh but he had a bit of understeer and his car isn't the brand or layout I like". Pretty dumb. Fwd has inherent strengths along with its weaknesses. Not only weaknesses.
Well what you are suggesting is a normal conventional roundabout. However what you were responding to was a turbo roundabout. I would suggest that you do some research on turbo roundabouts before bashing them, there are reasons why they are slowly replacing conventional ones. With a turbo roundabout you pick the correct lane going into the junction and then follow that lane. With a typical roundabout (with more than one lane) you need to merge between lanes when travelling over them. This makes traditional roundabouts have more points of potential impact than a turbo roundabout. Older drivers who aren't good at learning do tend to struggle on turbo roundabouts since they have never been taught how to use one though and may treat them like traditional roundabouts which tends to lead to accidents, but in general turbo roundabouts tend to be easier to use.
Yes, it's strengths include, but are not limited to: 1. Being cheap to buy 2. Being cheap to modify 3. Reverse donuts 4. Amateur rally Also, I never said they couldn't hold up to a properly tuned RWD or even AWD car. They can. They absolutely can. They just aren't better. You're right, they have both strengths and weaknesses, but I feel their weeknesses outweigh the strengths. You have to spend so much money to get a FWD car to handle properly that you hit the point of diminishing returns and should have just started with a car that actually handles correctly, like an MR2, for example.
On the topic of launching with FWD cars they are at a disadvantage. It is neither expensive nor difficult to make a FWD car handle "properly", you just need to know how to drive them. If you try and control one like a RWD car you are going to fail miserably. I also saw someone mention controlling oversteer. To combat oversteer in a FWD car you need to accelerate and rurn into the oversteer, this way the front wheels help to pull the car out of the spin. This is the opposite to RWD where you need to let off the power to allow the rear wheels to regain traction.
