Re: Re: Peugeot Back ... rwd comments
From: Gnarly 505stx (gnarly505stx@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed 15 Dec 2004 - 05:05:58 EST
Thomas John <thomas@ikonengold.de> wrote:
....I totally disagree about the statement "front wheel drive is the
future".
ofcourse RWD is superior. race cars use it, police cars (USA) use it (with fringe exceptions), prestige cars use it, etc. when i sold new volvos (1/2 rwd), i used to say, "Real cars are rear wheel drive..." and we sold a lot more 960s than nearly all other volvo sales people :)
but first and foremost, car manufacture is a business, for better or for worse...
i believe its apparent that if companies, especially small ones in the large tight market want to survive, FWD is necessarily the future, especially if they are going to take advantage of the American market. fwd is cheaper and easier to build, with higher profit margins.
as volvo-isti and as Swedes, we were sadder than the next guy to see a company with a strict RWD heritage step away from it in Sweden. and now that the company has backing with DEEP pockets, we see other volvo-isti irrationally hoping the company can fish out a new RWD platform, but it's futile. normal new car buyers are almost NOTHING at all like us. only the smallest, most insignificant numbers of them care or know anything at all about true driving dynamics and the principles of motoring tradition. those are just esoteric concepts that dont make the list of what car companies need to do to make money, especially when its easy to simulate those attributes to a mostly ignorant buyer. and in the name of profit and survival, there is nothing disingenuous about it. they never said they were defenders of the traditions of the motor car. we just decided we would ascribe that role to these companies, because they used to be so slow to change and because evolution was more
acceptable than revolution in auto design. in the newer, tighter market, these conditions just arent so anymore.
sad!
it's just as honda says here in the US, "SIMPLIFY."
its amusing to see a few american cars coming back around in NEW rwd versions, necessarily with sophisticated traction control. but its also interesting to see the results: the first one, lincoln LS (on the Jag S type platform) FAILED miserably and lincoln canceled plans to introduce another RWD and is now planning FWD only.
Cadillac introduced an Opel here as the Catera. no one bought it and its a target or ridicule, but it was just a place holder until the new cads were ready. two are RWD and just went on sale. mostly, no one talks about them being RWD, but they talk about their other styling characteristics.
chrysler just introduced RWD again in its top of the line (with much help from parent Daimler-Benz) and everyone is talking about RWD in this car. we'll see !
but, on the ground, in show rooms (a place i know well!), especially in the northeast, new car buyers in the $25,000 - $37,000 range still ask, "Is it front wheel drive?" in the first 45 seconds! FWD is the simplest, easiest "fix" in the minds of most american new car buyers to the problem of driving everyday on snowy, icey, slushy roads... not to say you cant educate some of these people, but its the mainstream, mass market where most of the $ $ $ are for better or for worse i say.
jay
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