Front Wheel Drive - FWD

It's easy: Where the engine only drives the front wheels. Even I said, "That's it? Are you sure?" In order to tell you the way it works, I have to include the history; so sit down, relax, & just read.

It all started between the years of 1895 & 1898; an automaker from Austria named Gräf & Stift created a "mini car" that was powered by the engine being in front of the vehicle instead of the back. This powered the front axle which made it known as "The First Front-Wheel Drive Automobile". There are only two manufactured in the whole world!

Anyway, when the actual automobiles first started coming out, that's when the experiments started with the Front-Wheel Drive. A man named J. Walter Christie was actually working on a FWD car that he can promote & "show off" by competing with it at a variety of speedways in the United States. By 1912, he got confident enough to start manufacturing FWD for fire engine tractors; but sales weren't as high as he hoped for so he failed... unfortunately.

In 1924, the Miller 122 racecar was one of the first vehicles to compete with Front-Wheel Drive. Since the idea was still considered to be "out there" with the automotive industry, no real automotive manufacturer decided to pick up on the idea. About five years later, the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) was determined enough to produce a three-wheeler Front-Wheel Drive vehicle. This only lasted until about 1936 because sports cars & touring models finally became available to the public & that's what consumers preferred to buy. By this time, all of the foreign models included FWD & by the late 1930s, the United States released the Cord 810 with the engine behind the transmission which offered better steering & better weight distribution.

When 1948 rolled around, some French automaker named Citroën made the FWD even more popular by placing the flat twin engine in the front wheels. In 1954, an automobile manufacturer by the name of Alfa Romeo was testing with his first FWD car; it had the same layout as the Citroën model, but since it was based in Italy & Italy had some financial troubles after the war, this idea had failed, too. Five years later, the British Motor Corporation released the Austin Mini; this vehicle was in actuality, the first car that had a four cylinder engine that was installed obliquely & not like your average FWD engine would be installed. This structure entitled the space for passengers & luggage in the car. It eventually caught on & now, that's the formation that we have in our modern cars today.

Mini Cooper made this format popular by 1959; but by the 1960s, Simca (another manufacturer) decided to design it by keeping the engine & transmission in line, but transversely set up-which is the layout that we use for our Front-Wheel Drive cars today. In 1978, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy had all American-Made Economy-Efficient vehicles be made as FWD; and by 1982, Front-Wheel Drive was the basic form for mid-sized cars in the United States. This eventually caught on with Japan manufacturers so all of their cars were beginning to be sold as FWD. When the mid-1990s rolled around, most American vehicle producers only sold a few cars that had Rear-Wheel Drive.

As of today, most cars sold worldwide are FWD & only larger model cars such as Chevrolet & Ford Trucks are beginning to have the option of RWD included with them; and even smaller cars like the Ford Mustang include RWD since it has so much power!