[jadcock]

Front wheel drive has many inherant advantages over rear wheel drive. Unfortunately, all the automotive press tells you that anything fast has to be rear wheel drive and that's not so. The Cadillac Sevilles hustle down the road faster than many more expensive RWD imports.

You obviously have better traction in the snow, in the rain, etc. If you live in 75% of the United States, you probably deal with snow at some point during the season. This in itself isn't a reason to switch to FWD, but there are obvious advantages when the white stuff falls. Imagine this scenario -- you're trying to pull out of your neighborhood, which isn't plowed, onto a busy road that is plowed. With FWD, you just have to inch your front wheels out there and jam the throttle and you're gone. With RWD, you have to make your way all the way out into the road before your drive wheels even start to get traction! It's also much safer in the snow to the common driver. RWD in the snow is prone to severe oversteer if you're not careful. FWD is very benign in the snow and much more drivable. When that RWD guy is stuck spinning trying to make it up a hill, you can drive around him smiling.

FWD is also cheaper to produce, with fewer parts, meaning the car is less expensive to you.

It's much more fuel efficient than an "identical" RWD design. With FWD, all you're turning is the skinny half-shafts and wheels. With RWD, you're turning that long heavy propeller shaft back to the rear end, the differential, the big heavy axle shafts (they've gotta be big, because they're so much longer than FWD shafts), and the wheels. It takes more power to turn heavy equipment; this is power lost in turning the equipment versus getting your car down the road. Not to mention all the static weight of all those parts. That rear axle probably weights 400-600 pounds. That's DEAD WEIGHT that slows you down when you're trying to get going. There's a reason that a stock '96 Deville will get down the dragstrip every bit as fast as a stock '96 Impala SS -- weight and parasitic loss advantages.

The advantages are obvious. About the only place that RWD is functionally superior is in heavy-duty use (semis, pickups, etc.) and on a road course. During normal driving, modern FWD vehicles are very safe and capable performers. Don't let the marketing guys fool you.