With advancing technical insight, we have become better able to control complex systems over the years. Nevertheless, a lot of modern technology has its roots in the past, including front-wheel drive.
Front-wheel drive, steering and driving with the same wheels, it is still seen as a compromise in some circles. In addition, front-wheel drive also gives the necessary headaches in terms of construction. The main challenge: a uniform spinning wheel while the car follows the submitted route. However, the fact that the CV-joint had yet to be invented did not prevent the automotive pioneers from getting started with front-wheel drive.
The creation of Cugnot
If we consider the steam-powered artillery tractor of the Frenchman Nicolas Cugnot from 1771 as a car, it is not only the first car, but also the first front-wheel drive. Cugnot has no problems with universal joints or CV joints, just as with differentials. To begin with, his vehicle has only one front wheel, and the entire steam engine steers with it.
When the combustion engine car was born at the end of the 19th century, the first examples were rear-wheel drives for practical reasons. It is a period in which people experiment enthusiastically, also in Vienna just before the turn of the century. The Gräf brothers, originally bicycle manufacturers, see bread in the car and commission technician Josef Kainz to design one, a so-called voiturette. It will be a cart with a single-cylinder De Dion-Bouton engine. De Dion-Bouton’s motorcycles were in great demand among motorcycle manufacturers in those days, so Kainz’s choice is not entirely surprising. What is startling is that, contrary to what has been customary until then, the motor does not drive the rear wheels, but the front wheels. It never came to series production, nevertheless the Gräfs did have the construction patented. The voiturette has served for years and is now in the Technical Museum Wien, as the first front-wheel drive car.
Commercial breakthrough
The solution of the French engineer Auguste Latil turned out to be commercially better. Latil comes (also in 1898) with a construction in which the front axle of a horse cart or carriage can easily be replaced by a motorized unit.
Victoria Combination
Front-wheel drive seems to be in the air those days. Also in 1898 the Société Parisienne introduced the Victoria Combination. Just like the Gräf brothers’ car, this voiturette is fitted with a De Dion-Bouton engine, but the construction is more reminiscent of that of Latil: the engine steers with the front axle.
The Frenchman Jean-Albert Grégoire invented the Tracta clutch in the 1920s and applied it with reasonable success in the cars that also bear the Tracta brand name.
Although the front-wheel drive concept is still being romped around here and there, a big step forward is being taken with the universal joint, with cars like the DKW F1 (1931) and the Citroën Traction Avant (1934) in a leading role. However, it is the homokinetic coupling that ensures that the front-wheel drive finally reaches maturity in the second half of the 20th century.
This article previously appeared in 2014’s Techzle Classics issue 5.