Why does everyone say rear-wheel drive is better?

Answer

Hi Bart,

It is not that everyone says that rear-wheel drive is better, otherwise all the statements you write are correct.

For most cars in combination with an average driver, front-wheel drive is much more interesting and, above all, safer. A rear-wheel drive car tends to oversteer when cornering (the rear of the car breaks out to the outside of the corner). While a front-wheel drive car usually has understeer behavior (the front of the car slides to the outside of the corner or the car goes more straight than the front wheels indicate). Understeer behavior is much easier to control: you see that you are not going to make the turn and automatically release the accelerator pedal and usually this is enough to eliminate the understeer behavior and the car still takes the turn in a safe way without moving further need to make steering corrections. With oversteer behavior (rear wheel drives) your rear will break out, at that moment it does not always help by letting go of the gas you should countersteer and certainly not brake, which would be a logical reaction for many people, but that makes it even worse so that you make a spin and end up next to the road.

Why are rear-wheel drive cars still being made? This is especially advantageous when you have cars with a lot of power. When you accelerate with a car, most of the weight moves to the rear axle, the front wheels come off the ground, as it were. This means that if you want to leave quickly with a front-wheel drive car, it is much more difficult to maintain sufficient grip on the road here than with a rear-wheel drive car because the rear wheels are pushed onto the road, as it were.

Then there are some advantages to rear-wheel drive, but then you really have to be a rally driver, then you can use the oversteer behavior to make corners faster: you can then steer the car with the front wheels via your steering wheel and with your accelerator you can also use the rear wheels to make further adjustments via a controlled oversteer behavior and thus come out of the bend faster.