Randy Pobst: Front-wheel-drive understeers? Think again. | Articles

Front-wheel drive understeers, right? Everybody knows that. Don’t you? 

But wait, did you ever drive a 1988 CRX? Ever see PD Cunningham in one of his RealTime Racing Acura Integra Rs? I sure did, in the windshield and the mirrors of my Tri-Point Engineering Mazda6 back in the good ol’ days of World Challenge Touring Car competition. No push.

[Restoring one of the most iconic Acura Integra Type Rs]

Fact is, they don’t have to. Why would they? Standard answer is all that weight on the front, right? 

Well, just hang on a minute. Isn’t that weight why they’re good in the snow or rain? Why wouldn’t that work in the dry, too? And Randy, aren’t you always preaching about weight management? How does transferring weight and load to one end of the car or the other make it stick better, not worse?

Have I got you thinking? Any driving instructor worth their sunburn will advise you not to lift suddenly in a corner ’cause it throws weight forward and makes the rear light. If weight improves grip in front when you lift in a corner, why would it hurt grip in the front of a car, especially a FWD?

Well, I’ll tell ya one of the main reasons: because almost all front-wheel-drive cars have the same size tires all around. Yep, think about that. What are the tires sizes on powerful rear-drive cars, especially mid- or, God forbid, rear-engine cars? The same? Hay-yull no. Some examples: 2024 Porsche 911 GT3 has 255/19 fronts, 315/20s rears; Ferrari SF90 gets 255/20 fronts, 315/20 rears. Now let’s come down to earth: Mustang GT Performance Package has 255/19 fronts and 275/19 rears. 

Toyota GR86? 215s all ’round. Yeah, it’s balanced. FWD is not.

It makes sense to size the tire to the load, and that’s where the front-drives get in trouble. These are all street cars, so where does most of the load go when you add people and luggage? Yep, on the rear. So for safe, full-load handling, a FWD needs enough rear rubber to handle it. Safety ruins the fun–again.

[Wheel width: Is wider always better?]

And what about the CRX and race cars I mentioned? These cars were required to run the same size on all four corners, so they all used the trick of rear steer. In 1988, Honda introduced an utterly amazing suspension designed to minimize the understeer typically found in FWD–and in their low-priced daily driver Civics. Man, I loved them for that. It went away a couple generations later–just too expensive. But wow, in…