Originally Posted by
BigIn my opinion, over 200 wtq with FWD doesn't make sense unless all you do is roll race or drag with slicks.Hey man, you seem like a well spoken, knowledgeable person. And because of that I figured I'd let you in on my personal experience with torque in a FWD car and how much is too much.
My car makes 237 WTQ and is at or above your magical 200 WTQ number from 4,500 - 7,400 rpm. (
Dyno). With cold performance tires in the summer in a straight line I slip a bit at the top of 1st and there is a hint of traction loss at the top of 2nd. From then on it's smooth sailing. Everyone else with around 300 WHP from a turbo SR20 makes much more torque than I do and they all seem to report massive traction problems in 3rd gear in a straight line and only get grip in 4th and 5th. Obviously torque is the issue, but frankly 200 WTQ is not the magic number on these light cars. On a Mazdaspeed 3 it might be. I have no doubts about that, especially with 18" wheels
. However we don't over-wheel our cars, and we have weight on our side, so we can get some traction where the Mazda might not.
On the road course my car never even hinted at losing traction in a straight line or around corners. I could plant my foot into the accelerator and the car would accelerate and stick until my bravery ran out or I started a 4 wheel drift. With some heat in the tires I was begging for more torque, more power even on the slowest hairpins.
As for the AWD/RWD/FWD argument, you're not going to find people around here who are too delusional. We know FWD is not ideal for most performance motorsport contest. However you said it wasn't good for
any of them.
Originally Posted by
BigI'm sorry but there is no advantage in racing/motorsports of any kind to having front wheel drive.
That's just not true. Front engine cars with FWD are much better at rally racing or ice racing than front engine RWD cars. Anything where traction is
severely limited FWD has an advantage. Obviously not over AWD though...
We can all concede that AWD and RWD are superior in almost every performance aspect that counts and given the chance most of us (all of us?) would take a RWD (or AWD) version of our own FWD car over most any car on the planet. However, there are plenty of us with more than 200 WTQ and gobs of us with much, much more than 200 WHP and in doing so most of us are not over-powering our cars. We still have traction. Just because your Mazda didn't doesn't mean we don't. They are two completely different animals.
Don't think we're bashing on the Scooby. We're not. For the most part this forum loves them. We have plenty of members who own them and/or dream of owning one. If you don't want to trade Cliff for his car, I'll trade you for mine!