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The powertrain layout of a motorised vehicle such as a car is often defined by the location of the engine or motors and the drive wheels.. Layouts can roughly be divided into three categories: front-wheel drive (FWD), rear-wheel drive (RWD) and four-wheel drive (4WD).
A front mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout (FMR) places the engine in the front half of the vehicle but behind the front axle, which likewise drives the rear wheels via a driveshaft. Shifting the engine's center of mass rearward aids in front/rear weight distribution and reduces the moment of inertia , both of which improve a vehicle's handling .
The front-engine front-wheel-drive layout also has this advantage. Since the engine is typically the heaviest component of the car, putting it near the rear axle usually results in more weight over the rear axle than the front, commonly referred to as a rear weight bias. The farther back the engine, the greater the bias.
The earliest example of the form appeared in 1932, with the design and construction of the prototype Maroon Car by chief designer Harleigh Holmes at Coleman Motors, an established builder of Front- and All-Wheel-Drive vehicles based in Littleton, Colorado. [1] The car had front-wheel drive and was powered by a rear-mounted V-8 engine.
In this case the lateral forces at the tire do not act at the center of the contact patch, but at a point behind the center. This distance is called the pneumatic trail and varies with speed, load, steer angle, surface, tire type, tire pressure and time. A good starting point for this is 30 mm behind the center of the contact patch. [citation ...
where is the force on the front tires, is the force on the rear tires, is the wheelbase, is the distance from the center of mass (CM) to the rear wheels, is the distance from the center of mass to the front wheels (+ = ), is the mass of the vehicle, and is the gravity constant. So, for example, when a truck is loaded, its center of gravity ...
Front-engine design is an automotive design where the engine is in the front side of the car, connected to the wheels via a drive shaft. [1] The main types of Front engine design are: Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout, the traditional automotive layout for most of the 20th century.
Intersecting the axes of the front wheels on this line as well requires that the inside front wheel be turned, when steering, through a greater angle than the outside wheel. [2] Rather than the preceding "turntable" steering, where both front wheels turned around a common pivot, each wheel gained its own pivot, close to its own hub.