Front-wheel drive
The world's first self-propelled vehicle, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot's 1769/1770 "fardier à vapeur", was a front-wheel-driven[2] three-wheeled steam-tractor.
Sometime between 1895 and 1898 the Austrian brothers and bicycle producers Franz, Heinrich and Karl Gräf (see Gräf & Stift) commissioned the technician Josef Kainz to build a voiturette with a one-cylinder De Dion-Bouton engine fitted in the front of the vehicle, powering the front axle.
By 1899 Victoria Combinations were participating in motoring events such as the 371 km (231 mi) Paris–St Malo race, finishing 23rd overall and second(last) in the class.
[8] He promoted and demonstrated several such vehicles, notably with transversely mounted engines, by racing at various speedways in the United States,[2] and even competed in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup[9] and the French Grand Prix.
In 1912 he began manufacturing a line of wheeled fire engine tractors which used his front-wheel-drive system, but due to lack of sales this venture failed.
[10] However, the idea of front-wheel drive languished outside the motor racing arena as few manufacturers attempted the same for production automobiles.
During the second World War, all British vehicles, U.S. Jeeps made by Ford and Dodge command cars used Tracta CV joints.
[13] The United States only saw a few limited production experiments like the Cord L-29 of 1929, the first American front-wheel-drive car to be offered to the public,[14] and a few months later the Ruxton automobile.
[15] The Cord L-29's drive system was again inspired by racing, copying from the Indianapolis 500-dominating racers, using the same de Dion layout and inboard brakes.
[16] These very specific components allow motive power to be delivered to steered wheels more seamlessly than universal joints, and have become common on almost every front-wheel-drive car, including on the front axles of almost every four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicle.
[1] Hupmobile made 2 experimental models with front-wheel drive in 1932[19] and 1934,[20] but neither came into production In the late 1930s, the Cord 810/812 of the United States managed a bit better than its predecessor one decade earlier.
[1] Save the interruption of World War II, Citroën built some 3⁄4 million Traction Avants through 1957; adding their cheap 2CV people's car in 1948, and introducing an equally front-wheel driven successor for the TA, the DS model, in 1955.
His innovation was to create the happy combination of a low centre of gravity boxer engine (flat four) with a special frame.
[22] In 1950 West German makers also reintroduced front-wheel-drive cars: DKW had lost its production facilities in Eisenach (now in DDR) and reestablished itself in Ingolstadt.
Its progressive rate rubber sprung independent suspension, low centre of gravity, and wheel at each corner with radial tyres, gave a massive increase in grip and handling over all but the most expensive cars on the market.
It allows the use of equal-length half shafts and the easy addition of all-wheel drive, but has the disadvantage that it makes it difficult to achieve 50/50 weight distribution (although they remedy this in four-wheel-drive models by mounting the gearbox at the rear of the transaxle).
The driveline was set fairly at centre-point of the wheels for better weight distribution, though this raised the engine, requiring lowered intake systems.
– Hemmings Motor News, August 2011[24] Front-wheel-drive layout had been highly impacted by the success of small, inexpensive cars, especially the British Mini.
[25] This Active Tourer MPV wants to be more stable than a BMW M3, and using the Dante Giacosa-pattern front-wheel-drive layout compacts the mechanicals and saves space for people in the reduced overall length of what will surely become a production 1-series tall-sedan crossover.
– Robert Cumberford, Automobile Magazine, March 2013[26] As engineered by Dante Giacosa, the Fiat 128 featured a transverse-mounted engine with unequal-length drive shafts and an innovative clutch release mechanism – an arrangement which Fiat had strategically tested on a previous production model, the Primula, from its less market-critical subsidiary, Autobianchi.
By using the Primula as a test-bed, Fiat was able to sufficiently resolve the layout's disadvantages, including uneven side-to-side power transmission, uneven tire wear and potential torque steer, the tendency for the power of the engine alone to steer the car under heavy acceleration.
The problem was largely solved by making the shorter driveshaft solid, and the longer one hollow, to ensure both shafts experienced elastic twist which was roughly the same.
The compact, efficient Giacosa layout – a transversely-mounted engine with transmission mounted beside the engine driving the front wheels through an offset final drive and unequal-length driveshafts, combined with MacPherson struts and an independently located radiator – subsequently became common with competitors[27] and arguably an industry standard.
[28] The Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard drove a mass changeover of cars in the U.S. to front-wheel drive.
Despite these developments, however, by the end of the 1980s, almost all major European and Japanese manufacturers had converged around the Fiat-pioneered system of a transversely mounted engine with an "end-on" transmission with unequal length driveshafts.
Peugeot-Citroen themselves also moved over to the end-on gearbox solution when it phased out the Suitcase unit in favour of the TU-series engine in 1986.
The popularity of front-wheel drive began to gain momentum, with the 1981 Ford Escort, the 1982 Nissan Sentra, and the 1983 Toyota Corolla.
Front-wheel drive became the norm for mid-sized cars starting with the 1982 Chevrolet Celebrity, 1982 Toyota Camry, 1983 Dodge 600, 1985 Nissan Maxima, 1986 Honda Legend, and the 1986 Ford Taurus.
[27] The 1959 Mini used a substantially different arrangement with the transmission in the sump, and the cooling fan drawing hot air from its side-facing location.
American auto manufacturers are now shifting larger models (such as the Chrysler 300 and most of the Cadillac lineup) back to rear-wheel drive.
