Customs Front Wheel Drive Hot Rods

Me and one of my friends were discussing how awful this would look. I know its been done, but have never actually seen it myself. For entertainment, has anyone got any pictures?

No Cords either.

 

Nineteen thirties Traction Avant perhapes ?
Looks channeled, chopped and sectioned from factory,
No running boards, low, long and looking every bit the poster child for body lines,
and yes front wheel drive.

I got to admit I am not tempted to go FWD,
but I am quite in to using FWD plant as RWD with maxed set back,
I see plenty of scope for using parts from late model FWD,
to build say 'engine behind cab' 32 truck.

 

Do a web search for the Summit / Trepanier (sp?) 4 WD 32 roadster... amazing rod. Gary

 

Tommy Ivo

 

there is a Morris Minor Traveller over here with Peougot 205 FWD running gear...sumat tells me it's a diesel to....other than that I can't really think of any.The Traction Avants are very cool cars, look real swoopy but only available (generally) as 4 doors and to my eye don't look quite right..they need a chop and 2 dooring for a start!Sas Hunter, over here built a 32 roadster using an MR2 mid engine set up (it's only the drive shafts and hubs that are different for that engine in FWD set up..or so I have been told)..nice car if not really HAMB material...I also remember a T bucket witha FWD tornado V8 in the pick up bed from some time in the late 70s..from memory it either had a tunnel ram or a blower on it too!
there are pleanty of kit cars over here that use FWD setups in mid engine configeration....the Honda Integra and Civic type R motors seem popular for some reason...

 

think miller/ford or pretty much any front drive miller racecar!

 

1928 miller front drive:

 

buddy of mine did a 56 ford pickup with a tornado front wheel drive set up, couldn't tell it at all .l

 

I saw one at a swap meet this spring.
It was a fat fender Ford Tudor with a Toronado setup.
The firewall was cut back and there were no inner fenders.
You coldn't really tell til you opened the hood.

Jeff

 

Two door roadster

 

This is the Crosley powered sprinter originally driven by a woman.
Lots of inspiration to take from this one.

 

I guess this qualifies as a hot rod............

 

I''ve really enjoyed the build article on the lakester. Any idea if it will be ready for Bonneville this year?

 

Citroën BX diesel, if it's the same one. I saw a feature in Minor Monthly a few years ago. I wasn't impressed: I think it had the stock Citroën plastic aero hubcaps, and the front suspension spheres poked through the wings, or had some sort of ugly bumps over them. It sort of misses the point of being a Morris Minor.

But as regards a FWD rod, I think it can work as long as one goes for a longitudinal engine layout with the engine behind the transaxle. I can imagine one based on a Renault 4/5/6/16, because it already has wishbone/torsion bar rather than strut/coil ifs, and all the steering geometry sorted. It has to be seriously tiny, like a SWB T. But I think a polished transaxle between Deuce-like frame horns could be quite cool.

But if I had only one rod to build that wouldn't be it!

 

Starbird did a Merc custom on a late model Chrysler FWD chassis.
Hot rods tend to have too much of the front end visible to pull it off unless you embrace it. Think like the Millers shown or an old 3 wheel Morgan.

 

Posted this in another thread, but 30' Auburn Boattails have FWD, lots of engine and a small body...

and they look good, too

 

Neither the Morgan nor the Auburn are front-drive. The Morgan might have the engine suspended out in front of the front axle line, but it's driven by the single rear wheel.

The Auburn was likewise RWD: at that stage all the mechanicals were bought-in. EL Cord reserved the lateral thinking for cars that bore his own name.

 

Sorry,

I was looking at Auburn and thinking Cord... momentary lapse of reason!

 

1933 BSA chassis;


Fairly sure DKW were making FWD in the late twenties,
As were Panhard, and others.

I could possibly see the point if you want to sit the floor real low,
or build some thing like the Panther Mobile,
where not having to have an ugly tunnel straight through the middle of the passenger compartment becomes part of the 'look'.

I don't see FWD as 'looking awful' in it's self,
in fact I might argue that driving the wheels at the same end of the car as the engine, is far neater and thus from a visual point scores over the strange practice of putting the engine at one end and driving the wheels at the other end.

Many early FWD makers claimed all kinds of advantages for thier systems,
but I have long suspectted that any improvements over the RWD product of the same era were more down to the suspension/reduced unsprung mass,
rather than the choice of driven axle.

 

L29 cord was very cool just had a ton of small problems keepin them on the street back in the day

 

I'd forgotten the Deek. Two-stroke twin; transverse if I'm not mistaken, behind the gearbox. I believe it had some sort of very simple unibody, too.

I think the main thing in the early days was that FWD was going to impart a bit of understeer. Conventional non-independent suspension systems were limited by the geometry of spring base and track being unequal. Decent roll stiffness meant a disproportionately harsh ride. To reduce the spring rate while maintaining roll stiffness meant increasing the spring base, for which the rear of the chassis offered more scope. So cars ended up with too much roll stiffness at the back, and a tendency for the tail to step out unexpectedly. FWD tended to balance that.

 

Never been a fan of 'wrong wheel drive'. There's a limit how much power you can put down,torque steer can be a problem,not to mention understeer by the bucketload!
GM tried it here with a 'hot hatch' (Astra VXR) and it obliterates front tyres coming out of fast corners.
I'll stick to conventional 'oversteer' drive ......
I appreciate the engineering side of some of the older cars but call me old fashioned.....

 

This thing is called a Suncar and it's FWD Renault-based:


It is indeed extremely ugly. But more could be made of the concept. It'd be a lot better for a start if you could see the transaxle.

This one is slightly less awful:

 

Spot on there Dawie,
I raced mk1 and mk2 escorts against Mini's,
and Mini's against escorts.
Escort you came in to the bend with the thing understeering like a pig,
then as the body rolled the back would start to come round,
feed in some power and you now are oposite locking to keep the car from spinning out, see exit to bend, and have to feather off to straighten the car enough to avoid wipe out.
Mini, we came in hard, braking with the power still on, you got a mild understeer to start with, which increased as you let the brakes off, and when you saw the exit square on and gased it fully the car would go straight on, pretty well regardless of the steering ( often handy ! )

Both cars suffered from poor weight distribution, which made neather 'the fastest way round a corner', and I would not claim that driving the front axle has any advantages, if any thing I see it as disadvantagous in so many ways, the only handling improvement comes because it requires the maker to introduce independant suspension on the driving axle.

However to be fair to the idea at least, I think the whole FWD thing may have got a bad name in the handling dept because most makers have used the packaging of the plant/gearbox/final drive as one unit to produce cheaper cars not better ones, no one raised the bar, just found a cheaper way of barely getting over it.

More to the point possibly is that if we are talking hot rod here,
with the usual lowered C of G and better weight split,
there is no reason to think that FWD would not work just fine,
and having no drive line to accomadate in the cab would allow one to sit lower, you want to build some thing with a 40 inch roof line and still have room in the cab, FWD could be an answer.
But I still don't think I want to build one.

 

Picked up a 91 Mitsubishi Mirage with a new head gasket, valve job, and rebuilt transmission with under 3000 miles on the repairs. My Great Aunt ran it into a ditch and caved the quarter panel in. $200 and it runs and drives. Asked around for what it would part out for and got $500 if I pulled the parts. I might eventually do something with it, but I'm currently so burnt out on chassis swaps that its the last thing on my mind.

 

Liked it better before they had Troy redo it...

 

Called the quadraduece....spelling?

 

Quadradeuce is correct, and it was AWD not FWD. A Mark Steilow creation.

 

Auto unions.They were german racecars. Also the first novi s were front wheel drive.

 

Auto Unions were rear engine rear wheel drive.