How AWD Ruined Everything

Is it a coincidence that the malaise that’s besetting the car industry – sales are down by about 2  million annually from their peak of 17 million-plus back in 2017 – is at least in part due to the lack of fun that’s afflicted new cars for some time now? And part of that absence of fun can be laid at the feet of the near-standardization of all-wheel-drive.

AWD being – arguably – the fun-killing equivalent of a chaperone in the back seat of your car on prom night.

Where to start?

How about with the fact that AWD serves to make driving this car pretty much the same as driving that car. This especially includes powerful cars. The power is gelded, in a way – because powering all four wheels means none of them spin as they would if it were just the rear or front wheels that were turning under power. The point of AWD, of course, is to prevent wheelspin. But this results in a controlled – and boring – experience. It takes no skill to floor the accelerator pedal when the wheels don’t spin. It takes a lot of skill to control the spin and that is what makes it fun – because you never know exactly how the car will behave and so each time it is a new experience – as opposed to the same-old-same-old.

There is also the element of risk, which AWD greatly reduces. But risk is part of the fun. It is bracing to risk it, successfully. It get boring, quickly – when there is very little (if any risk). It is the difference between actually sky-diving and watching it on YouTube.

It is also why rear-drive cars such as the Mazda Miata and Ford Mustang are perennial favorites. You can steer them with the rear wheels, power sliding them through the curves. That throttle oversteer is fun. It is much less fun going fast in a curve in an AWD car because the car doesn’t give much feedback until you’re already too close to the edge of grip and then it’s no fun at all.

AWD has also served to assist the push to “electrify” everything, which has served to ruin everything that was once emotionally appealing – that is to say, fun – about cars. An AWD EV is functionally the same as an AWD not-EV, other than the silent-running and more-immediate responsiveness of the EV. To understand what I am trying to convey here, consider the difference in the way a rear-drive car accelerates through the quarter-mile vs. the way an EV or and AWD gas-engined car does. You have to feel the RWD car when the light goes green, pushing down just enough to not completely overcome the rear tires’ ability to maintain their grip on the asphalt. A little more, then a little less. As you do, your hands make fine adjustments to the wheel to correct for the slip. Then all the way to the floor.

That’s how it’s done, son – and it is a lot of fun.

It is also fun to torque-steer the front end of a powerful front-drive car, as for example the MazdaSpeed3 – which Mazda no longer sells. Instead it sells a gelded AWD iteration of what it used to sell that’s much less fun and so much less interesting.

This is not to say that AWD doesn’t have a place – including a place in the performance car market. The Subaru WRX is a fun car. But it is less fun when every other car is like the WRX (with less or more power). It was more fun when the WRX was one of the few AWD-equipped performance cars because that made it different, which – again – is a species of fun.

There is also a deeper critique to be laid at the feet of the bum’s rush to AWD everything. It is that AWD has served to dull the skills of the average driver by assuring they are never developed. The marketing departments of the car companies (and new car salesmen) have successfully persuaded many people that they must have AWD – because otherwise they will not have enough traction and that is dangerous.

Saaaaaaaaaafety!

Now many people are afraid to own a car that isn’t AWD, which is as ridiculous as being afraid to walk around in public without a “mask” on. It amounts to a variation of the same phenomenon.

Of a piece with ABS – and “advanced driver assistance technologies.” These have made people dullards behind the wheel as well as fearful and passive behind the wheel. They rely on the car to deal with weather and situations and so never learn how to deal with them. This includes driving faster than they ought to in a situation – my car has AWD! And too close on top of that.

My car has ABS!

It’d be better if they knew how to drive fast – and when not to.

. . .

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