Why Front Wheel Drive cars sometimes have spoilers.

Now. Every now and then I see people say “why does this FWD car have a spoiler??? It’ll just slow him down, the dumb ricer!!!”.

Well, yes it will slow him down in the straights. But he’ll have better grip through the corners. Why you ask. Here is why.

The reason some FWD cars have spoilers is because of a little thing called weight transfer. Weight transfer is almost self explanatory.

But since it isn’t. I’ll explain what this is. Weight transfer is when the weight of the vehicle shifts from one side of the vehicle to the other.
Causing the car to loose grip of spin out if not controlled properly.

FWD cars have weight transfer (duh) thus meaning that they can get sideways. What this also means is they go slower through the corners. Therefore the fix to the problem is a spoiler. Like a RWD car.

Now, your probably like “well it’s fine on a race car since it’ll always be used. It has a constant use. On a street Civic it’s useless”.

That’s not strictly true. How do you know that Civic doesn’t go on track days? How do you know that it’s just for show and the owner likes it? People could say the exact same thing about your E30 having a spoiler and it being “useless” when they don’t even know it’s intended purpose.

So now I hope you just don’t irrationally call a FWD with a spoiler “ricer” when it really isn’t. Unless it looks like this without a splitter

Not to say there aren’t some beast looking Honda’s though :D.

Also I must add Lift Off Oversteer. This is another problem FWD cars face. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBYSl3dD-UQ

http://www.drifting.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14094

Spoilers and or Wings are both very good ways to prevent this. So there is Function follows Form going on. (Sometimes)

Lift off oversteer is when a FWD (or RWD) car oversteers because the driver lifted off the throttle. It’s a very effective way of getting the tail end out without using the handbrake.

This is a quote from cherniydiave. It goes more into it then my entire article XD. Enjoy this read because I know I did :D.

“well, weight transfer should be absolutely minimized on the rear axle for a front engine, front wheel drive car. the rear wing for track applications is usually for high-speed stability. front wheel drive race cars are usually tuned to oversteer (because of the natural tendency of front wheel drive to understeer) which is a bad thing at high speed corners and straights. the wing has little effect at low speed (so it doesn’t load the rear, so the rear tires slip) so the car can turn hard. at high speed the wing is effective and loads the rear of the car, forcing the tires to grip better, so the car understeers and is stable.

Also, a wing shifts the center of drag rearwards, which is another benefit for high speed stability.”

-cherniydiave