I've had this conversation with a couple of very smart people in the car world and I haven't heard a good answer yet: why does everyone love rear-wheel drive now?
This is not to say that I don't love rear-wheel drive. I do. I very much do.
But it seems like when I was growing up, all enthusiasts wanted was all-wheel drive, or even well-tuned front-wheel drive. I mean, other than the muscle car kids, who I'm not sure were ever really concerned about where their power was going so much as how much power they had.
This came up when I was looking at a very, very clean old Mitsubishi Eclipse with my coworker Freddy, remarking that nobody really wants DSMs right now, but everyone is clamoring for 240SXs.
Is it that carmakers are responding to everyone wanting to go Tokyo Drifting nowadays instead of drag racing their gutted Hondas on the feeder road at the edge of town?
Is it because in new video games, it's harder to drive RWD cars than AWD or FWD ones that seem easy to handle?
Is it because burnouts?
Photo Credit: Raphael Orlove