When was front wheel drive introduced

Issigonis started drawing and calculating space in one of his ubiquitous sketch pads. The idea for the original Mini was to stuff five people and their gear in 10 feet of car along with engine, transmission, differential, wheel wells, suspension, and all the other bits needed to make the car roadworthy.

Issigonis had previously experimented with transverse front wheel drive on a modified Morris Minor. But no one up to that point had attempted to mass produce a transverse FWD vehicle. Issigonis utilized a Hardy-Spicer Birfield joint a license built Rzeppa , that was being used in submarines, to send power to the front wheels.

Another issue was the potential intrusion of the wheel wells on passenger space. The solution to this was sourcing a 10 inch wheel and leaning on Dunlop to build a suitably sized tire. The suspension had to accommodate the space restrictions and the potential for the payload to equal the unladen weight of the car.

Instead, the initial production vehicles utilized specially developed rubber cone springs and shock absorbers. Eventually the Hydrolastic suspension was incorporated in production. And the Mini became the future. In time all major entry and mid-market manufacturers relied on FWD for he bulk of their offerings. Why would BMW do this? The logical explanation is that emissions and fuel economy requirements in world markets require a lightweight anchor for more extravagant offerings X5 M, Li, etc.

This represents the potential dilution of the brand image in the North American market. And, historically, Americans have rejected premium small cars. More from Featured Posts. Great article, though, Hugo. Are these angles in the same plane? Doug — those wild oscillations are the varying output speed at the end of the shafts.

Therefore at each revolution when the front wheels are turned for steering, alternate acceleration and deceleration is imparted to them. This then produces a spasmodic movement which is felt in the steering. One company I completely failed to mention and maybe one of the best historical examples of doing FWD well is Saab.

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Up to this point, front-wheel-drive had been hampered by the lack of a solution to the odd pulsating motion that universal joints are subject to when deflected at large angles. This normally isn't a problem on unsteered wheels or, for that matter, on a rear-wheel-drive driveshaft as the vertical motion of suspension travel is generally less than that of the horizontal angles necessary for steering. Effect of angular displacement on universal joint. From Wikipedia.

All roads lead to France at this juncture, even though constant-velocity CV joints were beginning to be developed elsewhere. A firm known as Tracta was founded to build cars that demonstrated a new, easily manufactured CV joint. DKW also took interest in the joint and applied it to their two-stroke, transverse-engine "kleinwagen" car.

Other CV joints, built by companies like Rzeppa Ford and Weiss Bendix , were available at the same time, but Germany and France were the innovators, and the Citroen Traction Avant was seen as something of a breakthrough. His brief was to lay out three new cars, and work was well underway on the first two when the Suez crisis intervened.

As a result of the subsequent charge towards small cars, Issignois was approached by BMC's chairman, Leonard Lord , and asked to develop a "proper" small car unlike the "bloody bubble cars". The assignment dovetailed neatly with Issigonis's minimalist thinking — he had wanted to do another small car after his well-received penning of the Morris Minor. The thinking for third proposal was to maximize passenger space. Issigonis started drawing and calculating space on one of his ubiquitous sketch pads.

The idea for the original Mini was to stuff five people and their gear into 10 feet of car along with an engine, transmission, differential, wheel wells, suspension, and all the other bits needed to make the car roadworthy.

This constraint of the car's length led to the two-box design that went against prevailing styling norms. Issigonis had previously experimented with transverse front-wheel drive on a modified Morris Minor, but up to that point, no one had attempted to mass-produce such a vehicle. He utilized a Hardy-Spicer Birfield joint a license-built Rzeppa , previously used in submarines, to send power to the front wheels.

Another issue was the potential intrusion of the wheel wells on passenger space.