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Rear-engine, front-wheel-drive layout

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Framed illustration of the Dymaxion car.
Framed illustration of the Dymaxion car.

A rear-engine, front-wheel-drive layout is one in which the engine is between or behind the rear wheels, and drives the front wheels via a driveshaft, the complete reverse of a conventional front-engine, rear-wheel-drive vehicle layout.

The earliest example of the form appeared in 1932, with the design and construction of the prototype Maroon Car by chief designer Harleigh Holmes at Coleman Motors, an established builder of Front- and All-Wheel-Drive vehicles based in Littleton, Colorado.[1] The car had front-wheel drive and was powered by a rear-mounted V-8 engine. Only one was built and the vehicle was never placed in production.[2]

Since then, it has remained an extremely uncommon drive layout throughout automotive history, used only by a few prototypes and concept cars, such as the 1937 Howie machine gun carrier (nicknamed "belly flopper"),[3] Buckminster Fuller's 1933 Dymaxion car, which was able to turn within its wheelbase thanks to rear-wheel steering,[4] and the 1947 Gregory Sedan.[5]

The layout has occasionally seen renewed interest as a potential option for innovative car designs, such as in the 1999 patent application of inventor–engineer Michael Basnett at the former Rover Group, which proposed a front transaxle, rear quasi-flat engine (an inline-4, turned 90 degrees) architecture, with the fuel tank placed where the right-hand cylinder bank would have been in a "true" flat engine; overall somewhat mimicking the "pancake engine" design of the Volkswagen Type 3 but in water-cooled form and without rear drive.

According to the patent, the layout is designed to be advantageous in terms of crash performance by increasing the front crumple zone, in allowing greater styling freedom, in enhanced ride via reduced noise, vibration, and harshness, and in lowered center of gravity providing improved handling, braking and roll characteristics—as well as, much like the Type 3, increased cabin and cargo space within the same chassis footprint and body height. Its main disadvantage is the lack of weight over the drive wheels, particularly under hard acceleration as weight shifts to the rear.

However, as mentioned in a Jalopnik article listing all known RF-layout cars,[6] it too appears to have been nothing more than a speculative exercise, without so much as a single physical prototype being built—and the point of whether Rover Group intended to develop it any further is moot, as the corporation was broken up and its assets sold off barely a year later, with the fate of that particular piece of IP being unclear.

The drivetrain design closest to RF in actual series production vehicles is the mid-engine, four-wheel-drive layout, typically seen in high end sportscar designs, and which, with the use of power-split centre differentials or hybrid drive systems, can be set up to send a variable amount of the total drive to the front wheels, in some cases up to 100%. Electric front-wheel-drive vehicles can also be found with small range-extender motor-generators, which are typically mounted in the rear luggage compartment, but do not technically count as RF drivetrain as there is no direct mechanical link between engine and wheels, or even the generated engine power and drive motor output, as the generator tends to run at a constant speed and is used to maintain battery charge rather than power the motor directly.

Discover more about Rear-engine, front-wheel-drive layout related topics

Littleton, Colorado

Littleton, Colorado

Littleton is a home rule municipality city located in Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson counties, Colorado, United States. Littleton is the county seat of Arapahoe County and is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city population was 45,652 at the 2020 United States Census, ranking as the 20th most populous municipality in the State of Colorado.

Prototype

Prototype

A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to evaluate a new design to enhance precision by system analysts and users. Prototyping serves to provide specifications for a real, working system rather than a theoretical one. In some design workflow models, creating a prototype is the step between the formalization and the evaluation of an idea.

Howie machine gun carrier

Howie machine gun carrier

The Howie machine gun carrier was a 1937 light U.S. Army scout and machine-gun vehicle prototype, created to prepare for World War II.

Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion", "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity".

Dymaxion car

Dymaxion car

The streamlined Dymaxion car was designed by American inventor Buckminster Fuller during the Great Depression and featured prominently at Chicago's 1933/1934 World's Fair. Fuller built three experimental prototypes with naval architect Starling Burgess – using donated money as well as a family inheritance – to explore not an automobile per se, but the 'ground-taxiing phase' of a vehicle that might one day be designed to fly, land and drive – an "Omni-Medium Transport". Fuller associated the word Dymaxion with much of his work, a portmanteau of the words dynamic, maximum, and tension, to summarize his goal to do more with less.

Rover Group

Rover Group

The Rover Group plc was the British vehicle manufacturing conglomerate known as "BL plc" until 1986, which had been a state-owned company since 1975. It initially included the Austin Rover Group car business, Land Rover Group, Freight Rover vans and Leyland Trucks. The Rover Group also owned the dormant trademarks from the many companies that had merged into British Leyland and its predecessors such as Triumph, Morris, Wolseley, Riley and Alvis.

Transaxle

Transaxle

A transaxle is a single mechanical device which combines the functions of an automobile's transmission, axle, and differential into one integrated assembly. It can be produced in both manual and automatic versions.

Flat engine

Flat engine

A flat engine is a piston engine where the cylinders are located on either side of a central crankshaft. Flat engines are also known as horizontally opposed engines, however this is distinct from the less common opposed-piston engine design, whereby each cylinder has two pistons sharing a central combustion chamber.

Volkswagen Type 3

Volkswagen Type 3

The Volkswagen Type 3 is a compact car manufactured and marketed by Volkswagen from 1961 to 1973. Introduced at the 1961 Frankfurt Motor Show, Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (IAA), the Type 3 was marketed as the Volkswagen 1500 and later as the Volkswagen 1600, in three body styles: two-door Notchback, Fastback, and Station Wagon, the latter marketed as the 'Squareback' in the United States.

Crumple zone

Crumple zone

Crumple zones, crush zones, or crash zones are a structural safety feature used in vehicles, mainly in automobiles, to increase the time over which a change in velocity occurs from the impact during a collision by a controlled deformation; in recent years, it is also incorporated into trains and railcars.

Noise, vibration, and harshness

Noise, vibration, and harshness

Noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH), also known as noise and vibration (N&V), is the study and modification of the noise and vibration characteristics of vehicles, particularly cars and trucks. While noise and vibration can be readily measured, harshness is a subjective quality, and is measured either via jury evaluations, or with analytical tools that can provide results reflecting human subjective impressions. The latter tools belong to the field psychoacoustics.

Mid-engine, four-wheel-drive layout

Mid-engine, four-wheel-drive layout

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Source: "Rear-engine, front-wheel-drive layout", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2021, July 27th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear-engine,_front-wheel-drive_layout.

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References
  1. ^ Harleigh Holmes and the Coleman Motor Company Littleton government history webpage
  2. ^ Hearst Magazines (August 1932). "Rear Engine and Front Drive in Same Auto". Popular Mechanics. Hearst Magazines. p. 250.
  3. ^ "The Car That Inspired The Jeep Was Completely Bonkers". 28 January 2016. Archived from the original on 28 January 2016.
  4. ^ www.thirteen.org Dymaxion Transport. accessed 21 March 2010
  5. ^ "Gregory Sedan- 1947". Lane Motor Museum.
  6. ^ "This Chart Shows Every Car With The Worst, Weirdest Layout In Auto Design". Jalopnik.

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