Drift the tercel.

Turns out my ideas about being able to drift fwd cars are probably due mostly to my driving a 1982 Toyota Tercel everyday. This car unlike all front wheel drive cars being made today (excepting Subaru) does not have a transverse mounted engine, in fact part of the engine and all of the tranmission are actually located behind the front axels making for it's interesting handling characteristics... Anyways I was prompted to write this after finding a 1980 issue of Car And Driver, with an article on the Tercel that has a nice picture of the car going sideways through a turn, and some interesting text...

"There's no torquesteer, not much understeer, and just enough lift-throttle oversteer to keep hard drivers amused. Oddly enough, there's not much evidence in the hardware to suggest how all this was accomplished."

"The Tercel does break with boredom in handling. Turn the wheel and it charges after apexes with a vengance. There's less understeer than Toyota's ever dared to build into it's sportiest Celicas, and if you're willing to horse around with the throttle and steering wheel, you can produce quite a nice sideways view of the world in the Tercel's windshield... ... but any front-driver that can be cajoled into oversteer is all right by us."

Unfortunately in 1987 Toyota revised the layout and following Tercels had far less tail-happy handling characteristics. I'll see if I can get the picture of the sideways Tercel scanned and post it here for you non-believers.

That IS a rare quality in a front wheel drive. I am impressed, I can drift my Neon, but it is tricky and takes a combination on sudden hard braking and faint motion. I am very impressed with a front driver that does this naturally.

It is dissapointing that toyota only ever used this layout for the Tercels. I know other front wheel drive cars, the 2-stroke powered SAABs and DKWs in which the tranny outweighed the engine, that nuetral/oversteering handling characteristcis were common, I've never driven a front-driven Subaru though, and would be interested to find out how they handle.
With a transverse mounted engine all of the weight of the go part of the vehicle is in front of the wheels, with a layout such as that used on the early Tercels, the weight is more balanced giving better handling.
The Citroen Traction-Avante acutally had the engine engine and transmission mounted behind the front wheels! (it was one of the earliest front wheel drive cars) as did the American Cord (technically mid engined, so yes mid engined front wheel drive cars do exist - but they don't make anything like that anymore:( )

My old Escort drifted wonderfully (91-96 model). They revised the suspension for the "egg" Escorts so they wouldn't do it anymore, but my 91 was surprising in it's ability. Just floor it into a turn, lift off fully halfway through and the back end slides right out.

Apparently oversteer is dangerous - whoever came up with this idea should burn in automotive hell (Nader) Oversteer can be dangerous, especially to somebody who doesn't know how to handle his car (my brother) steping on the brakes will make things worse, stepping on the gas straightens everything out...
Because of the preceived danger of oversteer, and the phenomenally high rate of less (how should I say this...) informed drivers, all cars today are boring to drive, we can't even get neutral handling - we have to settle for understeer:rolleyes:
There was a time when cars could be thrown around - and it was fun, if somewhat unpredictable... we need more fun cars (and I don't mean straight line fun.)
I took the toyota out for a trip around my hilly, curvy nieghborhood and had so much more fun testing it out to see what it'd do while going the speed limit! than anybody could have had endangering people with fast, reckless "street racing" in a beat up 1987 CRX (short of also setting off fireworks out the windows). The car fears no turn, it loves them - lift of off the gas and the car pull towards the inside of the curve, step on it and it pull out straight - great fun.
Passing sports cars who's rear ends light up at the sight of a sharp turn in a 60hp toyota -without exceeding the speed-limit- (or slowing down for that matter) was great fun, I had a mile wide smile on my face. :D Afterwords I pulled back home, and the front disks were still cool enough to touch without burning your fingers.
Now I've normally driven like this (using the throttle to coax the little car through turns) but after reading the article, I really just had to see what the car could do - I'm not unimpressed, if only the Yugo would be so shure footed...
This is also not to say I kicked the rear end out every turn just to look like an asshole, I wanted to get a good feeling of when the tail end brakes loose (and to tell it's going to) and to get it back into a straight line.
And for those of you who still don't think FWD can drift... I never touched the parking brake, but for it's intended purpose - parking.

yeah i had i nce 88 tercel that thing cornered so nice i could slide that ass end of that car right out but the night i yet my friend dd he hits the corner too fast then hit the brake and puts it in to the crub there goes my rims and car. never never yet any one drive your car if you got a good thing going no matter now cheap it is

I drove a 1986 Audi 2000GT coupe, its got a Quattro coupe body but it was front drive. The engine was all the way to behind the front bumper and it was positioned like most rear drive cars. I was going downhill on a right bend at 40 mph and I let go of the gas, all of the sudden the car starts to spin, I was like "what the hell!!" I twitched the wheel to the left and the car regained control...I never touched that car again.

And I like to bump 4 month old topics too!

Go sell yourself, JeffForSale! :thefinger

Go sell yourself, JeffForSale! :thefinger
Bids start at 4 bucks, any takers? :licka: