[2strokebloke]

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.