The rear-wheel drive conquers the small car back Dear push than pull

Dear push than pull

Because it is closely related to the upcoming four-seat Smart, the new Renault Twingo comes with a rear engine and rear wheel drive. The result is an amazingly spacious interior. The electronics has long taken the tail skid of the horrors once.

Former owner of a VW Beetle, the first Opel cadet or even the legendary Renault 4CV can report Scary: Wet cobblestones, the step on the gas at the wrong time and had been a small, light car was the treacherous tail spin. Often such antics took a bad end. No wonder, then, that minis with rear-wheel drive were gradually relegated to the museum and are subject to this type of drive from now on, the stronger and larger cars remained.

Now experienced the seemingly abandoned concept at the Geneva show his rebirth. New Renault Twingo has not only rear-wheel drive, but on top of that a rear engine. As just his ancestor 4CV, which was affectionately called " Cremeschnittchen " because of its baroque form. The reason is simple: future, the smallest Renault and the forthcoming four-seater Smart sharing basis. Since Daimler's city car has always been familiar to rear-wheel drive, the movement was taken at the Community production this way.

© Wikipedia ... Renault 4CV and ...   Renault's chief designer Laurens of the field is called a stroke of luck: "The combination of rear-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive offered us unprecedented opportunities. The new Twingo is ten inches shorter than its predecessor, but inside 22 inches longer. " Because the stem of the first four-door Twingo was significantly shorter and the wheelbase grew by an impressive 13 inches, there is so much space for passengers and luggage than in any other small car. "We have also obtained a smooth meter turning circle ," reports from the field. " Who needs to turn on a narrow city street, know how long can a meter".

And the security? Modern electronics as stability control has tamed all tail spin, small car or even husky sports cars such as the once quite difficult to control the Porsche Turbo. Laurens of the field: " The Twingo brings a certain extent also the fun of driving back, because if the rear wheels instead of being pushed out of the curve drawn, real kart feeling comes on ."

Does this mean a renaissance of the rear-wheel drive? "I 'm afraid so ," smiled the chief designer with a Dutch passport. "Because others will copy the concept of our Twingo and perhaps the sister model Smart". Then from the field again quite seriously: ". Indeed, this technique is particularly well suited for the future more and more popular supermini, the need to provide comfort for up to four occupants despite lower external dimensions " where the designers play the ever more compact and smaller engines in the cards that can be in the rear enough room for luggage.

However, another trend will help the rear wheel drive to new heights. Modern electric models such as the BMW i3 and the little plug-in hybrid VW XL1 are driven by the rear wheels. Reason for this is in addition to the short distance between the electric motor and rear axle weight distribution. However, the engineers were able to start in both cases on a white sheet of paper and then decide freely on the drive concept.

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