All you folks have made some reasonable conjecture about why there aren't
more FWD pickups around, thanks.
I still think that a FWD pickup configuration is reasonable and could
be advantageous for many light-duty truck owners. One objection was that
a heavy load would take weight off of the front wheels and make steering
difficult. Well, a properly-loaded pickup has the center of mass located
in front of the rear axle. This means more weight on both the front
and rear axles; not a problem, and actually tends to balance out the front:
rear weight ratio.
Anybody who loads a truck with the center of mass behind the rear axle
is just begging for trouble in any case, and I'd actually suspect that the
problem of taking weight off the front end is worse for a RWD than FWD
vehicle. Since FWD combines the steering/driving wheels, you'll know
you've lost traction as soon as you put your foot in it. On a RWD platform
you won't notice the lost front-end traction until you actually try to
steer.
Towing is another very real case of taking weight off the
front end, but again I think that problem is worse in a RWD platform.
Besides, the problem is minimized by the tongue weight rating.
So the lack of FWD pickups seems to be due mainly to the lack of a
truly heavy-duty FWD transaxle, and that truck owners tend to like RWD/4WD
better (I know I do). The Arrow/Rampage/Rabbit pickups were all based on
small auto chassis and couldn't have been rated for any noteworthy hauling
or towing capacity.
Speaking of H/D FWD transaxles, what about the high-performance vehicles
like the blown Grand Prix and SHO Taurus?
Absolutely nothing to do with Dakotas, so I'll shut up now...
Ron
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:08:58 EDT