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Monday, October 4, 2010

2010 Volkswagen GTI

Front-Drive Follies
It's a simple matter of physics — in particular, the change in the center of gravity location during acceleration. When you lay into the gas, the sprung mass rotates around the geometric axis and effectively shifts the weight rearward. So under acceleration, more of a car's weight transfers onto the rear wheels and off the front wheels. Therefore, the front wheels get less traction and the rear wheels get more.
2009 Frankfurt Auto Show Day 1 Highlights Video 2010 Audi
What that means, burnout-wise, is that with less traction a powerful front-driver's front wheels will spin, but won't produce the friction against the pavement necessary to produce the billowy clouds of magnificent smoke that are what burnouts are all about.
More importantly, since Inside Line's scientifically somewhat precise method of judging a burnout is to measure the visible rubber stripe left by a car on the pavement during a burnout, the stripes left by a front-driver are fainter than a rear-driver's and therefore more difficult to measure. So there's more subjective evaluation in this still-stupendous contest than there was in our previous two.

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