Tea Break: Front-wheel drive
Charting the early years and pioneers of FWD technology.
The engineering constraints of early horseless carriages dictated that the steered wheels could not be powered. The problem was how to create a complex driveshaft mechanism, because practicality dictated that the bulky engine had to be positioned where there was the most room and, typically, this meant beneath the rear seat.
One of the earliest front-wheel drive car designs came from George Shelden, who proposed a host of other advanced features, not because they furthered vehicle engineering but so that money could be made from the patents. Fortunately, Henry Ford called his bluff in a lengthy court case, which decreed that Shelden had to build his design, incorporating a three-cylinder side-mounted, in-line engine, to prove that it worked. When a sole example was completed in 1877, it could hardly move under its own power and Sheldon was discredited.
EJ Pennington, perhaps one of the original and most successful automotive charlatans, introduced a FWD car at the 1898 National Cycle Show that was rear-steered. Incorporating allegedly a rope-driven final drive, more than 400 orders and deposits were taken, but nobody received their cars, so they were unable to discover for themselves quite how unstable the contraption was.
Despite these spectacular false starts, the Christie Direct Action Motor Car Company was formed in 1904 by John Walter Christie, who had developed an earlier FWD racer, fitted with a 19.9-litre V4 engine and with a total weight of just under one metric tonne. Developing a claimed 135bhp and capable of 120mph, it enjoyed some competition success and led to an improved version being developed that represented the USA at the 1907 French Grand Prix. While it employed front-drive shafts with double universal joints and coil sprung front suspension, its road-holding was inferior to many of its more conventionallyengineered competitors. It retired after the fifth lap and finished in 30th place. Later, the same car won a 250-mile race at Florida’s Daytona Beach and further experiments were made with FWD technology to create four-wheel drive racers with an engine at either end of the car. The Christie Front Drive Motor Company closed in 1910.
FWD moves to Europe
While the Christie creation had turned heads on the French racetracks, FWD experimentation, otherwise, suffered a shaky start in France.
A small vehicle from Austrian producer, Gräf and Stift – a company known better for producing buses and trucks, prior to merging with MAN – has been heralded as the first FWD passenger car, but only a single example was produced. This presented a singlecylinder engine that powered the front axle and appeared sometime in 1897.
Société Parisienne patented a FWD car the following year, which featured a 3.5hp De Dion-bouton engine and the whole running gear articulated with the tiller steering. Roughly 400 examples were sold before the company went bust in 1903. Another French firm, Bucciali, introduced its FWD TAV-6 six years before the arrival of Citroën’s Traction Avant, but that company learned also that technical advancements do not equate always to financial success and the firm was dissolved in 1933. A far more successful effort came from Jean A Gregoire with his Tracta, in which a small displacement (1.1-litre) supercharged engine sat behind the gearbox and final drive casing. To prove how well the arrangement worked, the Tracta won its class in the 1930 Le Mans 24 Hours Race.
British & German contributions
While the Mini did not appear until 1959, it would be a mistake to think that British industry was not open to FWD technology. Unsurprisingly, perhaps the most forward-thinking of pre-world War Two English car manufacturers, Alvis, produced a lightweight FWD sprint car in 1925, which was moderately successful at hill-climb events. Despite being a technical curiosity, the cuttingedge FWD installation created several issues, such as the heat, created from the inboard front brakes, overheating the adjacent transmission. The understeer-prone handling was also a notable drawback.
Alvis’s subsequent business decision to focus on the FWD FD and FE series was a brave but misguided judgment. Buyers were not ready to accept such technical innovation and the models lasted barely two years before the company returned to more conventional mechanical layouts.
While other manufacturers in the 1920s and 1930s were flirting with FWD and bankruptcy, often simultaneously, some companies were proving that FWD was not always synonymous with commercial disaster. Stoewer of Germany (formally a sewing machine manufacturer) produced a medium-sized FWD car, the Greif Junior, which was powered by a 1.5-litre engine. It remained in production until the start of World War Two.
At the same time, BSA Cycles Ltd of Birmingham figured that FWD was the ideal configuration for a front-engined three-wheeler, which was a market that Morgan dominated at the time, albeit employing rear-wheel drive. Introduced in 1929, the technology permitted the Hotchkiss 1.0-litre vee-twin to drive both front wheels, rather than the single rear. Having proved its competence in motorsport, the inexpensive little car was a sales success for the company and more than 2000 examples were produced, until the production of all BSA three-wheelers ceased in 1936. Interestingly, BSA introduced a small four-wheeled FWD car in 1931, but demand was patchy and very few were made.
In West Germany, Auto Union, the precursor of Audi, produced a number of commercially-successful FWD vehicles from its inception in 1932. While the large six-cylinder UW and 225 models were moderately successful, the smaller DKW Reichsklaase and Meisterklasse (589cc and 684cc respectively) enjoyed greater popularity.
FWD gains momentum
By the time Citroën’s Traction Avant debuted in 1934, FWD was enjoying mixed success, both technically and financially. Despite not being a FWD pioneer, the Traction Avant’s high development cost is one of the main reasons why Citroën faced ruin and was bought by its main creditor, Michelin Tyres.
Originally, the Traction Avant was to be fitted with an infinitely variable Sensaud de Lavaund automatic gearbox, but the last minute discovery that this would make the car excessively underpowered dictated that a new manual gearbox and dry clutch had to be developed quickly. Further issues involved driveshaft reliability, with several different types trialled in the first few years of production.
Despite being so advanced, the Traction Avant was not as well packaged as it could have been. By having its engine mounted transversely, the BMC Mini showed just how much passenger space could be liberated cost effectively and this was its main innovation. Gradually, this influenced other manufacturers, such as Renault, to mount their engines ahead of the passengers to drive the steered wheels. Many other car-makers took a long time to realise the advantages – Ford being an obvious example.
Not only has the transverse FWD now become virtually universal, but many all-wheel drive systems remain faithful to the layout.