Technical 4 x 4 Fiat 500

[ahmett]

Guys I just fought of something!
Why not a Fiat 500 4 x 4? That would be so much more fun I feel than boring FF handling and wheelspin in 1st out of every single corner on a wet/slippery road! Maybe some more power (120 hp from the 1.4 liter NA) would help it make a really exciting small car!

 

[loveshandbags]

Guys I just fought of something!
Why not a Fiat 500 4 x 4? That would be so much more fun I feel than boring FF handling and wheelspin in 1st out of every single corner on a wet/slippery road! Maybe some more power (120 hp from the 1.4 liter NA) would help it make a really exciting small car!

A good set of premium tyres on 16 inch and 2nd gear will solve the wheel spin out of the corners problem (not too sure if it would still work if it was slippy). There's always the option of a quaife (Rallycinq?)
If you look at the 1 series with RWD the cabin gets very cramp inside - the same would happen to the 500 with 4WD.
Not too mention all that extra weight which would blunt the performance.
To increase the 100 bhp it has been demonstrated that you can get to 110bhp with just a cat back Group N exhaust and a hard to get induction setup like the GSR one - you might be able to pick up these 2nd hand now.
If you still want 4x4 how about a secondhand Panda with an economic 1.2 engine.

 

[RobW]

Nothing dull about fwd, as said above get the car set up properly and it's very capable

Do a few track days to learn the dynamics and improve your skills

 

[306maxi]

A good set of premium tyres on 16 inch and 2nd gear will solve the wheel spin out of the corners problem (not too sure if it would still work if it was slippy). There's always the option of a quaife (Rallycinq?)
If you look at the 1 series with RWD the cabin gets very cramp inside - the same would happen to the 500 with 4WD.
Not too mention all that extra weight which would blunt the performance.
To increase the 100 bhp it has been demonstrated that you can get to 110bhp with just a cat back Group N exhaust and a hard to get induction setup like the GSR one - you might be able to pick up these 2nd hand now.
If you still want 4x4 how about a secondhand Panda with an economic 1.2 engine.

Michael has more or less nailed it other than the interior space bit. The Panda 4x4 uses the same floorpan as he standard Panda. A BMW will only have less interior space because they run multilink rear suspension at the back which takes up a lot more interior space than a beam axle. Our Subaru is of course 4wd and you don't lose all that much interior space because it's got macpherson struts which are more efficient than multilink rear suspension when it comes to interior space.

Modern FWD cars can happily cope with around about 200bhp so if you're getting wheelspin then tyres and your differential are the obvious candidates for a change.

 

[ahmett]

You guys all have a good point, especially with the space. I did not fit in the rear of the new 1 series at all (i am 6ft3), the rear space is about the same as the Fiat 500, the only difference being the 1 series has rear doors! Why get a car costing 30,000 euros 4 door when you cant even fit in the rear??? I was thinking 4wd Mini Countryman style but i guess thats a slightly bigger car. Regarding front wheelspin if you nail it in 1st on slippery roads it does spin a bit when turning or on the straights, especially on greek marble roads! (roads here are extremely slippery). Now if i go on the best road in greece i can nail it in 1st with no wheelspin at all. The thing is, front wheel drive cars feel less stable than four wheel drive cars for obvious reasons, because the rear has no power whatsoever! I feel that front wheel drive is not 'natural', i feel you need slight power oversteer to counter the understeer that front wheel drive cars always produce. Now obviously only rear wheel drive wouldnt work on such a short wheelbase car but 4wd woud! The fiat 500 is a good handling car dont get me wrong, but with 4wd it would definately feel more sure footed, especially on slippery and wet roads.

 

[306maxi]

You guys all have a good point, especially with the space. I did not fit in the rear of the new 1 series at all (i am 6ft3), the rear space is about the same as the Fiat 500, the only difference being the 1 series has rear doors! Why get a car costing 30,000 euros 4 door when you cant even fit in the rear??? I was thinking 4wd Mini Countryman style but i guess thats a slightly bigger car. Regarding front wheelspin if you nail it in 1st on slippery roads it does spin a bit when turning or on the straights, especially on greek marble roads! (roads here are extremely slippery). Now if i go on the best road in greece i can nail it in 1st with no wheelspin at all. The thing is, front wheel drive cars feel less stable than four wheel drive cars for obvious reasons, because the rear has no power whatsoever! I feel that front wheel drive is not 'natural', i feel you need slight power oversteer to counter the understeer that front wheel drive cars always produce. Now obviously only rear wheel drive wouldnt work on such a short wheelbase car but 4wd woud! The fiat 500 is a good handling car dont get me wrong, but with 4wd it would definately feel more sure footed, especially on slippery and wet roads.

I've driven FWD, AWD and RWD cars all for years and you just adapt to all of them. The idea that 4wd will killing understeer completely is a bit of a myth tbh. There is simply a different driving technique for these different cars and you need to drive them differently. RWD is easy peasy to drive, anyone can drive a RWD to within 90% of its limits and do so safely. To take a FWD car to that same 90% point takes a lot more skill.

To be honest the 500 isn't that great in terms of handling, in fact it's pretty poor. It has a lot of grip thanks to wider tyres, but in terms of handling it's not a great car. Grip isn't handling.

If I'm honest I'd love a 4wd Abarth model with perhaps 180bhp or so. I think it'd be a lot of fun and very useable. Problem with the Panda 4x4 system is that it's not really set up for performance.

 

[ahmett]

I've driven FWD, AWD and RWD cars all for years and you just adapt to all of them. The idea that 4wd will killing understeer completely is a bit of a myth tbh. There is simply a different driving technique for these different cars and you need to drive them differently. RWD is easy peasy to drive, anyone can drive a RWD to within 90% of its limits and do so safely. To take a FWD car to that same 90% point takes a lot more skill.

To be honest the 500 isn't that great in terms of handling, in fact it's pretty poor. It has a lot of grip thanks to wider tyres, but in terms of handling it's not a great car. Grip isn't handling.

If I'm honest I'd love a 4wd Abarth model with perhaps 180bhp or so. I think it'd be a lot of fun and very useable. Problem with the Panda 4x4 system is that it's not really set up for performance.

Yes, the main point is that 4wd is faster than FF in all conditions. = )
Hence racing cars are NEVER FF. (i dont call those baby rally cars these days proper rally cars especially super 1600, are they joking???). Now Group B, thats rallying!

So yes i think a 4wd fiat 500 with like 120 hp + would be much more fun than the current model = ) . I would not like to spend more than 20k on an FF car, in the end of the days FF cars will always be cheap easy to drive cars and proper cars will have either 4wd or rear wheel drive, thats the way it goes.

 

[RobinPJ]

Yes, the main point is that 4wd is faster than FF in all conditions. = )
Hence racing cars are NEVER FF. (i dont call those baby rally cars these days proper rally cars especially super 1600, are they joking???). Now Group B, thats rallying!

So yes i think a 4wd fiat 500 with like 120 hp + would be much more fun than the current model = ) . I would not like to spend more than 20k on an FF car, in the end of the days FF cars will always be cheap easy to drive cars and proper cars will have either 4wd or rear wheel drive, thats the way it goes.

I'm not really an expert but I am fairly sure that not every rally in which FWD cars have raced 4WD cars has been won by a 4WD. Which would suggest that the relationship between drive and speed is not as straightforward as you suggest.

And this FWD road car looks like it might be quite quick:

 

[loveshandbags]

Guys I just fought of something!
Why not a Fiat 500 4 x 4? That would be so much more fun I feel than boring FF handling and wheelspin in 1st out of every single corner on a wet/slippery road! Maybe some more power (120 hp from the 1.4 liter NA) would help it make a really exciting small car!

How about this as a little plaything in the garage that you could take out on a Sunday drive. It wouldn't cost the earth and it's back to basics. I did check out the interior space on an advertised car and surprisingly it had the same floor pan as the standard Panda (Maxi was right on this). It's at all odds with the benefits of space saving of the iconic design of the original Mini. It must be because it is higher off the ground. The multi-link suspension in the Panda is a big thumbs up. Comparing the performance figures with a standard Panda the 0-60 is 20 seconds but does it really matter when you're having fun on a budget. I'm sure ahmett could find a lot of good terrain in Greece to justify this.

 

[306maxi]

Yes, the main point is that 4wd is faster than FF in all conditions. = )
Hence racing cars are NEVER FF. (i dont call those baby rally cars these days proper rally cars especially super 1600, are they joking???). Now Group B, thats rallying!

So yes i think a 4wd fiat 500 with like 120 hp + would be much more fun than the current model = ) . I would not like to spend more than 20k on an FF car, in the end of the days FF cars will always be cheap easy to drive cars and proper cars will have either 4wd or rear wheel drive, thats the way it goes.

Not really. The loss of power through a 4wd transmission is fantastic. You've got 3 diffs instead of 1 and then because of the transmission losses you need more power so you then need a bigger and stronger gearbox so more weight there.

Do NOT rag on FWD rally cars. Do not do this. Put my username into google and you will be presented with this

A car which with less horsepower and less torque managed to give the 4wd turbo World Rally Cars a bloody nose on tarmac. People think my name is Max or Maxi. Nope, my username is just a tribute to one of the best rally cars of all time. Group B is great and all, but a 306 Maxi would kill any of the group B rally cars on a tarmac rally stage. In fact I'm sure it'd have time to kill it, teabag its corpse for a while and then romp to victory by a significant margin. Unless we're talking about putting down ridiculous amounts of power then FWD is generally enough in competition cars.

 

[306maxi]

How about this as a little plaything in the garage that you could take out on a Sunday drive. It wouldn't cost the earth and it's back to basics. I did check out the interior space on an advertised car and surprisingly it had the same floor pan as the standard Panda (Maxi was right on this). It's at all odds with the benefits of space saving of the iconic design of the original Mini. It must be because it is higher off the ground. The multi-link suspension in the Panda is a big thumbs up. Comparing the performance figures with a standard Panda the 0-60 is 20 seconds but does it really matter when you're having fun on a budget. I'm sure ahmett could find a lot of good terrain in Greece to justify this.

The panda doesn't have multilink rear suspension, I'm pretty sure it's a macpherson strut at the rear.

 

[ahmett]

Not really. The loss of power through a 4wd transmission is fantastic. You've got 3 diffs instead of 1 and then because of the transmission losses you need more power so you then need a bigger and stronger gearbox so more weight there.

Do NOT rag on FWD rally cars. Do not do this. Put my username into google and you will be presented with this

A car which with less horsepower and less torque managed to give the 4wd turbo World Rally Cars a bloody nose on tarmac. People think my name is Max or Maxi. Nope, my username is just a tribute to one of the best rally cars of all time. Group B is great and all, but a 306 Maxi would kill any of the group B rally cars on a tarmac rally stage. In fact I'm sure it'd have time to kill it, teabag its corpse for a while and then romp to victory by a significant margin. Unless we're talking about putting down ridiculous amounts of power then FWD is generally enough in competition cars.

Fair enough but i wouldnt call the roads i drive on Tarmac = ) And yes in Greece there is quite a lot of 'terrain' to have fun in! Most young people who have the cash go and buy a Jeep Wrangler (40,000 EUROS for something designed in the 1940's but still a fun car that i would not pay more than 25,000 euros for USA price style) , a car that almost doesnt exist in the UK! Its nice to have that 4wd surefootedness in all conditions!

And yes the Ford Focus may be a fast car but for that mmuch power it is too slow around a track in comparison to its rear wheel drive rivals, 335i has similar power?

 

[loveshandbags]

The panda doesn't have multilink rear suspension, I'm pretty sure it's a macpherson strut at the rear.

I was thinking of an earlier post on the rear suspension of the Panda 4x4 and you are correct - it isn't a multi-link.
Autoexpress referred to the setup on the 4x4 as the following...
Backing up the 4WD is suspension that's raised by 50mm all-round, with the rear getting a new independent set-up. There are also specially designed tyres and additional underbody protection.
I'm not exactly sure what is different in the setup and if it is any better than the standard 500.

 

[loveshandbags]

Fair enough but i wouldnt call the roads i drive on Tarmac = ) And yes in Greece there is quite a lot of 'terrain' to have fun in! Most young people who have the cash go and buy a Jeep Wrangler (40,000 EUROS for something designed in the 1940's but still a fun car that i would not pay more than 25,000 euros for USA price style) , a car that almost doesnt exist in the UK! Its nice to have that 4wd surefootedness in all conditions!

And yes the Ford Focus may be a fast car but for that mmuch power it is too slow around a track in comparison to its rear wheel drive rivals, 335i has similar power?

In some review that I read the figures quoted for the RS were 'over the top' i.e. it didn't give the 305 or whatever horsepower. My understanding is that RWD is faster than a FWD in the 'right' hands (this was according to a trained Police pursuit driver) - I'm nothing to back it up. Realise that is at loggerheads with the 306 posted.
Interestingly enough in a article in Car sometime back from a journalist who loved his 'drive' through the remote roads in the middle on nowhere in a standard 911 Carrera 2 - the reviewer reckoned that the 'bread & butter' model was the best one and that was compared with the Carrera 4 and the Turbo models.

 

[306maxi]

In some review that I read the figures quoted for the RS were 'over the top' i.e. it didn't give the 305 or whatever horsepower. My understanding is that RWD is faster than a FWD in the 'right' hands (this was according to a trained Police pursuit driver) - I'm nothing to back it up. Realise that is at loggerheads with the 306 posted.
Interestingly enough in a article in Car sometime back from a journalist who loved his 'drive' through the remote roads in the middle on nowhere in a standard 911 Carrera 2 - the reviewer reckoned that the 'bread & butter' model was the best one and that was compared with the Carrera 4 and the Turbo models.

I didn't say that RWD was slower in the right hands. In fact it should really be quicker generally because the front wheels are free to steer whilst the rears are putting the power down. I was saying that RWD was a bit easier to drive quick than a FWD car. To really get the most out of a FWD car you need to be **** hot. The better weight distibution of RWD cars makes them better balanced too.

 

[loveshandbags]

I didn't say that RWD was slower in the right hands. In fact it should really be quicker generally because the front wheels are free to steer whilst the rears are putting the power down. I was saying that RWD was a bit easier to drive quick than a FWD car. To really get the most out of a FWD car you need to be **** hot. The better weight distibution of RWD cars makes them better balanced too.

It all comes down to driver skill and I would 'mark myself down on the richter scale'. I had a old RS Turbo CVH with a phase II BBR chip and a crude LSD and I could drive like a tool and it would still go around the corners. I then went through a spat of RWD cars (got a little tired of the torque steer) starting with an old Escort, Granada Ghia (!) - a long story and went on to a MX5 and 323i. I lost count of the no. of times I spun the MX5 and the ASC did wonders for me in the 323i. Now FWD have come on a lot with the 'knuckle joints' and varying levels of sophisticated electronics to harness the front wheels and given the number of scooby and evo drivers looking to downgrade to an A500 or the like it looks like the FWD is the way forward. It is only the Beamers and the Mercs who seem to be sticking with their RWD and they suffered a lot of sales with their perceived miserable performance in the snow & ice (we won't go there ). Now with just 100bhp or even 160bhp I would be very happy just to stick with FWD in the 500. Unlikely, but if there was any more I would be back to RWD.

 

[306maxi]

It all comes down to driver skill and I would 'mark myself down on the richter scale'. I had a old RS Turbo CVH with a phase II BBR chip and a crude LSD and I could drive like a tool and it would still go around the corners. I then went through a spat of RWD cars (got a little tired of the torque steer) starting with an old Escort, Granada Ghia (!) - a long story and went on to a MX5 and 323i. I lost count of the no. of times I spun the MX5 and the ASC did wonders for me in the 323i. Now FWD have come on a lot with the 'knuckle joints' and varying levels of sophisticated electronics to harness the front wheels and given the number of scooby and evo drivers looking to downgrade to an A500 or the like it looks like the FWD is the way forward. It is only the Beamers and the Mercs who seem to be sticking with their RWD and they suffered a lot of sales with their perceived miserable performance in the snow & ice (we won't go there ). Now with just 100bhp or even 160bhp I would be very happy just to stick with FWD in the 500. Unlikely, but if there was any more I would be back to RWD.

Well tbh a RWD car on snow and ice on summer tyres will be rubbish, no two ways about it. This is just by nature of the fact that there's very little weigh over the driven axle compared to a FWD car. Anyway we'll leave that there.

This is not a dig at you Michael (I'm being 110% serious here) but I think that anyone who pushes a RWD car fast enough to spin it on a public road is driving like an idiot. I say this as someone who is part of the "spun a rwd car on a public road" club too so I recognise that I've been a bit naughty too. In my defence the tyres on the car were probably about 10 or 15 years old and as hard as concrete and it was damp. In fact one of the tyres started to delaminate a few months later. But you should always drive to the conditions and what you've got underneath you so the driver is always at fault.

I used to converse with the late great Pentti Airikkala and he too agreed that anyone with a decent idea of how to drive could get into a RWD car and go fairly quick but that it was a lot more difficult with a FWD car to extract a lot of performance from them, especially in slippery conditions. Obviously to get 100% out of either configuration you need to be a Sebastien Loeb or a Sebastian Vettel or a Schumacher......

 

[loveshandbags]

Sometimes the hype you read on a car does not always match up with the reality of actually owning it. The MX5 was raved to be one of the best handling cars but the one I had was a jap import with crappie tyres (didn't know at the time how important those things were ) and no tie bar at the back like the bigger engined 1.8. Being underpowered didn't help. You learned to slow down before the bend and keep the power on during it. Some of the guys who ran the BBR Turbo version of the MX5 had a lot of 'difficulties' and the ones that got boosted were 'safer' with a Supercharger (predominately in the US) since the power delivery was more progressive and didn't come on in a 'bang'. Boosted FWD didn't seem to be as ‘affected’. After the MX5 I opted for ‘creature’ comforts with the safety gear. I still cringe a little when I see an old MX5 and still wonder what it could have been like if I had one a newish one.
Re the Sebastians I wasn’t surprised to see Vettel get the best lap time in the Top gear ‘test’ – talent shines through even in a crap car.

 

[D4nny8oy]

And yes the Ford Focus may be a fast car but for that mmuch power it is too slow around a track in comparison to its rear wheel drive rivals, 335i has similar power?

The irony being that in development, Ford tested both 4WD and FWD versions of the RS around the infamous Nurburgring, and found the FWD version was quickest.

The main issue will be the extra transmission drag. If you've ever jumped from a 1.2 Panda into a 1.2 Panda 4X4, it feels like you're driving with the handbrake stuck on. It would need the 1.4 engine just to give the same performance as the 1.2.

 

[306maxi]

The irony being that in development, Ford tested both 4WD and FWD versions of the RS around the infamous Nurburgring, and found the FWD version was quickest.

The main issue will be the extra transmission drag. If you've ever jumped from a 1.2 Panda into a 1.2 Panda 4X4, it feels like you're driving with the handbrake stuck on. It would need the 1.4 engine just to give the same performance as the 1.2.

Exactly! Just like I said above 3 times the diffs tends to use a lot of power up!