The Myth of Four Wheel Drive

Look around in traffic and you will see mostly just 2 kinds of cars. Front drive small sedans, and, if it’s an American car, a truck. It may be called an SUV, but it’s a truck. When did America become the home of trucks? How did all those soccer moms come to the conclusion that the best vehicle to drive around town is a 6000 lb., 4 wheel drive truck with a car interior?
I know the answer. They think they are safer, and they feel powerful in that thing.
There’s just one problem. It’s all a hoax. The fatality rate for SUV’s is the highest of all vehicle types, the odds that you will be in a rollover are very high. So, if you are going to be in a collision, try to make it a head-on with a little car like Bryan’s Miata, then you will come out the winner!
Don’t try to tell me you need the 4 wheel drive for snow. I have never heard of a single occasion where the inability to accelerate caused a crash, and that’s all the 4 wheel drive does. When you try to turn or stop, it no longer has any effect. Of course you are going faster than you would be in a 2 wheel drive, not realizing just how slippery the road is until it’s too late. Then, just when you need the thing to handle well, it drives like...............a TRUCK!

Audi pioneered the concept of all wheel drive in the 80's, and it revolutionized the auto industry. The US auto manufactures had a big problem trying to compete with the growing popularity of imports. Somebody in Detroit came up with a great idea. You do have to admire the way they just called their trucks something else and got people to buy them, and there seems to be no end in sight. Even Porsche and Saab now make an SUV, and people are actually buying those stupid H2's. It’s really sad. What the gullible American public never seemed to notice was that Audi, and those who followed their lead, were making cars with advanced technology, and America was simply building rebodied pickups. Maybe the worst part is that most of these SUV’s get no better gas mileage than trucks did in the 60's. It’s just inexcusable when the technology exists for 50 mpg vehicles.