[Martinjlm]

Originally Posted by rocket403

Dropping RWD was a hug mistake and to go from this 85 88 to this 87 88 is just beyond me.

Originally Posted by Royal Tiger

I think Jim & DG could chime in on the reasons. Probably for CAFE I would imagine.

CAFE.

Remember, it wasn’t just GM. The whole INDUSTRY went from RWD to FWD. Europe was already there. They have historically had stricter emissions and fuel economy rules and higher fuel prices than the US, so fuel economy improving technologies tend to happen there first. At the old levels of efficiency, FWD vs RWD on vehicles of similar size and mass was a 1 or 2 mpg improvement. In regulation-land that’s huge, especially when the average fuel economy was significantly under 20 mpg. One mpg improvement on a 20 mpg car is 5%.

Remember the Ford Probe? A little FWD coupe? That was shockingly close to becoming a Mustang replacement. Before you hurt yourself laughing at that, remember the Chevy Beretta? A little FWD coupe? Was almost Camaro replacement. And who could forget the K-Car? All FWD. All reactions to the early CAFE rules.

On a more positive note, those rules drove a lot of invention. The industry learned how to get huge power and decent fuel economy out of relatively small engines because it had to. The industry learned how to make transmissions more efficient while also being capable of handling huge torque loads because it had to.