Have you ever played TriBond before? That board game where you’re given three words and you have to figure out what they all share. For legal reasons, this isn’t that game, but I’m dying to pick your brains — What’s one distinctive thing that the Chevrolet S-10, Volvo XC40, and Mk7 Ford Transit have in common?
On the face of it, we’re looking at a pickup truck, a subcompact luxury crossover, and a cargo van. Sure, they might all have four wheels and fairly standard controls, but I’m talking about something specific. Something unusual. Something that will forever make these vehicles pub trivia material.
Jason’s previously written about the longitudinal front-wheel-drive powertrain layout, and while none of these cars fit that bill, the commonality we’re looking for runs along the same lines. See, all three of these vehicles were available with drive to the front wheels, the rear wheels, or all four wheels, an incredibly unusual move for an automaker to pull, much less three different automakers.
Let’s start with the easiest one — the Volvo XC40. In combustion-powered trim, it’s either a front-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive crossover, but the electric models all currently feature a motor at the back, meaning you have a choice of rear-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive. Considering how compact electric motors are and how they don’t require driveshafts running from the engine bay to the rear axle, it’s not terribly difficult to make a rear-wheel-drive electric XC40, so that’s exactly what Volvo did in 2023.
Electrification is also how the world got a front-wheel-drive Chevrolet S-10. See, this pickup truck featured rear-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive in its standard form, because that was, and still largely is, the standard for trucks in North America. However, in 1997, General Motors wanted to offer an electric fleet vehicle, so it crammed the motor and electronics from an EV1 in an S-10 pickup. This motor drove the front wheels on the EV1, and so it ended up driving the front wheels on the Chevrolet S-10 Electric.
However, the Mk7 Ford Transit was a much stranger case. It was an evolution of the Mk6 model, and Ford decided to offer it in both front-wheel-drive and rear-wheel-drive layouts, all with internal combustion engines. This meant that Ford had to design two different floors, two different rear axles, two different engine carriers, and make essentially the same van in longitudinal and transverse layouts. As you can imagine, this is a bewilderingly expensive endeavor, yet Ford made it happen.
It’s incredibly unusual that automakers take the Burger King approach to drivetrains and let you have it your way, but thanks to the extensive history of the automobile with virtually no niche left unexplored, it’s happened at least thrice. Weird, right?
(Photo credits: Volvo, Chevrolet, Ford)
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I bet they could have done a longitudal FWD setup like the Chrysler LH cars and cut down the cost and complication… IF they designed it to accomodate it to FWD and RWD from the start.
One of the other more weird switches was the MG ZT (a rebadged Rover 75).
The standard car was a totally normal FWD transverse engined car. But the MG was supposed to be more sporty, so they decided to put in something more powerful for the top trim cars. Specifically, a Ford V8.
Which of course doesn’t work well in a FWD transverse engined car.
So they completely re-engineered the car in 2003 to have a longitudinally mounted engine driving the rear wheels.
Because spending all that money on a car with limited appeal was obviously such a great idea, when the rest of the range was extremely dated and uncompetitive.
MG Rover folded in 2005.
Those electric S-10s are really interesting. A few of them survive, because they weren’t all leased like the EV-1. The Questionable Garage on YouTube has been bringing one back to life.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUK0LPn0iHC_u94qx_nxD-2Q_KZhNHXxG&si=FYyT-Du_5ny9vgWi
are there any other hybrids like the Volvo system? I realized that my dads v60 is all configurations in one vehicle a while ago and wanted to know if it was really the only one
Oh, if only the Triumph 1500 had been available with 4WD 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_1500
Triumph did develop an AWD variant of the FWD gearbox, but it was only ever used in the Autocars Dragoon, a small military pickup truck built in Israel.
The Renault 21 was available as…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_21
Why?! Wikipedia says all the engines were I4, so I really can’t understand why would they do it.
I have absolutely no idea… I guess at the time they had good reasons for it, But it’s not something we could easily work out I think.
Renault’s previous generation of cars had all had longitudinal engines. At the time of the 21’s introduction they had relatively recently introduced the second-generation of the 5, with a transverse engine, and the lower-medium 9 & 11 also had transverse engines, so the 1.7-litre engine in lower-powered versions of the 21 were already available in a transverse installation, with matching transmissions. However, they had never installed any of their larger engines transversely, so they didn’t have a suitable transverse transmission for the 2.0 petrol or 2.1 diesel. Therefore, they used the same longitudinal installation of these engines as in the larger Renault 25.
You can tell the two versions apart externally, as the front wheel is closer to the cabin on the longitudinally-engined versions, so the part of the front wing (fender in US-English) between the wheel opening and the door is much smaller on the longitudinal versions than the transverse versions.
Additionally, the “21 Nevada” (or “21 Savanna” in the UK), wagon versions had the rear wheels further back to increase cabin space and allow a 3rd row of seats. Combine this with the different front ends, and the 21 range had 4 different wheelbases.
Mind blown. Thank you!
It, is not that uncommon for european vans to be either FWD, RWD or 4X4 depending on variant of same model. I know of these examples:
Renault Master
Mercedes Sprinter
Volkswagen Crafter
MAN TGE
There is also electric Ford Transit that has rear mounted engine and independent rear supension instead of standard solid axle and leaf springs
That’s wild, on the Transit. I was aware it was available in all three layouts, but I always thought they all had a longitude/engine-forward layout and a longitude transaxle, a la Audi or Subaru, with the driveshafts removed from one end or the other for the RWD and FWD versions.
I didn’t realize that, while the RWD and AWD ones did have the engine-forward layout and transaxle, the FWD one was traditionally transverse, with the engine sitting beside the transmission. That’s a wild amount of variance in one vehicle.
The Chevy Blazer EV is also available (well, purportedly going to be available) in all three. Only the RWD and AWD are currently available.
Jason wrote about that on these very pages!
https://www.theautopian.com/the-2022-chevy-blazer-ev-may-be-the-first-production-car-to-be-available-as-fwd-rwd-and-awd/
What is, “None of them have been in Cliff Claven’s kitchen.”
As God is my witness, that’s the first thing I thought!
I had no idea, but I like this game!
Amazing how Ford could build and sell a van with completely different innards – as if anyone on the lot really cared – but can’t be bothered to build and sell a semi-affordable car in the US that isn’t a Mustang.
The LH Cars were intended to be available in AWD and RWD versions as well. Unfortunately Chrysler was Chrysler, ie poor and didn’t want to spend the money on tooling up the needed parts. That is what they dusted off for the LX and they were ready to send to tooling when Mercedes take over occurred and told them to redesign to accept the Mercedes components.
When the LH cars were being designed Chrysler did a lot of low bidding on police fleets and didn’t want to loose those sales. That is why they did a RWD design and of course that is in the first era of AWD car popularity.
Chrysler may have been thrifty, but they were hardly poor.
The day after the
takeover“merger of equals”, $13Bn was wired out of the Chrysler accounts to the Daimler-Benz account at Deutsche Bank.Which was after the Last Hope cars were sent to tooling and years of the new Grand Cherokee and Ram printing money. Those vehicles were also vying for development funding at the time the LH cars were going to tooling.
Fascinating, I never would’ve guessed it
Mercedes Sprinter
That’s what I can here to say. Not just the Transit, the current Sprinter lets you spec it as fwd, AWD, or rwd.
Well, yes, but all Sprinters have the engine in the same place and orientation. Daimler didn’t do what Ford did, and give the FWD version a whole different engine bay and floor pan, with the powertrain rotated 90 degrees.
As far as I can tell, the closest thing to this is when—after the brand was sold BMW—MG Rover went through the trouble of reengineering its transverse-FWD 75 to longitude-RWD…and stuffing a Ford Mod V8 in there while they did it.
The Renault Master also has transverse FF and F-AWD with optional longitudinal FR.
And Vito
Cool stuff. And you can call your game Treyffiliates.