Quote:
Originally Posted by ovekvam
But then again AWD will also not get the power down if you are cornering on the limit. The car has a limited amount of grip (not higher with AWD), and it is up to the driver how much you want to use for cornering, and how much to use for acceleration.
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Yes, that is correct, the lateral acceleration is the same for both when you don't accelerate during the turn. I don't exclude the better balanced RWD is even able to marginally have a better lateral g reading.
But when you drive only remotely like I do it no longer holds, I transfer mass to the front axle before apex and to rear after apex, by throttling in and out while searching the lowest gear on turn in. I do this to savely search grip limits I guess and it kept me already several times out of crashing my car. I actually don't believe that Schumacher can approach a turn with perfect constant speed across to have max lateral g.
Assume you're on 80% (or even 95% when you want) of lateral max attainable g's and you want to accelerate after the apex, than the 4wd will be able to spread longitudinal forces amongst the 4 wheels which ALWAYS provides a bigger resulting longitudinal accelaration, which is the vectorial combined of lateral and longitudinal accelerations. This is a plain physical and mathematical law, you can't deny.
The problem with RWD is that the front wheels can not get exploited to use their resting longitudinal grip to help accelerating out. This is a problem that BMW very well knows and understands! The m135i has more than enough torque to confront you with it every time it rains and you still want to get things moving. I assure you that you won't need extreme performance driving to push the rear wheels over the grip limit with this enthousiast engine.
Therefore, when you consider AT and you don't live in California or Spain, go for the xDrive, certainly in Belgium where price delta is very small.