Axon’s Automotive Anorak: Happy birthday front‑wheel‑drive!

Yes, as if you needed reminding, it is 110 years since the launch of the very first car with a transverse engine and FWD layout: the Christie of 1909, created by the Walter Christie Automobile Company of New York. Oh, and just in case we forget, it’s also the 60^th anniversary of another important automobile sharing essentially the same mechanical configuration as the 1909 Christie, too, a small British economy car called the Mini!

In 1959 BMC’s revolutionary, and now legendary, Mini – designed and engineered by (Sir) Alec Issigonis – set the template for all respectable small FWD cars to follow over the last 60 years. The Mini’s real party piece though wasn’t its Christie-inspired layout, but more its gearbox located within the engine sump, this being the truly pioneering engineering element of the small bubble-car-banishing Issigonis model.

Contrary to popular belief however, not only was the Mini not the world’s first small FWD car (Coventry’s BSA beating BMC to this by a full 30 years with its economy 1929 FWD three- and four-wheelers, with Citroën, DKW, Adler, Amilcar and various others also getting in on the act far sooner) but, as you’ve just been reminded, the Issigonis Mini was also not the first front-drive car with a transversely-mounted engine configuration either, Christie being 40 years ahead.

The first popular transverse-engined FWD car to sell in any significant volume was the German DKW Front, introduced in 1931 and featuring an economy twin-cylinder two-stroke engine. In 1946 a prototype of the first SAAB car, the FWD 92, was built with a transversely-mounted two-cylinder, two-stroke engine similar to the pre-war DKW, but with the clutch and gearbox innovatively located in-line with the crankshaft, with these components located ahead of the final drive assembly.

Saab stuck to this layout for its production 92 of 1949, the Swedish marque remaining loyal to front-wheel-drive throughout its pioneering car making career, although most models used a longitudinal engine layout. Meanwhile, DKW (later Auto Union, and now Audi) also stuck with FWD, its last transverse engined vehicle being the three-cylinder F-91/4 Munga 4x4 utility made for the German military from 1955-69. The advent of the Audi 50 hatchback in 1974 saw DKW’s lineage return to a transverse engine/FWD format once more; the Audi later morphing into the original Volkswagen Polo.

Other pre-1959 Mini FWD cars with a similar transverse engine layout included the Dechaux, a prototype developed by French engineer Charles Dechaux, and planned to offer a range of engines spanning 1.5-litres to 2.0-litres, as first presented at the 1947 Paris Salon. Further afield, in 1955 Suzuki presented its first motor car model, the FWD Suzulite, a compact and light passenger car, weighing less than 500kg. Powered by a 360cc, 16bhp two-cylinder, two-stroke transverse engine, the small Suzuki was highly advanced for its time, enjoying independent coil spring suspension and rack and pinion steering, as favoured by Issigonis and later used on his Mini.

Grimsby-based Lloyd Cars Ltd. (not to be confused with the German Borgward-owned marque of the same name) presented its FWD 650 in late 1946, powered by a transversely-located 654cc, 25bhp two-stroke motor, with around 600 examples made until 1950.

The unlikely communist setting of East Germany saw the first (now cult) FWD Trabant revealed in 1957, with its smoky transverse two-stroke motor being made until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, this being replaced by a more modern (and cleaner) Volkswagen Polo 1.1-litre transverse engine in 1990.

Once BMC’s cunningly-packaged Austin Se7en and Morris Mini Minor (quickly and collectively nick-named the ‘Mini’) had been revealed at the 1959 London Motor Show at Earls Court, life for other economy city cars would never be the same again, the Mini revolutionising small family motoring for good.

Early examples of Issigonis’ minimal miniaturised masterpiece were not without their problems, water leaks and rapid gearbox synchro wear being particular problems. And at launch, the Mini’s tiny 10-inch wheels and overall sparse and diminutive size caused the car to be something of a laughing stock, especially within BMC’s huge Cowley and Longbridge workforces. When people first drove the Mini though (especially John Cooper and the Continental press), the model’s go-kart-like handling and huge fun factor quickly transformed the smirks into smiles, and by the time the Swinging 60s had come along, the Mini had gained its must-have, classless cult status.

Fiat’s Dante Giacosa, a contemporary of Alec Issigonis, and an equally gifted engineer, took five years to follow the lead of his Turkish-born British-Greek ‘rival.’ Giacosa’s first transverse, front-drive model appeared in 1964 in the form of the accomplished but unsung Autobianchi Primula, an advanced larger family car that largely copied the Issigonis layout, but also perfected it, locating the gearbox in-line with the crankshaft. With the gear train linked to the offset differential, and final drive and unequal length drive shafts, this more satisfactory arrangement later appeared in the standard-setting Fiat 128 and 127. It was this set-up that quickly became the arrangement we now see under the bonnet of nearly all front-wheel-drive cars today.

So, the original influential Mini is 60 years young this year, having created the basis of most of today’s FWD cars. Many happy returns Mini, plus the same to the Fiat 128 on the occasion of its 50^th birthday, the Saab 92’s 70^th, plus of course, the 110^th anniversary of the truly pioneering front-wheel-drive, transverse-engined 1909 Christie!