Should you buy a big, front-drive SUV or spend more on all-wheel drive?

AutoExpert

Are you thinking of buying a big, fat, seven-seat SUV for the family? Maybe saving a few thousand bucks and going for the ‘poverty’ powertrain? These front-drive SUVs - if you tick this box, I fear you might discover the vehicle is just hard to live with, over time.

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When you look at some arbitrary SUV model range - there’s generally a premium powertrain and a poverty powertrain. And you have to pick one. The premium powertrain is often the one with AWD. The poverty powertrain is front-drive, typically. Sometimes there’s a better engine with the AWD - Hyundai and Kia do that. Toyota does not with Kluger - same engine (3.5 V6 atmo petrol) and the distinction there is just AWD for premium or front drive for poverty, with Kluger. Mazda borrows from the Toyota playbook on this for CX-8 and CX-9. CX-8 offers only the 2.2 diesel - in either front-drive or AWD. CX-9 - ditto, a 2.5 turbo petrol four with AWD as the ‘premium’ and front drive as the ‘poverty’. It costs you $4000 more to tick the ‘AWD’ box with Kluger and CX-8, and nearly $4500 in CX-9. Obviously, manufacturing this premium powertrain adds a transfer case (like, a gearbox module) hanging off the back of the transmission, which splits the drive front and rear, plus you have to pay for all the rear-drive componentry - the propshaft, rear diff and rear axles. Stuff like that. So it’s not as if they’re just stitching you up. AWD does cost more. That’s justified. Over at Hyundai and Kia the poverty powertrain in Sorento and Santa Fe is a 3.5-litre atmo petrol V6 with front-drive, and the premium is a 2.2-litre turbo diesel four with all-wheel drive. And the difference in price is just $3000. And I think the price gap shrinks there because V6 engines are expensive to build and package. I really tried to make the case for the V6 front driver. Like, who would buy this? Who is it right for? So, my objective was not to kick the V6 gratuitously in the nuts at the outset - because it doesn’t purport to be an equal kind of option to the diesel AWD. It’s worse. We all know it’s not going to be as good. Because the V6 is pumping all that drive to the front two wheels, and because it needs a rev to perform, it’s easy to spin the front wheels off the mark. In terms of motive power, you’ve only got about half the traction potential of the AWD. Typically you’ll feel this wheelspin when you dart out of a side street onto an arterial road, and you notice a B-double bearing down on you, unexpectedly - so you give the accelerator a squirt and the front inside wheel starts to spin. Like, what else can it do? There’s rear weight transfer thanks to the pitch and right weight transfer thanks to the roll - the left front wheel unloads and spins. They’ve done a pretty good job dialling back the throttle response in this situation, and the intervention of the traction control is pretty mild too - so, well done there, making this process as civilised as it can be. The steering gets a bit squirmy, but it’s not full-tilt torque steer, which feels like it can pull the wheel out of your hands, in extremis. And this is not that, but it’s still not as refined as the all-wheel drive option, which just grabs the road and goes.