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Originally Posted by nikitopo
Not a marketing thing. The "front mid" term helps you identify if the engine is behind the front axle or not.
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Again I'm well aware of the benefits of placing the engine well aft on a front-engine rear-drive car. Hell, Henry Ford's designers understood this which is why the front-engine rear-drive Model T has the engine behind the front wheel centerline.
Suppose an FR car has the "entire engine" 1mm behind front axle centerline, then one year there's a minor design change adding a small boss to the front of the engine which then puts the forward-most point 1mm *forward* of front axle centerline? Does that *really* fundamentally change the architecture of the car?! Of course not...
And what does "entire engine" even mean? Does it include water pump?
Pulleys? Intake manifold and throttle-body? Air filter? Depending on how you define it, plenty of cars could fall either way.
Also, some have defined this nebulous and useless category of "front-mid" as having the engine's *center of gravity* in aft of front-wheel centerline. Which pretty much makes *every* front-engine/rear-drive car ever built a "front-mid-engine".
"Front Mid" is b.s. marketing invented by Nissan for the 350Z, ironically a car with not-very-awesome 53/47 F/R weight distribution. Before that NObody talked about front-engine sports cars being "front-mid-engine" even with the engine mounted way aft.
The C8 will be the *first* mid-engine production Corvette, despite the fact that with introduction of V8 the 1955 C1 had the engine entirely behind front wheel centerline. As I think about it, it's possible the 1953 and 1954 inline-6 C1 Corvettes also fit this definition, but likely dependent on where the water pump or pulleys are...
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and others as you said have the half of the engine behind the front axle or even have it complete behind the front axle. Everything matters on a sports car and weight distribution is one of the most import aspects. Saying that weight distribution doesn't make any difference is at least naive.
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I never said or suggested that! Of course weight distribution is important (fwiw my 240Z and my S2000 had identical weight distribution). That doesn't mean that a car that's on the limit of some arbitrary definition fundamentally changes if a tiny part of the engine moves one direction or the other! Indeed, even changing front caster could be the difference between "front engine" and "front-mid". And it would be hard to know without some sophisticated measuring equipment to determine where whatever arbitrary point on the engine lies relative to the front wheel centerlines. This is silly, stupid, ridiculous, and wholly unnecessary.
Engine in front of driver: front-engine. Again, any decent FR car will position the engine aft for weight distribution. We already know this. No need to add a configuration to try to make a few people feel like they're driving "mid-engine" cars when they aren't...