Category Technical Talk

For US market luxury brands, most of their upscale sedans offer the AWD option nowadays. However, not all AWD systems are created equal. Before our review, let’s look at what goes into a luxury sedan AWD system.

Differential: this is a device to let both sides of output rotate at a different speed, and still obtain torque. For example in your front-wheel-drive car, your front wheels are connected with a differential.

Open differential: when one side of output loses traction, there will be no torque available at another side at all...

This road test comes from MotorTrend’s 2014 June Issue.

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