ORIGINAL: koots

It is common automotive knowledge that a rear drive chassis has inherently better handling over a front drive car because of one huge reason: You are not powering and turning the car with the same wheels. the transverse engine layout of a FWD car focuses an engine and transmission in the front quarter of the car adding an incredible front weight bias, which adds to more stress on the front wheels, which willdull the cars handling limit and create alot of understeer. RWD's drivetrain layout has the engine occupying the engine bay, the transmssion underneath your feet and an axle at the rear. this spreads the drivetrain weight over a much longer area, which puts a helluva lot less stress on the front wheels.

Not to say a FWD car cannot handle well, they are just limited by design. That means nothing, you say? If RWD is worse, why would Porsche,Ferrari,BMW,Jaguar,Ford GT40 and the Chevrolet Corvette, to name a few, would still use this inferior architecture?
I love my civic alot, but with the layout of FWD it was meant to save space and overall weight, but had a heavy front bias that is just not the real answer to a performance oriented and spirited drive.

Please refrain from making useless comments on any internet forum without any credible info to back it up.