Hi there i will like to purchase a RWD car
i am trying to get a used 2003-2006 car with a average engine not those V6 300 HP monster that make 18 MPG i am looking more for a light maneuverable car with decent engine power (aroung 150-170 HP) and average fuel consumption any good ideas here ?
BMW 3 series, Cadillac CTS would top my list.
How many seats to you need?
Miata sounds ideal if you don’t need much room. A BMW 325, or a C-Class Benz would also fit the bill if wanted more room. V6 Mustangs can be had for reasonable cost.
What type of car, what price range? There are dozens of choices depending what you want/need.
I was thinking Mustang for 4 seats or Lotus Elise if only two are necessary.
Just curious… why RWD? The handling experience? The ability to pull doughnuts in a parking lot? Boasting rights? I take it you don’t plan to drive very much in a snowy area.
If you have to ask…
Long live RWD!
We can be more helpful if you specify size, and how you mostly use your car.
My extended family drives only RWD. We have mostly BMWs, two old Volvo station wagons, and Lexus GS. We drive all our cars at least a quarter-million miles before retiring them.
BTW - we are from Iowa and Indiana, so we are no strangers to ice and snow, and the benefits of FWD are real, but over-rated. FWD exists because it is cheaper to manufacture, period. Volvo switched to FWD to stay cost-competitive, not to improve winter handling, and the Sweedes know something about winter driving.
Now that the kids are grown, we can drive pretty small cars. I even looked at a Mustang (poor visiblility, but the handling has vastly improved in the past few years) and a Camaro (fit and finish was horrible). Mercedes I drove was very nice, but it worried me that they keep changing engine designs. Our Lexus GS is a GREAT car, but it does not have a lot of personality. Our most recent purchase was a gently-used 2004 BMW 330 that we got last year for $22k. It drives great and has had zero problems in our first year of ownership. The only thing I don’t like is the low profile tires that cannot be rotated because the rears are wider than the fronts. They are expensive!
“FWD exists because it is cheaper to manufacture, period.”
Actually, there is an additional reason, namely interior room.
By eliminating the transmission hump and minimizing (or eliminating) the driveshaft hump, additional interior room is gained, and that can be mighty important in a small car.
An excellent example of the interior room penalty of RWD is the old Toyota Cressida. It was a very nice car, but the interior was incredibly cramped for a car of that size. Its FWD contemporaries of a similar exterior size were far more spacious in the interior.
As cars continue to get smaller because of gas and diesel prices, I believe that RWD will essentially exist only on luxury-level cars that are fairly large to begin with, and whose owners are not as concerned with gas mileage.
Probably true, RWD is now more or less limited to luxury and performance cars (with the exception of domestic fleet cars and trucks). These two classes of cars will be unaffected by fuel prices anyway. Most of the appliances are already FWD, they will continue to get smaller and cheaper as they are driven by the market and fuel prices.
One of my goals in life is to get through without ever owning or regularly operating a wrong wheel drive car. Even the Toyota hatchback that I owned was RWD (right wheel drive).
Yet one more advantage to front drive with an east-west engine layout over rear wheel drive. With everything else being more or less equal, the front driver will get better gas mileage because there is no right angle gearbox in the differential. A right angle gearbox will have more power loss than a parallel gearbox for lack of a better word.
Rear drive cars, however, typically have better highway steering stability in my view. Another way of describing it is straight line tracking.
I am looking for a coupe / 2 seats
Smart car 
to be honest i have drive FWD since i born but i have read about the advantages in control of RWD and i will like to try some fun besides the point i am getting tired of rotating the tires every 3 months cause fwd cars are not balanced on using the tires wisely you use the same tires to get traction and to control the car on RWD you use the back tires for traction and front tires to control car but to keep it simply just curiosity
mm my price range is between 20K-35K , i am looking for a coupe light coupe i dont like heavy cars at all and cause of the cheap prices of gas , i am looking for a car that can make 25MPG-30MPG in a highway , in fact i was looking some options and like the RX-8 and the mazda Miata the problem is that i know so little about RWD cars that maybe i will miss a better car on the same price range
i like the elise SC is just what i am looking for the only problem is 15 k outside of my price range i doubt i can find one used so it has to be new i think
You said you were looking for a coupe/2 seats in the $25-30K price range, I assume you mean a roadster (coupes normally seat four)?
In that price range, I would probably be looking for a good used SLK with a smaller engine, a used boxster, or a used Z3/Z4. That’s about it, except for the TT (which isn’t RWD, it’s a FWD car with a AWD option that still has that funky FWD engine layout). I can’t think of any “real” RWD cars that are in your price range new, but you will usually get a better deal buying something 3-4 years old anyway (as long as it hasn’t been beat up).
If you are interested in asian cars, I assume there are a bunch that you could buy new for that price but I don’t know anything about them. I would probably avoid used asian cars because they were probably owned by kids. Of course, there are always vettes, if that’s your taste (I have know idea how much they are selling for).
Toyota MR2 Spyder or a Honda S2000.
The Spyder is a really cool car, it was designed by Lotus engineers for Toyota. It’s engine in in the middle of the car, it is RWD and it handles awesome. If I was you and you can find one, that is what I would buy.
The S2000 is also a really nice car, fast small, RWD, and near perfect 50/50 balance. It also is still made by Honda so it is probably easier to fing than the Spyder.