I had never heard or thought of a mid engine car with engine in front of driver before getting my S2000. When I tell someone it is mid engine they have a hard time believing it. Have to open hood and show axal line with engine behind to prove. Even looking at the car with hood closed it looks almost impossible to be true. I read that the new Z was going to be mid engine in front. What other cars are/or have been produced in this configuration?

 

BMWs for one. I think they are lots of them, not as rare as one would hope.

 

not sure what you mean the middle... pretty sure that the engine is not located half way between the front and rear wheels- i think mid-engine means taking into account the weight of all drive-train components, the weight is evenly distributed over the front and rear wheels...

 

We always used to refer to just three engine layouts: front-engine(like S2000), mid-engine (like Boxster, MR2), and rear-engine (Porsche 911, the old air-cooled VW's). The "front mid-engine" concept came along after most front-engine cars became transverse engine fwd, where the engine is totally in front of the front wheels. With the front engine cars where the engine is front-to-back, at least part of the weight of the engine and all of the transmission was behind the front wheels, so people never made any distinction about how much of the engine was behind the wheels.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by wanabe
[B]not sure what you mean the middle... pretty sure that the engine is not located half way between the front and rear wheels-

 

Going to BMW site it appears that while having near 50 50 weight distribution that BMWs are front engine. Anyone who owns a BMW care to pop the hood and check?

 

I looked at two reviews of the S2000 on the Car and Driver website. The specifications page for both reviews had the vehicle type listed as " Vehicle type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 2-passenger, 2-door roadster ". Not everyone who knows or is interested in cars makes the "front mid-engine" distinction.

 

While it's true that the engine is behind the axis between the front wheels, that doesn't do away with the weight bias of the engine being in the frontward part of the car. It has to do the polar moment of inertia. The car would have different handling characteristics if the engine were in the traditional mid-engine placement, which is just fore of the rear axles...this would change the weight bias just as having it aft of the front wheels.

It took some pretty cool engineering to get the entire engine behind the centerline of the front wheels...but IMO, that doesn't make it a mid engine car. It just makes it a FR car with the engine behind the front wheels.

 

It's a front engine! Especially the trans. is behind the engine!

 

Front-Mid engine designs are not very common. I believe the current Corvette is also a Front-Mid design, but I'm not aware of many other F-M designs on the market. While the polar moment of inertia in a front-mid is not the same as a rear-mid, it's better engine placement than a front or rear design.