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Behold: Honda's initial prototype of the 4-wheel steering (4WS) system they put into the Prelude
(lemmy.one)
It's literally two front ends of a first gen Accord welded together. They put so much effort into it, they even blended the body panels, shortened the doors, and changed out the rear "headlights" for red lenses.
I love honda engineers so much.
Is there any actual practical advantage to this, though? It sounds to me like a lot of things waiting to go very expensively wrong, without much in the way of real benefit.
It's significantly better for car dynamics. It does add complexity, but not really "expensively wrong", since Honda's system is almost entirely mechanical sans some slightly long power steering lines. There's very little to go wrong.
See now you put it that way and all of a sudden I'm wondering why this never caught on. O.O
It's honestly because 99% of drivers never push their car hard enough to see the actual handling benefits of 4WS while moving, and most parking lots are already designed around traditional cars' turning radius making the low-speed maneuverability not terribly beneficial. The system is simple ans super cool but it IS still added cost, and ultimately the market made it not worth the additional manufacturing complexity.
Better handling, better turn radius, better stability control. Definitely correct in saying it adds more to maintainence, though.