I Have Questions About The Car On The Countertop Mat At AutoZone

As I mentioned yesterday, David is in town and we’re working on a fairly idiotic automotive project that we’ll be writing about soon. This means, of course, visits to auto parts stores. And auto parts stores means at least some standing at a counter as someone looks up something on a computer that’s running what looks like text-only software designed to emulate a 1980s WANG terminal. One plus about this, though, is that often these countertops have these printed mat things, and on one I saw yesterday, there was a diagram of a car. A car I have questions about.

You can see the mat up above there, which was at an AutoZone, and I encourage you to scrutinize it with the focus of a bored customer who doesn’t want to be confronted with any actual news on their phone, or whatever. Because I think you’ll find something strange, like I did.

Here, look for yourself and see if you can spot it:

Let’s zoom in on each end, just to be sure. First, the front:

…and now, the rear:

See what I’m getting at here? I bet you do. It’s this:

I think what we’re looking at here is a very rare sort of machine, a front transverse-engined, rear-wheel drive car! I thought maybe this could be an AWD setup, but I don’t see any kind of driveshafts going to the front wheels, so it really does seem like a transverse front/RWD setup!

This setup is exceedingly rare! In fact, I can’t think of any actual production car that used this setup, though Ford did play with the idea, building some genuinely bonkers Tempos with transverse straight-eight engines!

(photos: Ford via Drivingenthusiast.net)

The driveshaft was connected to the middle of the engine using something they called a T-drive. They seem to have built a Thunderbird with a similar layout, a T-Drive T-Bird, and at least one concept car, in 1991:

Deeply strange stuff. Seems like an overly complicated way to get power to wheels, too, and is there really a demand for a straight-8 sideways engine?

Still, I laud Autozone for their bold choice to commemorate this exotic layout in their countertop mats. It’s possible they just wanted to show the most common engine layout, transverse front, but still have a way to show a rear-drive/differential. That’s possible. But I prefer to think some designer toiling at Autozone appreciates the exciting periphery of automotive engineering, and wanted to share it, subtly, with a mass audience.

Good job!