TECH TALK: ALL ABOUT FOUR-WHEEL-DRIVE | PART 1

Is AWD and 4WD the same thing?

- SYED SHIRAZ SHAH

Today, I'll let you in on a secret—all auto journalists' enthusiast side has favourites or specific areas of interest.

It may include a couple of manufacturers or even a few types of automotive technologies. For example, while as an auto journalist I would want to review everything from an electric moped to a Rolls Royce, and do full justice to each vehicle while at it, my happiness quotient rises exponentially when I get to review 4x4s and motorcycles.

This interest, more often than not, is a result of being inadvertently exposed to such vehicles in your formative years. Like in my case, I learnt driving on my father's Left Hand Drive Willys CJ-3B, and since back then we used to live at our farm, putting the Jeep in 4H and 4L, as the situation demanded, was almost a daily affair. Similarly, since I was also exposed to motorcycles simultaneously, I became as hooked to them naturally as I was to our Jeep and offroading.

What I am trying to come at is the fact that decades before making a foray into automotive journalism, I was already well versed with the basics of 4WD, Jeeps, and motorcycles. Now since this story is all about four-wheel-drive, we'll keep the motorcycles out for the time being.

Coming back to 4x4s, it really pains me to see that even now with 2025 about to end, and despite information available at the tips of your thumbs in milliseconds, everyone—from the masses to the majority of auto journalists, including we'll founding fathers of Indian automotive journalism—has no clue about the basics of four-wheel-drive vehicles and offroading.