First I will let you all know I am a fan of american muscle all the way. I do own a import mainly because of gas prices, and I must say some of the imports I've seen definitely deserve respect. My question is why are there so many front wheel drive cars with big huge spoilers on the back deck. Even if they can get up enough speed for it to do anything its just going take the weight off the drive wheels. Right?

 

because they are idiots.

the ONLY time a spoiler will help a FWD car is above 110mph, above that they tend to get tail happy. (ask anyone in the road racing forum, many many discusions about this)

touring wings = gay on street cars

 

The intended purpose of spoilers is for cornering, not acceleration. Like Kamin said, they could only start adding downforce at very high speeds, so they can't affect your quarter mile times.

Downforce will help in cornering whether it's on the drive wheels or not. But again it only works at very high speeds. So yes, they are probably idiots.

Adding downforce on the rear wheels isn't necessarily going to take it off the fronts (unless the spoiler/ wing is way behing the rear wheels).