When you are buying a car, you are flooded with information. You get terms like differential, torque, 4x4, fuel consumption, engine capacity and many more technical terms thrown in your direction. Some of these terms are pretty common and easy to understand; others are not so easy to understand and require some level of technical understanding of how a car works.

A car is moved by one of the following three ways: power either goes to the front two wheels and they pull the car along, or the power goes to the back two wheels and they push the car along, or the car evenly distributes the available power to all four wheels at the same time. Steering is always done by the front two wheels, no matter how the car is set up. The first two options are called 2x4 or two wheel drive cars, the last option is your 4x4 or four wheel drive car.

An advantage of having a 4x4 is that you are not relying on one pair of wheels to get traction. You have a wider area of tyre on the road with which to grip the surface. This means that you are able to pull away more easily on slippery surfaces as the extra set of wheels with power compensates for the lack of integrity of the surface you are driving on.

The car that you end up buying will depend entirely on what you will be using the car for. For general town driving, it could be better to buy a fuel efficient two wheel drive, whilst if you intend on driving off road or spend a lot of time on dirt roads which are not graded regularly or transport heavy, bulky loads, then a 4x4 would be a better option for you.