Is there a difference between the two? Car magazines always have different numbers for both and I have not been able to understand the difference. Thanks in advance for the help! And please don‘t give me useless answers telling me to look it up on Google or in a library. I asked here for a reason.
American cars makers can boast of great mpg numbers with high hp engines but they sacrifice performance because of their high final drive and gear ratios in these vehicles.
There may be, depending on the transmission layout. All cars have the axle (or better, the diff) ratio, while some cars may have the final drive, usually an extra gear pair in the gearbox or, in case of off-road vehicles, at the wheel (portal axles). To further complicate things, the terms may even be interchanged in some situations. The safest way is to search the transmission layout. All these gear pairs plus the transmission gear (1st to 6th) concur to form the overall trasmission ratio which is the mathematical product of single ratios: iTOT iGEAR * iFIN * iDIFF (*iOTHER, if any).
