Rims: Front vs. rear wheel drive rims

From TireRack.com:

Wheels come in all different styles, sizes, bolt patterns and offsets.

I assumed that if the wheel size, bolt pattern and offset were correct,
a rim should fit my car. Today I had a guy at Sears tell me that the
wheels in their ad were only for front wheel drive cars and not for rear
wheel drive cars. So I said that I didn't know that there was some
characteristic that made a wheel usable on a front wheel drive car and
not a rear wheel drive car, and he acted like I was real stupid. (So I
called another Sears and they said the wheels in their ad were available
for my rear wheel drive car.)

So I could understand if the first guy said that they were only
available for certain models of cars but not my car. But this guy was
saying that there was some inherent difference between the design of
wheels for front wheel drive cars vs. rear wheel drive cars and that
wheels designed for front wheel drive cars couldn't be used on rear
wheel drive cars. So for a given wheel size, bolt pattern, and offset,
is there something inherent in the design of a wheel for a front wheel
drive car that precludes it from being used a rear wheel drive car?

Thanks

On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:05:07 GMT, BW <bw (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote:

From TireRack.com:

Wheels come in all different styles, sizes, bolt patterns and offsets.

I assumed that if the wheel size, bolt pattern and offset were correct,
a rim should fit my car.

Good assumption. Wheel size is niether here nor there. You can get
17" wheels for a 13" car. The difference between front/rear drive is
in the offset. A standard RWD wheel has the offset mostly in the
middle of the rim (at or near 0 offset). FWD has offset mostly to
the outside of the rim. Sit one example of each side by side and you
can see the difference. How much offset depends on the car's
designer. Specialty wheels have a different set of rules for the
'look appeal'.

So for a given wheel size, bolt pattern, and offset,
is there something inherent in the design of a wheel for a front wheel
drive car that precludes it from being used a rear wheel drive car?

The steel and construction in a wheel better be as good for FWD as RWD