It’s the designation for a four-wheel-drive vehicle — most often used to represent one with true offroad capability.
The first numeral in the 4x4 designation stands for the number of wheels, and the second represents the number of wheels powered or driven. Thus, the average passenger car is a 4x2. A motorcycle is a 2x1. Obviously, it’s impossible to drive a 2x4, but you can drive to the lumber yard, buy some 2x4s, throw them in the back of your 4x4 or 4x2 and drive to your home 20.
Information for this was taken from the Cars.com’s glossary, written by Joe Wiesenfelder.
Learn more
See if your question has already been asked and answered
Your question has been successfully submitted to Ask.cars.com. It will now be reviewed by our editors and we'll answer it soon if we think it's a useful question. You will be notified via e-mail when the answer is posted. Ask.cars.com tackles your questions about new cars and the car-buying process. Unfortunately we can't answer questions regarding:
Have our experts answer any of your questions about new cars.
Don't worry — we won't publish your last name or email.
