For traction, yes, but for handling? Not so much.. Making Typhoon AWD just incorporated the FF understeer department into the handling. As a Mini owner, you should be familiar with that phenomenon. And I wouldn't call that an advantage. And just to make things worse, it's practically a van, which gives it higher center of gravity.. which makes the handling even worse. Thus, it was a botched attempt at performance vehicle.
(A Mini owner would understand what front-wheel drive does for a short-wheelbase car. It makes it easier to countersteer out of a slide. A rear wheel drive Mini would be much like a Clio V6... you can't provoke it into "fun" oversteer angles... instead... you drive it more like an old-fashioned 911... you drive within the limits and try not to provoke it... it'll be faster... but no... it won't be much fun. As a side note: rear-drive Starlets are awesome autocrossers... but generally too twitchy for big-course drifting or track-attacks)
Maybe you haven't driven many rear-wheel drive pickups... but basically...
Where your basic rear-wheel drive sportscar will be a finely balanced machine with neutral handling that edges out into oversteer if you provoke it, your basic rear-wheel drive pickup will know only two cornering attitudes: piggish, nose-heavy understeer... and lovely, unwieldy snappy-snap oversteer as the unladen rear end skips across the road. And they don't even have the low moment of inertia that hot hatches do that allow you to catch them easily... or the front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive that most hot hatches have that helps you "pull" out of slides.
And most RWD pickups can't put power down worth squat (thanks to that very front-heavy weight balance) unless they have rear tires the size of Texas.
The Sy/Ty had AWD with a rear-biased 35-65 torque split, an LSD, a lower ride height than the standard vehicle, with an uprated suspension and low-profile (for the early 90's) tires. The skidpad numbers were about 0.05 - 0.1 gs short of sportscars of the same period... around the same as most sedans of the time... and while they didn't set the world afire in the way they cornered, no contemporary road tests labelled them as understeering pigs.
That's not to say they're great
sportscars... modern road tests (I've got an issue of Hemmings open on my table right now, with a road review of the Marlboro edition Syclone... and Motive has one
HERE. ) note that these are basically creaky ladder-frame live-axle trucks with lots of go-faster goodies and grip... but therein lies the genius of these cars.
The development team that worked on the Syclone/Typhoon twins made pigs fly. A longstanding automotive tradition in the same vein that spawned the Lancia Delta Integrale and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. And an Evolution or Integrale is more practical than a Sy/Ty. More doors, more seats, and even more cargo capacity (cargo load limit on the Sy: 500 pounds... pathetic).
In other words... here was a truck that was faster than a Ferrari and nearly as impractical. If the utter absurdity of the Sy/Ty isn't cause for celebration, I don't know what is.
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. I'll agree on the Skyline, and the Lambo, but I bet you could give 'em hell on a dirt road and they would be lot's of fun. 
