Though most vehicles today have rack & pinion steering, some still use a recirculating ball steering gear. The recirculating ball design, which dates back to the 1950s, was used on many rear-wheel drive cars up through the 1980s, as well as most pickup trucks. It’s still used today on a handful of vehicles, including some RWD cars and trucks.

The main advantages of the recirculating ball steering gear are its compact design and low friction characteristics. The manual version takes much less driver effort to steer the vehicle than a manual rack, making it well-suited for larger, heavier vehicles. But the design doesn’t lend itself very well to front-wheel drive applications because it uses a parallelogram steering linkage with a pitman arm and idler arm. For FWD, rack & pinion is the better choice.