Why are some cars four-lug and some five-lug? Options

[Coomer]

Why are some cars four-lug, while others are five-lug? To me, it seems like a lot of nicer cars have five-lug.

For example, the third gen. Integras are all 4-lug, except the Type R which is 5-lug.

The fourth gen. Celica GT and ST in the US are 4-lug, but the nicer GT-S and even nicer All-Trac are 5-lug.

The fifth gen. Celica ST is 4-lug, while the nicer other models are all 5-lug.

So why do manufacturers decide to make some cars 4-lug and others 5-lug? It seems to me like 5-lug maybe adds a bit more weight, but is marginally safer because it's one more lugnut for protection in case others fail. It also seems slightly more expensive to make a 5-lug setup because of more materials. But I dunno...anyone have any good explanation for this?

[biglipzit]

The manufacturers do this for power considerations. The type R integra is a more powerful vehicle built for racing and a 5 bolt wheel would deliver that extra power to the ground alot safer than a 4 lug. In a race the last thing you want is breaking the bolts so the extra bolt is added for extra strength to deal with the power delivery situation and environment the vehicle was built for. That is why faster better versions of certain cars have 5 bolts instead of 4 bolts in the economy versions. Some companies like toyota use the same chassis on certain vehicles as on others and you would find that some economy cars come 5 bolt because it is too much trouble to deal with changing the hubs when they were already mass produced as 5 bolt. The weight difference is negligable in lug and bolt situations.