American cars or foreign cars....

[perc-o-prince]

FWD or rear wheel.. <br
With the snow coming in tonight, something popped back into my mind. I'm a firm believer that, in the snow, it's 90% driver and 10% car. Has anyone else noticed this? I've never had a car that I couldn't get through the snow, including a 1987 Camaro in something like 6 or 8" of the white stuff <br
What's your experience?? <br
Chuc

 

[hoover1060]

Always had rear drive...

Until now..
Used to always drive Buick's too, the two best ones being my 1976 Electra 225 Limited and the 1988 Electra Estate Wagon I bought brand new and drove for 10 years.
Never had any problems getting through snow or ice with those cars, ever. They would go through anything.
I've owned two Mercury Grand Marquis' as well, a 1992 model and a 2003 model.
Both of them were HORRIBLE in snow or on slick roads. The '03 model was worse because of the traction control. I would get stuck and need pushing/towing at least once a winter in those cars. <br
I've had my 2008 Mercury Milan since September, it now has 4700 miles on it, and we've been through some snow and ice with it. Its front drive, and does very well. I'll never go back to rear drive again!

 

[volvoguy87]

Foreign snow.

First, if I had to buy a car being made now, it would be a Honda. Like an Apple Mac, they just work, and I wish I had one.
In snow and ice, it's neither all driver, nor is it all car. First, it helps if your car has decent tires for the conditions (tires with enough tread AND winter tread vs. summer tread). I own both a front wheel drive car (2002 Saab 9-3, Saab is a 4-letter-word!), and a rear wheel drive (1987 Volvo 240 GL, the best thing on 4 wheels). I have driven them both in some snow. The Volvo has scared me a few times, but it has never stranded me. The Saab has ABS and traction control, but it is far from idiot proof. I can handle a little fishtailing every now and then, but the torque-steer from the Saab can get dangerous. Nothing like accelerating when 1 wheel hits a slick spot and the wheel suddenly jumps to one side! Under normal driving conditions I prefer rear wheel drive, especially because of torque steer. I have rarely had problems with RWD, but then again, I have been driving my Volvo for nearly 9 years and I know it rather well.
The greatest help in bad weather driving is knowing your car and how it will react under the circumstances at hand. There is nothing quite like experience. At times, however, experience is most helpful when it tells you to just stay home for awhile and not fool with going anywhere. Think of the laundry you could wash, or the meal you could make, while the road crews plow the streets to make it a bit safer and easier for you.

Shovel or have hot cocoa? Get me a saucepan, it's Hershey's time!
Dave

 

[hydralique]

It's not a simple question . . .

but overall it's hard to beat a good front wheel drive car for most people. Putting the weight over the drive wheels is a pretty common-sense thing, and in a front-drive car if you don't have enough traction to steer then you'll probably not have enough traction to move in the first place. It is the most foolproof solution to dealing with snow or ice.

If you're looking for pure traction, then a rear-engined car is best, especially up hills. That's because the effect of weight transfer tends to load the rear wheels more. This is the reason why rear-drive cars can get by with less than 50% of their weight on the rear, while a front-drive car needs over 60% on the nose to work well. With a rear-engined car you start out with maybe 60% of the weight on the rear, and then weight transfer works for you. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to either spin the car in a corner due to the heavy tail, or to have the nose just plow straight on if it can't get any grip when the rear end can.

Front engine, rear drive cars can work well if they have enough weight on the rear. One of the best cars I've ever driven on ice was my old Alfa Romeo Alfetta GT. With a transaxle in the rear it always got good traction but didn't suffer from wacky oversteer either. Unfortunately, not many front engine, rear drive cars use a transaxle layout and some of them are too nose-heavy to do well in poor traction conditions. The other solution is to set the engine well back in the chassis (BMW being a big proponent of this) which can give plenty of weight on the rear, although it hurts the overall space efficiency of the car.

With either front or rear drive, a limited slip or torque biasing differential is a huge help. Without this, if one wheel loses traction the other will just spin.

Regarding front-drive torque steer, IMO this is more a fault of poor design than inevitable with a front-drive car. I used to have a Saab 900 Turbo, a pretty decent car overall but it did have it's share of torque steer with a 160 hp engine. My '73 Citroen, with 190 hp, has none at all. Correcting for differences in the old and newer SAE hp measurements puts the cars at about the same power and they're not to different in size. However, the Citroen has the wonderful old centerpoint steering geometry that they pioneered back in the '50s. The steering axis passes right through the center of the tire contact point. To achieve this, the front wheel bearings are about 7" in diameter so that the outer CV joint can sit within the bearing. This requires that the front brakes be inboard, on the transaxle, as there isn't room at the wheel itself. Couple this with long, equal length halfshafts and the propensity for torque steer is greatly minimzed. Most modern front-drive cars have transverse engines which is great on a small, low powered car but forces the halfshafts to be short and thus increases the angles that the CV joints must contend with. It is cheaper to build, but doesn't work well with lots of power. Another example of cheap, standardized design having won out over elegant and functional engineering.

 

[panthera]

I'd say,

at least in my case, it's 99% me and 1% the car. Every time I've run into trouble while driving, it was my fault.
Regarding other drivers, it blows my mind how many people think 4WD, traction-control and ABS will let you control your car when your wheels are on powder lying on top of smooth ice.
Not that we have any 'real' winter weather here in Colorado/Wyoming...

 

[countryguy]

Definitely the best is AWD/4 wheel drive then front wheel and lastly rear wheel drive. My first car was a '79 Chrysler New Yorker rear wheel drive but all cars since then (and I've had 6) have been front wheel drive which is definitely better than rear wheel drive when driving through deep snow or up steep hills. My partner has a Subaru AWD and he never has a problem getting the car up our steep driveway which is about 150 feet in length. What makes the biggest difference however is putting on snow tires rather than having all seasons. They make the world of difference not only in traction but in stopping distance. And even better is having studded snow tires.

People think that because they are in a 4 wheel drive SUV that they are invincible but in the many times that I have driven hundreds of miles in snow storms, it is usually the SUVs that are the majority of vehicles in the snow banks.

Gary

 

[davy1063]

Simply put....

Audi Quattro

 

[gyrafoam]

Oh yeah,IMO, AWD is the wave of the future.
Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Back in Atlanta in the late 1960's I remember tooling around in my 1967 Coupe de Ville the day after an ice storm. Heading North on Roswell Rd. (Tuxedo Plaza), there were V.W's skewed sideways, yet that Cadillac had no trouble at all, and climbed the hill leading up to Wieuca with no problem. Go figya.

Here in Virginia, Mark,Gary, Robert and I have been out "fishing for appliances" down dirt roads in the countryside, in the dead of winter, with my Dodge P/U 2WD in a couple of feet of snow without a problem.

I just think AWD makes the most sense because it provides the most traction in any weather condition----except for ice----and I won't even try to drive on that. Cemeteries are full of heros.

 

[frigilux]

Chuck---Didn't you just LOVE your '87 Camaro? I had an '86 Z28 (dark metallic red with gold ground effects) and I freakin' LOVED that car. However, after one winter of spinning in circles and sliding backwards/sideways down the six steep hills in my little burg, I bought a teeny-weeny (emphasis on weeny) Geo Metro for winter use and stored the Camaro every November.

In '94 I bought a Geo Prizm (a rebadged Toyota Corolla) with front-wheel drive and wouldn't ever go back to rear-wheel drive. They're just so easy to deal with during our long, snowy, icy winters.

I do miss that Z28, though. She was a beauty.

 

[58limited]

Being from Central and South Texas, I don't have much experiance, but we got ice storms in Dallas every few years. My '78 Mercury that I had as a teen was able to handle it pretty good and I always drove very slow and with caution, unlike most of the other idiots that passed me and wound up off the road up ahead. This car went up a very steep, very icy, hill when many other cars, including FWD ones, were sitting at the bottom afraid to try. I just shifted it to "L" and let the engine idle carry me. One problem - the front disk brakes would stop the front wheels, but the rear drums would continue to spin thus fish-tailing the car (the brakes had been serviced so I assume they were adjusted, but disk brakes are better than drum so I guess the front engaged with less pedal presure than the back). I just shifted to neutral whenever I had to stop. In the few times I've driven on ice in Texas, I've never had a problem - but other drivers sure did - they thought they could still go 55 or higher on the interstate, I even got passed by a tow truck who had to be doing over 60 in Temple - I was doing 20 on an empty road (I-35) and he flew by me.

It was fun to take that Merc into an empty icy parking lot and do donuts in the big beast.

 

[jmirawm]

Snow

I agree 99% driver - 1 % car. When I was 16 - the first snow we had Dad took me to an empty parking lot - in a 1972-73? Ford LTD two door 400. <p> Then he put me behind the drivers seat and told me to drive it - gun it - brake it. We had fun that day. And in the meantime I learned to respect snow and ice. I have never had a wreck in the snow or ice. Have had a few people almost slide into me a time or two. <p> Thanks Dad!

 

[hydralique]

Provided that they have enough weight on the drive wheels, big cars can be good on ice and snow. They do have one big problem though: once they start to slide they have a lot more inertia than a smaller car and they'll slide a long way.

I learned this back when I had both a Fiat X1/9 and a Citroen DS21. The Citroen was a big car, 16' long and 3000 lbs. With front wheel drive it pretty much took care of itself on ice so long as you didn't really overcook it. Being young I did precisely that and found the car would slide a long, long way once it lost traction. By contrast the Fiat was much smaller and lighter, 2100 lbs., with a mid-rear engine and rear wheel drive. It moved around a lot on ice, and you could lose either the nose or tail on a corner, unlike the DS which always lost traction on the nose. When the X1/9 did start to slide it was easy to catch, and you could really play the nose against the tail to keep it on the road. Both the DS21 and X1/9 did a lot better than most front engine, rear drive cars of the day, and both were quite safe. It all depended on what driving style one was most comfortable with, either being a little cautious and not worrying too much (best on the DS) or paying a lot of attention to the car and going faster (best on the X1/9).

58Limited, I had that same rear brake problem happen on an '80s rear-drive Buick Regal owned by an office I once worked for. It was a really dreadful car on snow or ice, with poor traction and a tail that was unstable even at a dead stop unless you punched the brakes HARD. That made coming to a safe stop very difficult because you'd often lock the brakes up trying to keep the rear wheels from spinning. I really think a manual transmission is much easier to deal with in low traction conditions because you can be so much more precise with a clutch than a torque converter, and once you disengage the clutch at a stop no power goes to the wheels, but than again I'm not fond of automatics in the first place.

 

[perc-o-prince]

it is usually the SUVs that are the majority of vehicles in

SUV's, 4WD Jeeps, Volvos... any car that people buy thinking they'le be invincible. They don't understand that under adverse driving conditions, things like 4WD will help them stay on the road if they drive responsibly, and may help them out of a spot when they don't. Still can't just speed away and expect not to get into trouble.

Chuck---Didn't you just LOVE your '87 Camaro?
Yeah, I did!! It did me well in NH snow, then MA snow when we moved back to MA. Drove it to 150+K miles.

I was out today taking advantage of the 75% off Christmas stuff (found my C-9 multi-colored LED strands for $2.49!!!) and the snow came in. It was a mix of frightened rabbits driving 15 in a 45 (they shouldn't have been out to begin with), regular people doing a responsible speed based on conditions, and the "I have a _____ vehicle and can go anywhere at any speed" people. Visibility on the mass Pike (65MPH road) was about 150 yards for a while, and there were 4 vehicles were off the road that I could see. 3 were SUV's. One with the tell-tale out-of-control tire tracks behind it, and another too far off the road for it to have been on purpose. The 4th was a 4dr family car, cleaning off wipers.

Oh well!!!

Chuck

 

[sudsmaster]

I used to get by just fine in my '60's Plymouth Valiant. I liked to use Sno-Treds, which are yellow plastic contraptions that work quite well, like chains, except you can go speeds up to about 35 mph on paved roads with no problem. They also work very well in snow, flexing to bite into the snow and giving more grip than tire chains. The trick was to install them properly and keep them tensioned. The nylon webbing tends to stretch and I found it prudent to stop after a few miles and tighten them up. Apparently a lot of people didn't do it right and wound up with them wrapped around their axles, so they were pulled from the market. I still have a pair in the trunk of the Valiant, but haven't driven it for years. I never had a problem with the snow treds... except once on a very slow turn when the car gently plowed into a snow bank - probably because there was ice under the snow. No damage, though.

The problem with modern FWD cars is that you can't put chains on the front wheels, in most cases. There isn't enough clearance, esp when you consider the steering turning of the wheels. So it's either snow tires (meaning a complete four wheel tire change) or those funky (and expensive) rim mounted snow grippers that only some car makes support.

FWD cars may also have problems going uphill on snow with the car fully loaded with passengers. They might either have to get out and walk, or the car might need to be driven uphill in reverse (unsafe).

 

[perc-o-prince]

And even better is having studded snow tires

Hey Gary,

I thought studded tires were illegal in Ontario? I remember as a kid, going over the Fort Erie Bridge, the big signs about the studded tires. Did they change that?

Chuck

 

[red_october]

Cars and drivers and snow and such...

I have a front-wheel drive car. It is absolute dog dirt in snow. Today comming back from Lake George in the snow, I saw about a dozen cars in the ditch. Most of them were small to midsize import sedans and wagons, but a few were AWD cars, including one Audi. Just goes to show that no matter what you drive, you can still foul it up bad enough to end up in the ditch with the shiny side down (as at least one car was).
It doesn't matter, FWD versus RWD; for RWD just chuck a few sandbags in the trunk and have the right tires. There is nothing you can do to help a FWD car that is crap in the snow (as mine is); it will always be crap in the snow. All 4WD/AWD does is help you find traction; if you are in a situation where having driving force won't help, then extra driving wheels won't help.

Driving properly is the best thing you can do in any car; it's like the old addage about a professional photographer taking a better photo with an Insta-matic than a rank ammatuer with a $2,000 SLR. Sure the pro will do even better with the better gear, but your ability counts for more than your auto.

 

[gyrafoam]

Hydralique------

I know some folks back in a suburb of Atlanta that still have a couple of old Citroens! I remember the first time I tried to drive one (back in the sixties) and nearly put us through the windshield----there was a black "button" on the floor board instead of a traditional brake pedal----and that damn thing was sensitive!

I remember going up to Gaddis on Pharr Rd. back when the "SM" debuted and going for a spin---- that was a really nice car. I'm sure you already know the story, but those SM's had headlights that moved with the front wheels like an old Tucker and the stupid morons at the Dept. of Transportation required that they be made stationary for use in the U.S. DUH!!!!!!!

The DS-21 was a VERY comfortable car. A great cruiser. I would love to have one now, new out of the box (or an SM or WTH how 'bout a Deux Chevaux)! But who would know how to work on one! (Other than my friends in Atlanta!)

 

[sudsmaster]

Out here if you want to go skiing in the winter, and there's snow on the highway, you must have either chains or approved snow tires/4wd. Otherwise you'll get stopped by the CHP and turned back. There are various levels of traction device requirement: R1, R2, R3. R1 means it's ok to have snow rated (M/S) tires on a front wheel or rear wheel drive vehicle. R2 means a two wheel drive vehicle must have chains on the drive wheels. R2 means that a four wheel drive vehicle is OK with just snow tires. R3 means 4wd with chains only. The CHP emphasizes that in the winter in snow country everyone should carry chains, regardless (I guess they are in denial about the inability of most FWD cars to fit chains of any type).

The problem, I suppose, is that one can drive for several hours to get to the mountains and then find it's R2 rated and the snow tires on the drive wheels won't cut it, and of course the fwd design means no chains are available to fit the wheels. Don't know how common R2 conditions are, but I recall in the past getting stopped on HW80 in the Valiant and told that from there on out it was "chains only".

Currently I have all-season Michelin radials on the 300M that are marked "M+S". The car also has traction control to limit wheel spin, and I've read that it does pretty well in snow as is. I've not tried it, and not really all that interested in getting the car all gunked up driving in the snow if I can help it.

I've also driven a mini pickup (rwd only) in the mountains in the winter, and had no problems. I remember seeing 4wd's off in the ditch, whereas I was able to stay on the road by maintaining a steady speed, staying well back from traffic ahead, and going very easy on the brakes. So, like people say, a lot of this is how one drives as well as the type of vehicle/drive system/tires.

I did some googling, though, and found a cable chain that works on cars with limited wheel clearance and which might work on the 300M. Link follow...

http://www.scc-chain.com/Traction%20Pages/Trac_SZ6.html#

 

[countryguy]

Chuck,

A couple of years ago the government made studded snow tires legal if you live in Northern Ontario (ie. about 120 miles north of Toronto and northward). I really don't know how that makes much sense. I guess if I moved to southern Ontario then I would have to get rid of the studded snow tires but I can drive down there as long as my address is still in northern Ontario.

Gary