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In adverse weather conditions------------front or rear wheel drive car when you only have two wheel drive

Just reading the posts about BMW drivers problems ,now one has died in Scotland

[fizzwheel]

What counts as adverse ?

If its snowing that bad, then I dont go out in the car. Or if I do get caught out in it then you drive accordingly.

I used to like sliding the Ford Sierra Estate I had around wet round abouts it'd go really easily if it had less than 1/4 tank of petrol in it.

I reckon if I had to though I'd want a front wheel drive car as its easier to get traction with the weight of the engine. But again if you are in snow and dont keep your momentum up then you get stuck no matter what.

I remember a few years ago we had bad snow and I only just got up one hill, I had the car in 4th and was just letting it pull itself along where as there were loads of people giving it the beans, spinning the wheels and getting stuck.

rear wheel drive....

having said that...my M3 is seriously pants in snow....but the best car i ever had was a vw beetle...skinny tyres....was great. Only time it wheelspan or powerslid

I'd have to say rear, but to be honest I'm saying that for the wrong reasons Rear is more fun Well, that and it, to me at least is more predictable, rear wheel drive tends to be found on "driver's cars", that is they're set up better to feel the road and available traction, and when it goes wrong you know exactly what's going to happen and when (ie. fishtailing when you power on too early/hard). Front seems "safer" but also less predictable, front drive doesn't seem to give the road feel (whether that's an inherent thing about front wheel drive, or more down to suspension set up typically found on FWD cars, I don't know). Also FWD typically results in understeer which I find harder to instinctively deal with than oversteer.

[Luckypants]

The problem is not so much front / rear wheel drive but the modern low profile tyres we all have that just sit on top of snow and spin. Nice narrow knobbly (not mud pluggers but with a rough tread) tyres are the way to go. Loads of folks round here have Freelanders / RAV4 etc 'for when the snow comes' but they are all fitted with road tyres! Come the snow they don't get much furhter than a 2WD car, they just sit there with 4 wheels spinning instead of 2.

I fitted some half decent tyres (General Grabber AT approved as a snow tyre for Canada etc) to my X-Trail and do far better in mud and snow than many 'proper 4x4' on standard (road) tyres. Last decent snow fall I pulled a brand new Nissan Navarra up a hill, the owner could not see that the problem was his tyres... just kept going on about 4WD not being all it cracked up to be! LOL

No one in UK is gonna keep two sets of tyres though, one for normal and one for snow. This is the norm in places where they get regular snowfall (is law in Austria) but we don't have enough snow to justify it. So we slide around for a few days a year...........