I always hear people extoling the virtues of front wheel drive in the snow, but I've never had a problem with any of my RWD boats. The '82 Ford Granada was a tank, my '67 volvo loved the snow the same as the '78 and '87... and the SDL did great as well. Now, I've only had one of the 300TDs in snow, and I drove past a couple of accidents on hills where I had no problems. Proper tires, a little weight, and a little defensive driving.
It does snow in Germany and Sweden...

I know it takes a different set of skills to pilot a RWD in the snow, but it's not that difficult, or remarkably more dangerous.

(The AWD '98 Subaru Outback wagon was a beast in the snow- I couldn't get it to slide once, even when I tried. But, it leaked more oil than the diesels!)

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You clearly are not watching the advertisements of the automobile manufacturers extolling the virtues of four driven wheels and you certainly haven't kept up with the neighbors with their four wheel drive, gas guzzling $hitboxes.

What the hell is wrong with you?

I trained myself on a 91 Firebird with 245 50 ZR16 Goodyear Eagle GSCs and 300+ HP. Of course, now that the motor is in a 91 Vette and making 410 HP at the wheels and the tires are 275 40 ZR17, I probably won't do it anymore. Also another thing I like to do is to wait for snow and go to the mall parking lot and play. That gives me practice and tells me how the car reacts in the snow.

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I used to drive a front wheel drive Caddy before I got my first MB and I hear people say fromt wheel drive is better in the snow all the time all the time. I have never found that to be true. I think with MB you have equal weight distrubution so it is not an issue. With American cars there is more weight on the front wheels than the back so a rear-wheel drive car may not have the traction on slipperly surfaces. A couple of sand bags in the trunk can fix that, but I have never needed them in an MB.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
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Front wheel drive, with most of the weight on the front wheels, is likely to provide better traction for most vehicles. IMHO, they are also more forgiving than RWD for people who really don't know how to safely handle a RWD vehicle in snow.

Well RWD is ok unless you stop at the bottom of a hill, then you are not moving. Every fwd car I have ever driven in the snow is better then my SDL. I have yet to drive an awd car but after seeing an Audi wagon pull up my hill I am pretty sure they are the best. The Audi went halfway up the hill, came to a complete stop, dropped someone off and then kept going up like the pavement was dry. As I was feeling the rear end of my SDL starting to slide, If I stopped I would have had to back down the hill and try again. Thats about all that fwd is good for though, 360 days out of the year it is pointless.

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one advantage of FWD is when encountering those slush troughs on the highways, especially when changing lanes. If you hit one of these at highway speeds, you can spin your car, which is a very dangerous situation.

One should naturally steer into the spin. With a RWD car, one should lift off the gas, and if the car has a manual transmission, the engine braking should help resist the spin; the driver pretty much has to ride it out and wait for the car to stabilize itself.

With a FWD car, the driver has the additional option of applying power with the wheels pointing in the right direction to correct the spin. This reaction however, has to be learned, and I have yet to hear about a driving school teaching this - all they teach is steering into the skid direction, without regard for the drive type of the vehicle. I often see races of FWD sport sedans where the car gets into a seemingly hopeless spin, but miraculously recovers because the driver applies more power.

Cars with stability control systems have an additional margin of safety, but one must familiarize oneself with how the car reacts in such situations.

I have to say the ESP system MB has is very good. My freind and I were playing with his E300D in a very slick parking lot. With the ESP on it was very hard to get the car to spin. With it off it was only a matter of flooring it and turning the wheel. Also with ESP on it was easy to stop a spin, these systoms in new cars are very good and worth the extra money.


A common mistake I see people make is when they start to slide or spin in the snow they hit the brakes. This only makes it worse, doing nothing to the pedals or adding a little power on a fwd car seems to work well. As the saying goes:

"when in a spin both feet in"
"when in doubt both feet out"

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I'd argue against lifting abruptly off the throttle. When you do that, the car's momentum shifts forward and reduces traction available to the sliding rear wheels, increasing instability. The drivetrain drag also has a braking effect, reducing traction even more. I have driven cars (an E30 BMW comes to mind) that would actually begin fishtailing while going in a straight line after an abrupt throttle lift under low traction.

Power at the rear wheels is not what starts the skid, and it can actually eliminate oversteer if you know how to use it.

The left-foot braking technique is valuable under these conditions. Maintaining some throttle to maintain existing momentum, thereby maximizing traction at the rear, the driver brakes with the left foot until the car momentarily loses traction at the front wheels. The brief episode of understeer settles the car.

The technique takes a little practice, but it's quite effective with all but front-wheel-drive cars. I've even used it with my old Audi 4000cs quattro.


Absolutely, the greatest thing FWD has going for it is that you can power back into a straight line. And no, few FWD drivers have a clue about that.



Russ

Hey, I have one of those, a '98 in fact! They rock in the snow. And yes, it leaked more oil than my diesel does. But I replaced the front seal, and it's not bad now.

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Retired now after driving an average of 50k per year servicing bank equipment. Drove FW/RW/4W covering flat and hilly terrain and did some playing in mud and sand. Traded vehicles every 2 years for work. First snow of year play in large parking lot to get feel of vehicle. For mud and sand reduce tire pressure by 10 lbs. Best vehicle for traction is the one with the smallest engine offered, 4WD best but not worth the extra cost for the amount of times needed if ever. For your wife or kid best thing for them is a front wheel drive with the smallest engine available, it will handle the best with out thinking.