What cars best in the snow?

[NickMorgan]

Other than my Jeep Cherokee the best car (van) I have driven in the snow was a little Mini van. I remember when I was a delivery driver in Edinburgh it would go anywhere. At one junction at the top of a hill I came up behind a Subaru which was being pushed by a helpful bunch of people. I then drove up to the junction and they all moved towards my Mini van to push me, but I just drove straight out of the junction!!

[JPB]

.....My pal, who lives in the French Alps, and so is used to these conditions, informs me that the best road car ever in snow was the Panda 4x4....

The mechanically similar Subaru Justy was good for the same reasons, as were the old L-series Subarus which, like the Justy and the Panda, didn't have centre diffs.

When I worked for Subaru, many of the dealerships up this way used to find that the first task they'd be called upon to complete in Spring would be to unwind the transmission as people would engage 4 wheel drive on snow and forget to take it out on pavement.
The Justy especially, having a transverse engine and taking drive to the rear diff from the blank side of the front one, à la Steyr-Puch with the Panda 4x4, could be tricky to get back into front wheel drive, workshop time quoted was officially 14.4 Hours . In practice, we used to instruct the dealerships to take the affected car off road and reverse at high speed on the muddiest track they could find. There'd be a clunk and then the red button on the gear lever would, as if by magic, pop back up.
People never seemed to mind the mud if they were spared the £317 labour bill.
Steyr-Puch, with the Panda 4x4, cheated a bit by anticipating that people would ignore the instructions about not using 4 wheel drive on the road, so the (Haflinger-derived) rear diff on those had an overrun freewheel. A brilliant idea, except when going down steep hills.
The older Subarus were outstanding on the slippery, white stuff. They were more tolerant of the use of 4x4 on-road too, since the tyres used to wear fairly evenly front to back. The only thing that ever defeated anything pre-Legacy would be depth of the stuff as they had just an extra Inch of ground clearance over the FWD only versions.
That was before they ruined the whole ethos of the range by doing away with extreme simplicity and going for sheer technical brilliance without restraint.

[o/t]Why ever would you do away with the twin cambelts that allowed a car to limp home on one bank of cylinders when the o/s belt broke, in favour of one enormous belt that cost three times as much to fit ?[/o/t]

[VYO 372M]

I've never had a problem with any of my Herald's in the snow, even on the hilly sections, they have just ploughed on. A 1978 1000 Mini was excellent.

Steve

[KWM338R]

Ford Festiva, aka Kia (no) Pride with 145 snow tyres on the front. Never got stuck.

[trackerjack]

VW Beetle! Brilliant in the snow. When we had the snow last year it was the only car that could make it up the icy hills. Rear engine with rear wheel drive - so much traction!

/cue TrackerJacks obligatory anti-Beetle comment/

Aw shucks you have sussed me.................in this case I have to agree Gnashes teeth in silence GRRRR.

We used to do grass track in Devon and as stated the Subaru Justy was brilliant as was the Sierra 4x4.
The Stag was fitted with Ferguson 4 wheel drive on a prototype and according to legend when all cars were stuck in snow at a Swiss ski resort the Stag stunned watchers as it just went where it liked

[Lewis]

Have to say, took my Cherokee (old XJ, '96 one) out for a 50 mile drive in the snow/ice/slush yesterday, even up some really steep fresh-snow roads (and some heavily compacted sheet ice hills!) and it just thundered up with ease, even though it was only in full time 4WD, didn't even need to use part-time or 4 lo. Even drove up a long steep slope that was mostly compacted snow towing a Peugeot 206!

It also demists and warms up really quickly (a great feature on a winter driver), the engine gets up to temperature in no time at all, the autobox makes it very easy to put power down smoothly, an LSD keeps both rear wheels working, and ABS keeps it on the straight and narrow when you need to brake heavily. It also has good visibility all round and is quite comfortable

Supra (3.0, 5 speed, LSD) is OK in the snow but it is quite fidgity over bumps on ice-laden roads, partly because it's stiffened and lowered. Obviously harder to maintain traction as well as it's quite light at the rear - so if you stop on a icy slope, you're pretty much done for - although I did find backing up at points like that seemed to work quite well. Wouldn't want to push on in it though, not that you should anyway - definitely one for crawling along at walking pace in heavy snow and ice, as if you even looked at the accelerator pedal the LSD would just cause it to push sideways at the first given opportunity. Not recommended (plus the engine revs up easily and the throttle is quite sensitive to input, making it hard to modulate the throttle accurately and gently).

Always found my 1850HL (automatic) easy to drive in the snow - narrow tires, autobox to dampen the power delivery and a good heater made each journey a relatively easy, and comfortable affair. Never really tried any serious snow driving in it though

[JPB]

...Even drove up a long steep slope that was mostly compacted snow towing a Peugeot 206!

That sounds like a great new event for the Winter Olympics.

..Always found my 1850HL (automatic) easy to drive in the snow - narrow tires, autobox to dampen the power delivery and a good heater made each journey a relatively easy, and comfortable affair. Never really tried any serious snow driving in it though

I have to say that mine is much better on snow (and other types of slippery stuff) since he's had his new Avon rubber fitted, than he was on the perfectly adequate tyres that were on there during the last snow, back in February.
In fact it's like driving a different car, but in a good way.
Agreed about the heater as well, it's no Lada or Volvo but it does a lovely job of thawing out the left kneecap.

I still rate the kitten as the best-ever front-engined, RWD car in snow. Unlike the Dolomite, I could have put bald x-plies on that and it would have found some grip.
I can only assume that Dolomites are very sensitive to tyre choice in bad conditions and that way, by pure luck as much as anything, I appear to have made the right decision.

I can't remember the brand of tyres that I last used on the Ice Blue car, but don't remember that one feeling as stable in the white stuff.

[NickMorgan]

Having just tried to move my father's Volvo V50, it is definitely the worst car to drive in the snow. What a shame, Volvo used to make really good cars. I blame Jeremy Clarkson for his Top Gear car reviews. Doesn't he realise that we don't all buy cars to drift around a race track? Some of us use our cars in the real world where there are pot holes, bumps and snow!


I passed my father on the track up to my sister's farm. His Volvo was stuck firmly in a passing place and my sister's daughter was rescuing him in her Cleo. Later my brother-in-law and I went down in his Land Rover to collect the Volvo. The wheels just spun and we had to put straw under them to get it to move. As soon as we hit any snow it would just stop, with its wheels spinning. Eventually, with the help of two other people, shovels and grit we moved it into a gateway. We parked it and walked back for the Land Rover. When we drove back up the track we noticed that the Volvo had slid about six feet back onto the track with the hand brake on and in gear!!

[sprint95m]

Last week I read in the press that Highland Council have 100 gritters left, having lost 14 to accidents in the past couple of weeks.
These accidents are usually the result of the drivers going off road because they can't pick out the verges in deep snow.
The main routes have snow poles but it is Transerve who cover these routes, not the council.

The lamp-post outside our local Somerfield is bent over. It stopped a gritter from colliding with the store. That lamp-post was only replaced a few months ago after a similar accident.

[Edin Dundee]

..........
The lamp-post outside our local Somerfield is bent over. It stopped a gritter from colliding with the store. That lamp-post was only replaced a few months ago after a similar accident.

Some years ago my wife had a small bump in our Honda Accord due to black ice.
I dropped her off the next week and noticed the marks on the post she hit. A sign post. Warning of...........ICE!!

[Spunkymonkey]

If you don't count 4wd (cos they're just cheating ) my money's on our little Daf:

RWD with the transmission over the rear wheels and it's as heavy as the engine.

Nice skinny 135 tyres to dig in

No dif at all so equal torque to both rear wheels up to about 9mph and limited "slip" above that.

Completely smooth take-up of drive and no gear changes to upset it once you're moving

Plus, not enough torque to spin the wheels anyway

[merlind100]

Can't argue with any of that, though I've never driven one it all sounds just what you need. Is 4wd cheating, it's not always what you drive but how you drive it. There have been plenty of 4wds crashed in the snow because they being driven by tw**s. How about a 4wd Dolly? Relativly easy to do I reckon, 1500fwd, pony gearbox and a rwd dolly rear axle. It would probably suffer from the lack of a centre diff and lack of power but could be fun on the slippery stuff

[xvivalve]

...well it sure as heck isn't my Aston!

Had to have public assistance to get out of a frozen pub car park with slight incline on Christmas Eve lunchtime. Ironically this is the same pub car park we used to gravitate towards with a Morris Marina every time it snowed or was icy so we could learn to drive properly!

[VanIsleSprint]

When I was a lad in the 60's I lived in a place called Kitimat on the BC coast. The name
means 'People of the Snow'. In 1966 we had a snowfall of 37 feet and my VW beetle with
tall skinny crossply snowtires and rear engine would go anywhere as long as you didn't
high center it.
More recently, last year we had quite a bit more than usual in the lower mainland and
Vancouver Island. My wife's Nissan Altima V6 with traction control and a set of Goodyear
Assurance Triple Tread all-season tires was quite amazing. We were able to go on some roads
that stumped a few AWD vehicles.

[JPB]

...No dif at all so equal torque to both rear wheels up to about 9mph and limited "slip" above that....

Funny you should say that, I had a Daf owner in my home last night. Now running a Volvo 343, he was bemoaning the fact that on later cars, such as the 340 series, the transmission is ahead of a conventional diff, both belts driving that. I could well believe that an earlier car, with no separate diff, would be good on snow but why on Earth did they do away with the radial clutch shoes of early cars and fit a conventional SDP with that over-complex cover arrangement?

Darn it, I'm warming to the Daf idea, please put me off, I don't want a jealous Dolomite to deal with.