Why don't people buy snow tires?

Traction control? My 2004 Impreza wagon has 4 new snow tires. I can tromp on the throttle to the floor in the first 3 gears in snow up to

25cm deep and it just digs in and goes until I am over 140 k's where i decide to shift to 5th gear and slow down. That is traction control.

No, I think he means VDC e.g. if you start to understeer it applies the brake on the inside rear wheel to correct.

I agree as I drive in the same spirited manner with 4 snows on my '02 GT; so TC may not be terribly necessary on awd subies. But occasionally I'd like to have traction control for spirited uphill starts, yet not necessarily VDC, as I'd like to be able to disable either (or both) computer operated systems so as to still be able to get sideways, do handbrake turns, or to spin all four tires in the snow when desired (a rarity, yet fun). The GT has but 165hp, so traction control would be more beneficial in a car with a stronger motor as in an STi or B4 (when it gets here), and especially fwd and rwd cars which is where this started... Terry - '02 Regatta-Red GT wagon 5spd - 25,000 miles '03 Silver Legacy SE auto-sedan - 2450 miles Yakima / TandeMover / Rockymount rack To reply, get rid of the "nonsense"

Oh MAN am I glad you wrote that. The Dunlop SP Sport 5000 AS radials I just bought for my FWD Oldsmobile seem to have *much* better lateral (sideways) grip than they do when accelerating or decelerating. I was starting to think I was losing my mind.

- Greg Reed

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Here is where we see the reason for your belief that FWD is superior to RWD: You assume that a loss of traction is something from which we must "recover." When driving in the snow, my car is sliding in some manner or another about 50% or so of the time it's cornering. All of this sliding is intentionally caused and controlled by *me*, the *driver* of the car. Therefore, neither oversteer nor understeer is something from which I have to "recover" because in either case the condition was something that I caused intentionally. A RWD (or better still, AWD) car gives me more options as to how I can make the car slide through a curve than does a FWD car.

The expected response to the preceding paragraph (that "most drivers" are incapable of controlling their cars in this manner) is a testament to just how poorly trained "most drivers" are in the United States. As far as I'm concerned, anybody who can't do a decent 4-wheel drift through a snowy curve has no business operating a motor vehicle between the months of September and May.

And anybody who doesn't think that AWD should count as a "safety feature" in the snow has never tried to make a left turn onto a busy road in less-than-perfect road conditions in a FWD vehicle. There aren't a lot of things that I dread more than trying to pull into traffic in the snow with my FWD Oldsmobile.

- Greg Reed

In 1978 there was a blizzard that paralyzed the Boston area for about a week. I drove my '71 XKE 18 miles through that mess to get home safely. I can't tell you how many stuck cars I passed. In those days it was all rear wheel drive with the rare 4 wheel drive Scout around. the Jag had a limited slip rear differential and no snow tires. I suppose some of my success was due to luck, but a lot was due to the driving skills I had developed driving that car.

Al

No Way wrote: ...

...

So what's better, left rear of right front? And here I thought that, by association, left front and right rear were more common.

- D ;-)

It feels like I have a lot more all-round traction than with the orginals -- climbing steep driveway, steering in loose snow, everything. Now, this could largely just be the wonderful new-ness of the tires compared to the old ones, combined with wishful thinking to justify the purchase of an expensive set of tires... but I am quite happy with them in the snow.

In Montreal that doesn't surprise me. Most people in Montreal don't drive cars; they aim them and fire them.

Yeah, works great.

I grew up in Montrèal. One fine -20C winter's day my mother decided now was as good as any time to teach me to drive in her blue manual RWD Mazda GLC. She figured best just get it over with - if I survived that, I'd survive anything.