With winter this year hitting early and with a vengeance, I have already had to deal with winter driving conditions. In fact, this is the earliest I have ever had to put my winter tires on my vehicles for as long as I have owned them. All this winter weather has resulted in some pretty nasty road conditions.
Last week, we had a great QOTD, Sweet or Salty, discussing the dilemma that justaddoil was having on which vehicle to drive during winter. The comments that were posted lead to some great discussion on the prowess of each vehicle in the winter conditions. In this particular case, both the Jeep Wagoneer and the Saab are quite capable vehicles in the snow.
Of course, not all cars are as capable as the above two choices and it made me think of all the different vehicles I have owned and driven over the years. Some were excellent winter vehicles while others were remembered for being particularly bad.
After some thought, I came up with this list of my best and worst winter cars.
Best Overall
My current daily driver is a 2008 Toyota Tundra 4×4 pickup. Even though our other daily driver is a ‘16 Subaru Outback, this truck is significantly better in the snow than the Subaru. Tipping the scales at about 5300 lbs, it has lots of weight to make it sure-footed in the snow. In addition it has modern snow tires, Bridgestone Blizzak DM-V2s, Toyota’s excellent A-Trac electronic traction control system and a decent ABS system. All these things combined make it the best overall winter vehicle I have owned. There has never been any road condition this truck can’t handle with confidence.
Best RWD
Without a question, the most capable RWD vehicle I’ve owned was my late great 1993 Chevrolet Suburban. I bought this beast as a cheap alternative to a 4×4 pickup, which is what I really wanted at the time. I knew that a 2WD truck was pretty well useless in the snow, but I figured the extra weight of the ‘burb on the rear end would make it tolerable in the snow, much like fullsize station wagons. My Suburban was heavy, about 5000 lbs, and heavy vehicles work well in winter. It also had the G80 option which was an Eaton automatic locking rear differential (gov-lock). It was the proverbial tank in the snow, good enough for me to get away driving it a few winters in a rural setting with just all-season truck tires. After a few years I decided to invest in studded winter tires, which made it extremely capable. The year we built our house, we rented a place on the lake that had a seldom maintained private road. The landlord said 4WD was required, but I knew I’d be fine. The conditions got pretty hairy at times, but the combination of lots of weight, decent traction and ground clearance, resulted in the ‘burb always pulling through.
Worst FWD
For the most part, FWD cars are pretty decent in the snow. The typical front weight bias gives them pretty decent traction, and the understeer they exhibit is easier for most to deal with compared to oversteer in a RWD car. That said, our former ’99 Honda Civic was the worst FWD vehicle we owned for winter use. The car was very light and even with winter tires didn’t have particularly good traction. I found it very light and skittish on winter roads, and not particularly sure-footed. It was not confidence inspiring to drive. The car also lacked ABS and traction control. It was a good car overall, but neither of us missed the car when it was gone.
Worst Overall
This is not our actual Skylark. Ours was similar to this, except it was black.
The worst car ever for winter driving was our old ’72 Buick Skylark Custom 4-door hardtop. While not actually my car, it was one of the family cars I learned to drive on and had a lot of seat time in it as a teenager. The Buick 350 had lots of low-end torque and it easily spun its right rear wheel at the slightest application of the throttle. It had poor enough traction to even get stuck on flat surfaces. We invested in old school blocky snow tires, which helped a bit. I have to admit though; it was a great car to learn skid control. I did my first power slides and donuts with that car, so even though was terrible in the snow, it was fun.
So that brings me to my QOTD, what was your best/worst winter vehicles?
My favorite. South Florida rocks.
Wow, that’s a gorgeous car! Your post made me laugh.
This is easy for me. Best: ’95 short bed 2 wheel drive Ranger pickup with the bed full of snow.
Worst: Every Mustang I have ever owned.
This is a tough call as I’ve had many vehicles that do quite well in snow.
The Bests Overall
Scout II with the Travel Top, 4sp, limited slip, stockish size AT tires and of course 4wd. It goes great and since I upgraded to discs in the front stops good too. Being small does make it good for dodging the left for dead or struggling vehicles littering the road when it is one of those storms that hits right before or during the evening commute. On the other hand the short wheel base is not as controllable.
F250 Crew Cab 8′ 4×4 with limited slip, 35″ AT tires. It too goes and stops great thanks to its ground pressure. While the length and width make it a bitch to get around the idiots and abanoded vehicles all that time between the axles makes it soo easy to control while drifting.
Escape Hybrid “AWD” AT tires Ford’s Gas and Go style electronic 4wd is the best I’ve ever driven. Took a bit to get my wife to understand how it worked and that if it is slipping, feeling like it might slip to mash the loud pedal and spread the torque around. If you know how to drive it was excellent. The big plus is the hybrid system When you get stuck in the pass, with not a lot of fuel, because two semis tangled and are blocking the road for a long time the fact that the engine kicks on just enough to keep it warm is the greatest thing ever.
Tempo 4wd with not much in the way of power, push button to engage the rear axle that had limited slip diff it just went and with a decent set of winter tires you couldn’t turn a wheel no matter how hard you tried.
RWD
My first Panther a 92 CV with the traction assist did great. Yes I’d often hit the store and buy a 60lb bag of dog food and leave it in the trunk until the snow event is over but it wasn’t necessary.
My Mk2 Jetta does well in the snow, got a set of Saturn steel wheels with 195 60 15 studded snows, lifts the car a bit and gives it the ability to plow through some pretty deep snow, just take off in second gear and it does really well. The ’77 Rabbit did great in the snow and ice with studded tires as well. My ’66 Beetle was good as well, had snow tires on back only and it did well playing on snowy fire roads at Angeles Crest Highway back in the day. Never have owned a 4wd.
Best for me was the gen-1 Sequoia. First winter I had it, I sought out an empty shopping centre parking lot after a dump of 4 inches of snow. It had been a loooong time since I’d had a RWD vehicle, and I thought I’d have some fun.
No dice. At the first HINT of slip, lights flashed, buzzers buzzed, the engine went limp, and I could hear the brake controller clicking away from in front of the glove box, modulating the brakes to regain stability. No matter how hard I tried (trust me), I could NOT do more than a half-spin. And there was NO off-switch. Mighty impressive…if disappointing for that night.
I’ve thought of turning off the TCS in the LWB Expedition to see what it might do…but the idea of getting sideways in 6200 lbs and 19 feet of SUV is just a wee bit too much for me.
Worst, by far, 74 impala. It wasn’t that it couldn’t get through snow, but, once stopped it would not get going again. Literally impossible to push with less than three strong men. Also it funneled snow into the engine bay. It would fill the up and plug the air intake!
Best 2wd, 81 diplomat. 255’s on the back. Went where 4wds got stuck. Nice easy tourqe from the “super six”. Best 300 bucks I ever spent.
Best overall, Ram charger. Could not get stuck, even when trying. Hak 10 tires. In 2wd I could drift as far as I wanted to, with easy control. And the heat…
Most fun, 05 cobalt with winters on the front and all seasons on the rear. STUNT CAR! Otherwise mediocre.
Our 02 V70 is an enigma on snow or ice. It was designed for it.
My 99 Silverado is great in 4wd. In 2wd it is an accident waiting to happen. If you have no load you are skating. Throttle steering is a nessecity.
It should be part of driver training to go drift around an empty parking lot. You don’t want to “learn” how as a surprise. In the Yukon we drive on snow or ice more than dry road. Which can be a lot of fun! Just keep it safe.
Best RWD. 88 Jeep Comanche 4.0/5 speed. It just never seemed to get stuck. I exlven used it to yank a few cars out of the ditch after a particularly heavy snow.
Worst RWD. 90 Camaro RS. The 245 width tires would just float up on top of any snow and it’d just go wherever it wanted.
Best FWD. 2003 Cavalier 5 speed. Nothing exceptional about it, second gear starts just let it pull.
Worst FWD. 86 Omni GLH Turbo clone. Wide tires and peaky turbo didn’t make for a fun time in anything over a dusting.
Best 4WD. Tie.. 1986 Suburban. Chunky 33×12.50 “all purpose” tires made it ridiculous fun in the snow and mud.
1989 S-10 “Baja”. I think I just had the most fun in this one.
Worst 4WD. 2001 Xterra 5 speed. Mostly my fault though. After lifting it we could never get the front end aligned quite right. It made things really dicey on slick surfaces in 4WD.
After reading all the above replies and viewing the c-c-cold pictures; I am reminded why my parents fled the mid-west for New Orleans so many years ago!
Required air conditioning (home, work and vehicle) is much easier to deal with than snow, ice and getting stuck.
I read this today before leaving for work. I had thought about responding with something about how it is easier to warm up from being cold than it is to cool down from being hot. And then on a side errand at the grocery I slipped and fell on a patch of ice in the parking lot. Friggin’ owww. Maybe you have a point after all.
My brother slipped on the ice and broke his ankle during one of the extremely rare snow/ice events that we have experienced in New Orleans.
So sorry for your injury; hope you recover quickly.
I’ve often said that I would rather deal with sunburn that frostbite, Ha Ha.
A case of choices, to be sure!
Easy!
No FWD car beats a properly tuned Saab 96 V4 on Nordic winter roads!
Interesting QOTD that I can contribute.
I lived 14 years in the northern latitudes before returning to the South. The drivers are much worse down here when it snows.
Almost all my graduate and post-grad years were in a ’82 Toyota SR-5 longbed truck, 4×2 5sp and a campertop. I always had to be at the hospital, and it always got me there on time. Upstate PA, MA, upstate NY and Wisconsin. Even though I had my grandmother’s tire chains, I never used them. Always had all-season radials. What did my first truck in was rust after 14 years. Interestingly, I also had a ’97 Honda Accord with FWD, 5 sp manual, and I thought it was adequate in the snow. Once the battery died near work in Albany NY (left the headlights on), so had to walk home (about 2 miles) in the snow and brought my truck back to jump it.
My first car was a ’73 VW Type III squareback with 4sp manual. I was one of the very few to arrive to work during SnowJam 1982-83 in Atlanta. Even on balding tires it was unstoppable on hills–there was only one with maybe an 8% grade it couldn’t climb. It was my first car in SE PA and I wasn’t afraid to venture in the snow. (By then I had better tires.)
Oddly, my dad’s 1978 Datsun 810 sedan (I6, 4sp manual) did surprisingly well in snow, despite being pretty worn down including the tires. I was in Raleigh during the big snow referenced by Eric703 in January 2000 (although I think it was more like 7-9″, but easily the worst snow in the South since I returned in 1999), and so I dutifully went into work only to discover the Health Dept was closed and only one other (out of about 150) ventured there. The power was out for 4 days so we went back home. Eventually we were charged ‘vacation’ time even though I was fighting with the State HR director that “… marooned at home with daytime TV was not my idea of a vacation!” For the two years I had that car, this was the only time I was caught in snow. It is still my favorite highway driving car.
Worst car with experience in the snow is my 2001 Nissan Frontier, regular cab. Despite the years of driving in snow, it is easily the most skittish (skiddish?) of any vehicle I’ve had. Even with good tires it’ll lose traction unexpectedly and once I did a 360 spin into the opposing lane of traffic in 2003. (Fortunately, traffic was really light since it was actively snowing and I wasn’t yet on a main artery.) Years later, I was still able to get to work despite the snow in early 2011 and the two Snow-maggedons of 2014. The latter was simply walking to work since I lived about a mile from work, and could easily predict that Atlanta would gridlock for hours on end, which it did. My DD now is an AWD Toyota Venza with Michelins, but had not had any real snow in 4 years now.
Worst car in the snow is any car my wife is driving. She’s not a good driver in good weather, and before I met her she managed to put her car in a ditch 4 times during the winter season in Connecticut, including her AWD Subaru Impreza which I found to be a good winter car when I drove it.
Worst: 1987 Chevy C3500 dually cab&chassis
Best: 1971 VW super beetle (if you ignore comfort and 4wd is disqualified)
The winters in Portland Oregon are not too bad thankfully though the roads are not always cleared promptly resulting in the snow and ice sticking around for days as it freezes and thaws.
I own a 1993 Camry stick shift that for this year, does not have studded snow tires on it just General Altimax RT43s. I try to downshift to slow down instead of braking and avoid stopping on inclines. This year I got a good set of winter tires for my 04 Sienna and I will have to see how that does in the winter.
My best was my 2003 Ram 1500 4×4. It was pretty much unstoppable. Every winter, I miss it, but after I got hurt in 2007, it was more dangerous to get in and out of than it was to drive something less in bad weather. I still see it once in a while, getting rusty, and I still wish I could have kept it:
The worst was my ’71 Cutlass that I only drove the first winter I had my license before it was totalled by a flying VW bug. It had an open rear end and would spin the tire with almost any touch of the throttle. I put snow tires on it and got through the winter without getting stuck somehow. My mom’s ’72 Cutlass that got passed down to me had a posi and was much less dramatic the next winter.
Best: 2001 Suzuki xl7. My wife drove it for years here in Calgary and always said it seemed to drive itself in the snow (in a good way). It handled great in any weather and was reliable.
We sold it a few years ago.
We recently bought another old XL7 for the winter; a 2002 with low kms from an estate sale. Funny how the handling that seemed so tight and sharp in our 2001 seems relatively numb and indifferent now after having driven newer cars in the meantime. We still like it though in spite of Suzuki’s 2002 cost – cutting spree (cheaper materials and no 3rd row).
Worst: my 2007 Focus. Even with snow tires it spins and goes nowhere. TC doesn’t help and I usually turn it off.