Some very good car companies (BMW, Mercedes Benz, Infiniti) make a large number of Rear Wheel-Drive Cars. I’m contemplating purchasing one but am concerned about some articles I’ve read that state having a RWD car in a city like Toronto or New York or is stupid because RWD can not properly handle snow, even with snow tires.
Whats the straight dope?
My call is 30% vehicle, 70% operator. A FWD with chains can be put in a ditch by a boob.
I’ve never owned a front wheel drive vehicle, although I’ve driven them. The only two accidents I’ve had in the winter involved me being stopped, and a meathead hitting me.
Go figure. 
Like danceswithcats said.
There was a thread about this a while back.
The wheels that are driving the car are the ones that are most likely to slip. If those are the front wheels, the car straightens out and goes where it was aimed. If those are the back wheels, the car spins. In either case, the trick is to be gentle on the gas and to back off as soon as you feel the slightest loss of traction. If you have a rear-wheel-drive car and start to skid, you can recover by steering “into the skid”, that is steer in the direction the back end is going. As with the gas, be gentle!
I was brought up driving r.w.d. on ice, learned early how to do it right, and never lost control in a skid.
Also, there tends to be more weight over the drive wheels in a FWD car.
That said, the resurgence in popularity in RWD cars is in part due to widespread use of electronic traction control and tire technology that has narrowed the gap substantially. But I’d still have to say that a FWD car is better.
I imagine a RWD car with studded winter tires would still be better than a FWD car with all-seasons on it.
I’m still a guest so I’m unable to search: would someone mind linking to the thread on this subject that rjk talked about?
Rear wheel drive takes a far different driving style than front or all wheel drive, but it’s not unmanageable. The main thing is to take it easy, and keep some weight in the trunk. Bags of sand or kitty litter are perfect, as they can be tapped to provide traction assistance if necessary.
I learned to drive in the snow with rear wheel drive, then got a front wheel drive. I didn’t find the front wheel drive all that much better at handling snow. I think that weight distribution is more important than where the drive wheels are. My favorite snow car is the Pontiac Fiero – rear wheel drive, mid engine. It’s why the VW Beetle was renowned as a snow car – rear wheel drive, rear engine.
As Sam Stone mentioned, FWD cars are usually nose-heavy, while RWD cars have a more even weight distribution between the two axles. The added weight on the front axle gives FWD cars an advantage in snow.
Also, the front wheels provide the power and also steer the car, so you only need to use chains on the front. I’ve never driven a RWD car in the snow, but I belive that two pairs of chains are needed.
Here’s the one I was thinking of. It goes on at length about skidding and steering, and might make things clearer.
In any case, remember some old Prairie advice: Go slow, and never stop!
I personally prefer rear wheel drive in the snow. For me, a rear wheel drive is much more predictable about when and where it is going to skid, and much easier to recover from a skid since the drive wheels and steering wheels are not the same. In a front wheel drive, once your drive wheels lose traction you’ve lost steering as well.
A rear wheel drive car does require more skill to drive it in the snow though. In a front wheel drive, if the car starts going out of control and you stomp on the gas, the front wheels will kinda pull it in the direction that you want to go even if you don’t have a whole lot of traction at that point. In a rear wheel drive, stomping on the gas will make the car spin out of control. If you don’t know what you are doing with a rear wheel drive it is much easier to put it into a ditch than a front wheel drive car.
Also, I’d put it as 10% vehicle and 90% operator.
Whatever car you get, once the first big snow fall hits, take it to a big flat parking lot. Make sure it’s not a parking lot with concrete dividers and such. You want nothing but a big piece of asphalt and some painted lines, and as few light poles as possible. Zoom around the parking lot and intentionally skid out of control until you get a feeling for what it takes to make the car lose traction and how to recover when it does.
You might want to make sure that there’s no other cars either :smack:
I respectfully disagree. When I was growing up, almost all cars were rear-wheel drive and everytime it snowed, you’d see cars howling for traction, stuck in snowbanks, and generally helpless without studded snows. Now, even in New England, it’s very unusual to see a car stuck in the snow. Frontwheel drive is a godsend in the snow. Even my little 1980 FWD Datsun handled snow much better than any rear wheel drive car I ever owned.
Course, if you’re THAT worried about it, you may want to consider getting a 4WD. They’re a godsend in deep snow.
I agree with this post. My experence w/ RWD and snow is that it is usually hard to get started, espsically on a up slope, and unlike FWD in that situation you can’t turn the drive wheels to point them down hill (or just move them a bit) to gain some traction.
Some have noted about if you loose front traction you lost everything, but FWD has more weight over the drive wheels and less likely to loose that traction, also because you have total control of those wheels you have the best chance of regaining traction. That said the rear wheels are more likely to break traction, which is not a whole lot of fun (sometimes happens when the front regains traction).
Also for those who commented about the advantage of RWD when the front wheels break traction, please tell me what advantage you have, what good is acceleration in this circumstance, which is the only advantage I see, or possiable engine braking?
My $0.02 is that a FWD has about a 2:1 advantage over RWD in snow, but then again I am compairing older RWD cars compaied to the modern FWD cars, so it may not be totally fair.
Up here in the Land of Big Snow (200+ inches/year), people drive either FWD or 4WD cars. Rear wheel drive is not impossible in the snow - my first car was RWD - but they simply don’t have the traction of front wheel drive.
What people don’t realize is exactly how good FWD is in slippery conditions. Sure, your average sedan doesn’t have the clearance that a 4WD truck or SUV has, but as long as there’s not enough snow for clearance to matter, a FWD is close enough to 4WD that the real difference is operator knowledge. I once drove my grandmother’s 10-year-old sedan to our cabin in about 2+ feet of snow. I woudn’t have done it, but my father told me it was fine. I got stuck, couldn’t get out. My Dad, with 50+ years of driving experience in Big Snow, got in the car and drove it out like it was nothing.
We had snow a couple of weeks ago. Since my Jeep Cherokee has part-time 4WD, I like to use RWD as much as possible. I found that RWD on ice is a bit slippery, but 4WD on ice works very well.
Many, many moons ago, I used to drive a Toyota pickup to the mountains to ski. My recollection is that the RWD Toyota handled the snow and icy roads better than the Jeep when the Jeep is in 2WD (RWD) mode.
There was a big snow storm when I had by first MGB (which was, of course, RWD). It worked very well, and didn’t slip on the road. Ditto the Porsche 924.
I also had a Chevy Sprint (FWD). I took this car skiing, and it was great. It’s so light, that with its FWD I was able to make it to the top of the mountains without chains or slipping while everyone else was pulled over putting chains on.
All of the cars I’ve driven in snow had standard transmissions, except for the Cherokee. All of the cars handled well, but the Cherokee’s automatic transmission makes it a little difficult to modulate speed when first starting out. (i.e., there’s some slippage when I first setp on the gas when pulling out of the driveway.) IMO, RWD cars with standard transmissions are better in the snow than RWD cars with automatic transmissions. Fortunately, the Jeep has 4WD. But if I were given a choice, I’d take a lightweight FWD car with a standard transmission over a RWD one with either kind of transmission in the snow.
I have a BMW 325Ci. It performs perfectly well in the snow we get in Connecticut and Massachusetts with dedicated winter tires. The electronic traction control system helps a lot, too.
If you’re careful and know what you’re doing, it isn’t a problem. After all, when you’re not accelerating, RWD, FWD, and AWD/4WD vehicles all behave the same…
If you’re really that worried, all the manufacturers you mentioned offer most (if not all) of their sedans with All-Wheel Drive. I don’t know about Infiniti, but you can get AWD on the BMW 3-Series and 5-series, as well as the Mercedes C-Class, E-Class, and S-Class (not sure about the new CLS). But unless you live in area that constantly has deep snow on the roads, I’d question whether it’s worth the extra expense, decreased reliability, decreased performance, and decreased gas mileage.
Winter tires are key - most RWD cars emphasize handling and performance, and so they come with high-performance summer tires from the factory. These turn into Teflon when it gets cold, and are absolutely useless in the snow. If you buy a RWD car and live somewhere that has a decent snowplow operation, you’ll be absolutely fine if you buy winter tires. If you get them mounted on separate rims, you can swap them on and off yourself (just like changing a flat), and you spare your summer rims from all the snow, potholes, and other crap on the roads in the winter.
There have been huge leaps in tire technology in the last 20 years or so, not to mention traction control and stability control where unheard of. I was very young then but it also seems like they do a much better job of clearing the roads now. I would definatly take RWD with snow tires over FWD on all seasons. With equal tires the FWD might have a small advantage (mostly in traction) but if the RWD had traction/ stability control it would be pretty close.
RWD drive cars usually are usually designed with (summer) performance in mind and have relativly wide tires. Wide tires are horrible in the snow, even if you get snow tires you should get different rims so you can run narrower tires. Some RWD cars come with ‘summer only’ performance tires, when idiots leave these tires on in the winter and get stuck it adds to the RWD is horrible in the snow myth.
Aside - My wife had a Forester (AWD) with all seasons, while I had a Maxima on snow tires. The Forester had a traction advantage but I felt much safer in my car because it stopped and turned so much better.
Err, of course I meant “spare your summer rims from all the salt, sand, potholes, and other crap…” :smack:
It doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as whether the car has a limited-slip differential or not. Even that doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as what sort of tires the car has. Even that doesn’t matter as much as whether the driver knows what he’s doing.
Green Diamond tires are the ones to go for. They’re only sold online.
Go skidding around in a parking lot before you go out on the road. It’s better to know what the limits are than to guess them.