I agree with all of this but a couple of years ago I did buy an old Jeep for winter driving, with heated seats. It changed my life. My disposition, my attitude toward winter, my giving a shit if the roads are plowed at 7am and if so, is there a 12" mound at the foot of the driveway? Pfft, don’t care.
I lived in Alaska for seven years, then New Hampshire for 13 years, and never owned a 4WD vehicle. I’ve had two 2WD pickups, and I just throw some sandbags in the back and put on good snow tires, and I’m good to go.
Sure we are. There are all sorts of snowy, slushy conditions to be found in states like Wisconsin, many of which make the roads much more dangerous but are still inappropriate for snow chains.
Fuck off, you drooling idiot. While he mentioned a couple of specific vehicles as examples, it was clear his rant was a more general one,as evidenced by his call to “stay the fuck off the roads with your rear wheel drive shitbox.” That includes a lot of people, not just drivers of Mustang GTs and $40,000 pick-up trucks.
I imagine most of the people who actually have to drive in the snow to get somewhere - like they only get paid for hours they work, won’t eat tonight if they don’t work today, and so on - probably can’t afford to buy, insure, and maintain 2 vehicles just to have a snowmobile in the garage (that they also probably don’t have). Or, only affording 1 vehicle, it would not make sense to commute year-round in a vehicle that gets 10 MPG.
^ This.
The only reason I have two vehicles is that I bought them and paid them off back when I was making actual middle-class wages. When things really got bad I parked one of them for nearly a year to cut costs.
no, just get a set of real winter tires (like Blizzaks) and a set of cheap rims.
Ah yes, that makes life exciting. See also the Baltimore/WashingtonDC metropolitan area. Freakouts all around if you got more than a couple inches. But Hell even tropical me learned to manage 2WD in mild snow, I guess it was a matter of not having any preconceptions of how it’s supposed to go or what is a manly way to tackle it, so you learn to do what works to get to your destination alive and on time.
My disposition about winter improved greatly when I moved to CA. 
+1
To the idiots without 4 wheel drive/AWD and the jackasses with it!
You could have just said “To everyone” and reached the same target group.
As it stands, I’m thinking only idiots don’t have 4WD/AWD but jackasses do.
Snow, it’s that white shit that’s really cold right? I saw some once on top of a mountain in the distance. It was actually pretty.
Some of us actually live up in that distance. And we do need four wheel drives.
I’ll be plowing this morning just to make sure that my Wife and our guests (both with four wheel drives) will be able to get out.
Yeah, the pitting should have been directed at the idiots who don’t know how to drive in snow.
I learned to drive back when the vast majority of cars were RWD, 4WD was fairly uncommon, and since my cars were pieces of shit they had mismatched tires and often holes in the floorboards. I never had any trouble getting around, as I knew how to drive in snow. And incidentally, my first year out of college I drove a borrowed Mustang GT (302 TBI! Man, we thought that was fast) and I made it to work every time, including one honest-to-goodness blizzard.
This pitting is misdirected. Winter tires are the key in snowy climates, and all vehicles benefit from them. The biggest improvement is the confidence you gain from having winter tires, as you can stop struggling and just drive. I see the strugglers everywhere, creeping along well below the speed limit, totally terrified, with a death grip on the wheel. You are not an idiot if you won’t buy an AWD car. That is BS. You are an idiot if you have an AWD vehicle and use all season tires in winter. . Get the correct rubber and you are good to go with RWD, AWD or FWD. My best combo is my FWD car with winters and a manual transmission.
I giggle when I see someone in his RX-8 or BMW who obviously still has summer tires on the car and can’t get up his own driveway.
How much would you be giggling if, instead of their driveway it was a hill they couldn’t get up. Now you (and a dozen other cars) are also stuck half way up the hill with him as he spins, and spins, and spins. And the line of cars behind you grows and grows and grows. And you can’t drive around the idiot because of oncoming traffic. Now you’re become later and later for your destination because you’re stuck behind an idiot who decided to drive his Ford Mustang GT in a snow storm, In Wisconsin, in late December. Hilarious. Giggling all the way. :rolleyes:
The problem is the tires, not the car.
I know a guy (interior Alaska) who drives a Camaro year-round. His secret isn’t witchcraft, it’s a good set of tires. Same with ambulances and USPS trucks and school busses.
Also, if you’re driving in any kind of inclement weather, allow yourself extra time. It’s not the GT driver’s fault you were late, it’s yours.
I’d go around him on the shoulder, get out my tow straps, and offer to pull him up the hill.
I agree with several other posts. Cars weren’t immobile in harsh winter places back when 4 WD’s were a tiny % of the vehicles on the road and there was no such thing as AWD sedans. People used snow tires, chains where necessary, and just plain learned how to drive a car in winter weather.
I don’t generally have to drive when it snows and before they clear the roads (in NY area, nothing like more rural areas in snowier places, but messy sometimes). When I do I found 4 WD SUV we had past 10 yrs or so pretty adequate with all season tires. It drove itself right out of a snowpile if buried, just dig a path to the door. Now we have an AWD sedan we keep in garage, don’t have to dig it out, haven’t had occasion to have to drive it in snow in two years so far, and haven’t. But it’s like several people said, mainly the driver not the car, including whether and where you choose to drive when it’s icy, or getting snow tires or chains if you need them.
this. I love my goddamn 4WD Ranger with goddamn snow tires, but before I had this goddamn thing, I had a goddamn Neon SRT-4 with Blizzaks, and that goddamn thing could get through any goddamn amount of snow it could physically push out of its goddamn way.
goddamn it.
ETA: goddamn.
I disagree. I’ve owned sports cars most of my adult life and I’ve been driving since '75. In all of my experiences a 4WD/AWD with mediocre tires operates better than a RWD with good snow tires. Even with sandbags in the trunk RWD vehicle are not very good in snow going uphill.
Besides, and, this is important: THE DAMN IDIOTS DON’T PUT SNOW TIRES OR CHAINS ON THEIR CARS ANYWAY! They’re trying to drive in a snow storm with a RWD with summer tires. Idiots!
No you wouldn’t have. There wasn’t enough shoulder to fit a car and at the top of the hill was a bridge. There was no place to go. A flatbed had to come from the other way and winch this guy up the hill to the bridge/crest. Traffic was backed up behind him past 3 cross streets. it was a mess. Had I been working (and had that been where I worked. It wasn’t) I’d have blocked one of the streets past to allow the backed up traffic around. They could have done 10 cars from the north, then 10 from the south. But I guess they don’t teach muni cops traffic diversion anymore.
Before the flatbed showed the idiot spun sideways and was briefly blocking the oncoming lane. What a freaking mess.