Winter tyres or 4 wheel drive

shammyjack

Great tyres SKULLS ! I have them on my Yaris Verso and as you say the look on peoples faces when you sail past their skidding 4x4s is worth the cost .

2nd winter on mine, depending on the tread left in the spring I may buy another set for next year and sell the part worns on eBay next winter .

steve-L

Lum wrote: »

I have a 4WD car, it's still crap in the snow until I put winter tyres on it.

My GF has an RWD car, it's crap in the snow, but fine now that she has winter tyres on it.

The only combination I haven't tried is an FWD car with winter tyres on, but plenty of others here have done so and report the same thing.

The only advantage 4WD offers you over 2WD on an otherwise identical vehicle is it's slightly easier to move off if you're a bit stuck. 4WD offers no advantage for braking or steering and so will not prevent you from crashing.

Small hatchbacks would be good anyway, less weight and narrower tyres is what you want for driving in snow. A big heavy barge is going to be harder to stop and more likely to break traction under braking.

The exception to this would be the people in proper Land Rovers with gigantic nobbly tractor tyres on them, which are pretty good in mud and snow anyway.

On FWD & 4WD winter tyres make a significant difference to steering.... but this gives the 4WD a edge when steering for similar spec tyres (hence Subaru as opposed to Defender as a comparison)

I've tried all combinations (currently drive a 330!)
4WD with proper snow tyres wins hands down in snow.... but proper snow tyres are narrower than normal.

When I lived in Norway I was strongly advised to get separate (narrow) rims and was a bit dubious but it makes all the difference.

Winter tyres on RWD involves knowing when to use the handbrake on more serious snow as your tyres won't steer unless pushed in the right direction (and if you never practiced drifting or skidpatch your likely to mess this up) whereas FWD they can at least spin in the right direction by themselves.

However, on the original question....
My OH's honda Accord Estate with all weathers handled a lot better than my mates Porsche Cayenne with all weathers over the weekend! The BMW stayed put!

Lum

I am running slightly narrower, winter tyres. Got 205s on 16x7" Nissan Primera SRi alloys (£20 off eBay) as opposed to 225 on 16x7.5" Momo Sport alloys for summer.

My GF's car is running those same Primera alloys on her 200SX with 17x8" / 17x7.5" Rotas for the summer. It looks a bit silly with the wheels so far inside the wheelarches but it does the job and looks a lot less sillier than a lamp-post shaped dent in the door would.

And yes she's familiar enough with how the car handles when sideways. In the 2009 snow, before we got winter tyres, that was the only way she could get it up the hill to home was to point the car at a 45 degree angle with the front wheels pointing straight uphill. Unfortunately her autobox doesn't have a snow button.

Sensible route choice was what ultimately saved her. She opted to take the longer route with the shallower hill. The shorter steeper route rapidly filled with abandoned cars as people failed to get up the particularly steep bit, and polished the ice for everybody else while trying. About 3 in the morning someone broke into all those cars and stole anything they could find.

She's had to do none of that stuff since changing for winters

getmore4less

I think the easy way to think of it is all cars have 4 wheel braking.

Lum

Except the Reliant Robin.

Loganfire

Well what a day I had yesterday, I went out in my polo with four winter tyres on and omg what fun I had. I live in a small village and lets just say i went everywhere where there was snow beats driving me 4 wheel drive in snow.