I certainly notice how much more unpredictable the car is in snow when compared to the old car fitted with winter tyres.

I’ve been driving a lot this winter in a Focus estate with Michelin Alpins, which make it manageable. I know of a couple of people who refused to go out in a Focus when all we had was standard tyres and snow socks if you got stuck!

Winter tyres are a must if I keep the Saab for a while.

E-Class estate. No contest. In fact, any soft surface and the car would bury itself up to the axle with the meer-est hint of throttle in 2nd, 3rd and 4th.

The highly tweeked Dolomite Sprint I had too many years ago was huge fun though 😀

Surprised that people are struggling in Focuses, mine has been pretty good even on Conti summer tyres. I’ve taken it through the peak district, rural france on -10c sheet ice and never got stuck or crashed. Bit of understeer but that’s to be expected and easy to drive around.

2003 honda civic type r, no traction control and 200hp on the front wheels= nightmare

Continental GT V8. Gave up after three miles, parked it, and jogged in instead.

2001 Ford Mon-dog

In the dim and distant…

2 x Ford Sierra’s
2 x BMW 5 series ( the first of which was hampered still further by having stupidly wide low profile wheels & tyres)

You kind of got the feeling it would be a one way trip when venturing out in snowy conditions – Not exactly fun considering the steep hill I live at the top of.
used to use a few very large heavy bags of sand as directly over the rear wheels as poss – helped quite a bit but never a pleasant proposition.

Chris

Bought my C Class new last April and then bought an L200 in November knowing fair well the Merc would not get up the hill where i live if it snowed (South Wales, Abergavenny area) the wife has not been out of the L200 since i got it she loves it and it goes everywhere on standard tyres but i did shove some bags of the sand in the back for the snowy times.
Mate lives in Switzerland and he puts winter tyres on his Merc and has no problems but for the few days we have snow here it is a big outlay and then you have to store the wheels somewhere.

Mate had a Triumph Spitfire many mooons ago and that was horrendous when it was wet but snow was just outrageous.

My sprinter is pretty rubbish – big diesel weight infront of the front wheels, no weigh over the rear driven ones so any anything soft (snow, grass, gravel) the front sinks and the rears float. Winter tyres are a fair improvement though

A focus hire car. On a very slight hill the traction control kicked in and it would not move. Disabled the traction control and still no movement

When the big snow event happen a few xmases ago I knew my van would be hopeless (private, un gritted roads here) so I hired a focus on the basis that something FWD would be better. It totally wasn’t. Took me 3 days to get it back to the hire co too.

During that time of all the 4x4s (and german owned snow tyre-equipped audis) on the estate here the most capable car in the snow was a little old Nissan Micra. Its the only car I didnt have to push at some time or another during the month we were snowed up.

The most surprisingly good car I’ve owned over the years for snow was a 1971 MGB, even for having wide low profile tyres and RWD it was really well behaved – you could almost forgive it for having no heating. Almost.

My Astra VXR….240 bhp which is mad enough in the dry, but in the snow with big wide 19″ wheels and tyres wasnt much fun.

My Pajero was obviously the best, but most surprising was my old mid 90s 1.2 Clio. Front wheel drive, no power and tiny skinny tyres (which were £8 a wheel as I recall). That thing just never got stuck, got me over a few “closed” roads too!

Honda S2000 – Comical

The most surprisingly good car I’ve owned over the years for snow was a 1971 MGB

My 1978 one shocked me too as it should be awful but isn’t. I wish I’d had it taxed and MOT’d yesterday!

Micras are fantastic. Mine often used to pass stuck 4×4’s with barely a wheel slip.

My Dad’s old E-class Merc estate was “interesting” in the snow

My 07 Focus has been great this winter, I never normally have many problems with it but have put part worn winter tyres on and its been amazing this year. I normally clear the corner opposite my house as its off camber and steep but I didn’t bother this year as I could get round just fine.

A Sainsburys Mrec Sprinter Auto was terrible but a normal Merc Sprinter LWB natch is great fun.

It appears many folks have fantastic cars they think are awful but in reality they just have the wrong tyres! Get some skinny winter tyres and get moving

my wife had an MGF which was bad but fun. The MX5 she has now is horrendous. got to the point with it when it snows it stays in the garage to many near misses

My old Sierra diesel estate….

Degree006 by jimmyg352, on Flickr

AKA ‘The Team Bus’, used to get 4 bikes on it & the riders in it. Once got 6 bikes & everyone’s gear in it on a trip to Scotland. (Took pedals off & turned bars round)
I also got stuck in a flat supermarket car park that had about 1/4″ of snow. I ended up driving round with 4 big paving slabs in the back for the rest of that winter.

My Vivaro Van ,snow just laughs at it!

Weights all in the wrong place,the business spec Low Energy tyres which equals low grip in all weathers.

Remember getting stuck on a virtually level street a couple of winters back,shockingly bad.

Saab 9-5 estate auto with 2.3t, good quality tires with plenty of grip. Any sort of incline resulted in a loss of traction. Stopping was something that had to planned with a weeks notice.

I found the best results were with the flappy padles bit even then feathering the throttle was almost impossible.

Wifes 2wd Skoda Yeti got through everything.

I’d blame the tyres before the car. Lots of modern tyres have smooth strips around the middle, which are going to be really bad in snow. It’s nothing to do with the quality of tyres, just what they’re designed to do.

I reckon it’s 95% tyres and 5% car.

My nomination for worst car ever in snow would be a Reliant Robin. Not that I ever drove one, but my dad mentioned it as a reason he never considered one. And it doesn’t take much to work out why it’d be an issue 🙂

Have never really driven a car that was too bad in snow I must be lucky.

My old Cortina was difficult to get moving and relied on momentum to keep it moving but back then the roads were never cleared like they are now. I remember when yawn zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

And in contrast to an earlier post Mrs. Rocket’s old XR2 was pretty good in the snow – ultimately not very grippy but highly ‘provokable’ so you knew what was going to do when it did lose grip.

unclefred

Thanks for that – glad it’s not just me 😉

I reckon it’s 95% tyres and 5% car.

Having driven lots of the different cars with various tyre combinations I would say that % calculation/guess is very wide of the mark.

IME with winter tyres fitted, a car which is poor in the snow, only gets slightly above the level of a car which is good to start with on all season tyres.

any modern mercedes c class is awfull in the snow i have pulled many out of the work carpark with my trusty Audi, infact mercs are worse than my old BMW 735i.

A series 2 Landy SWB with a Perkins Diesel 2.5ltr lump in the front and bald tyres.

Appalling, truly appalling. 😆

Yes I had a Kangoo. Cornered like a fridge in the best of conditions.

IME with winter tyres fitted, a car which is poor in the snow, only gets slightly above the level of a car which is good to start with on all season tyres.

All season, or summer tyres? Most ‘normal’ tyres here are summer tyres I’d say. And the higher end the car, the more likely they are to be wide and smooth and therefore worse in snow.

A series 2 Landy SWB with a Perkins Diesel 2.5ltr lump in the front and bald tyres.

Appalling, truly appalling.

can go one better my old 2A SWB had bald tyres and no rear propshaft making it only fwd. had some very hairy moments during the snow 😯 😆

My V70 T5 SE… ex North Yorks ARV… 320BHP through the front wheels, with the Good Year Eagle f1s on it was appalling however when fitted with Continental winter rubber it was brilliant as long as you weren’t too “enthusiastic” with the loud pedal.

Tyres tyres tyres are the key..

Today we have a ’89 classic range rover (snow, for the use in)

I’ve just had a hoot ploughing through bonnet-deep drifts just North of Milnathort in my Berlingo. A gentle south facing downhill with large irregular transverse drifts. Before I drove out onto the A91 I had to stop to clear snow off the roof! Winter tyres make all the difference, but a chugging diesel engine, decent clearance and a relaxed driving style all help. Without a doubt the best vehicle I’ve driven in the snow…

Have Foci changed a lot? My mk1 estate was ace in snow… Helped that it had the TDDI engine, it made no power but the low-rev delivery was just beautiful, so easy to get its few horsepower down. And the feeble rear drums made braking easier, very little chance of the rears locking up

My Mondeo’s a bit of good and bad- 300lb/ft doesn’t play so well with snow, it takes very little revs to spin it up in any usable gear. On the other hand, it’ll pull along at idle and trundle up some really implausible slopes. And it’s a wee bit short on ground clearance so ends up pushing a lot of snow along in front of itself 😆

It has snowproxes on but they’re ludicrously wide, 250s (they were very cheap!) So they don’t bite too well on some snow compared to a narrower snow tyre. But on the other hand they can get a lot done while spinning, which is extremely satisfying, if not good form.

So all in all… It’s kinda rewarding, but kinda hard work. Almost wish I could switch to the standard map sometimes and get back the weak bottom end.

BMW 1 series. Worst. Thing. Ever.

EDIT: Although it was fun to turn the TC off and drive everywhere thinking I was the great Colin McRae…

but a chugging diesel engine

Gotta say that my Pug 306 HDi on winter rubber was almost unstoppable, it was prolonged deep snow that like you say defeated it.

Only thing that I found would work in the deep stuff then was my 300TDi Defender 90, put that on snow chains and it was like a tank. Battering through and over most of the nasty deep stuff. The only thing that stopped it was when the drifts reached mid grill height, but bear in mind that with the suspension lift and the rubber it had on this was about 4ft so I couldn’t really grumble.

What I found helped as well were the sailsbury axle guards and the steering guard tended to push the snow down rather than it clog the engine bay.

I wish I had never sold it.. 😥

Ha, in my old S2 Landy I changed the steering box and didn’t centre it properly, so I had 2 turns right lock, 7 turns left, it stayed like that for best part of a year 😳
It made both snow and towing neddie boxes around the lanes most interesting.

You should have seen me reversing 😆

My old transit was awful, almost impossible to get any rear traction – but with socks on it was fine.
In the last proper dusting my Vivaro was great, no winter tyres or socks. Clutch up at idle, then just drive away no problems.

Civic Type R.
Lightish car.
Rubber band tyres.
FWD.
200bhp.

Like a sledge, just more dangerous….

DrP

Worst: ’86 MR2 T-Bar Turbo. Wide tyres, boost was either on or off 😆 Great every other time!!

Best: Citroen AX 1.0. Skinny tyres, no weight, not much power. Even floated through floods!! Took ages to kill it, a taxi side-swiping it in Luton did the trick 👿

A work LR Defender, no brakes, no clutch, only two gears selectable 2nd & 4th!

Pig to start (you started it with a screwdriver anyway), leaked fuel, no heater, wipers, thinking about it, no electrics at all! Seat was all but gone, seat belts gone! It leaked when it rained, it stank of mold and stale food!

You had to top up the rad and pump up the tires, every day before you used it, the engine and starter motor were sound though!

Was only use for off road work, so we used to have great fun trying to launch it into the nearest pond or ditch, anything we could find that gave it a bit of air time!

2 references to Civic Type-R – get some winter tyres!

2002 Type-R with winter tyres here – happy round Aberdeenshire for the last 3 years. We live in the sticks and have a steep hill to get up before the main road. No trouble (here’s the way home the other day: Drifts).

Before the winter tyres, getting out of driveway was not happening in the snow.

Ford Escort Mk V, undoubtedly the worst car I’ve ever driven, and I must have driven it in snow at some point, so that.