Anyone else noticed that nearly all the cars stuck in the snow on the news reports are BMW’s.
I had one once, ace car but show it 0.1mm of snow and you are going nowhere.
Maybe thats why all this “can’t get anywhere on the roads” down south is caused by people owning BMW’s or are they just soft? 😉

Discuss 😆

Mine is utter gash in the snow and i haven’t even attempted to move it off the drive.
Went to birmingham a couple of years ago sideways the wole way due to a mm of snow.

Just needs the correct equipment (tyres) and a bit of sympathetic driving

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlYEMH10Z4s[/video]

as said a thousand times it mainly comes down to tyres/chains/socks etc i.e having the right equipment to cope and having the nonce to drive in these conditions.

Sadly us Brits still haven’t accepted that we have to spend a bit more on our motoring, i.e seasonal tyres etc to cope with our changing climate.

no weight over the driving wheels, plus wide tyres

I always buy 4 season tyres, is that because i am from the north so therefore have a bigger brain!! 😉

Just got rid of mine (just fancied a change) but RWD with engine weight at the front is never going to be great in snow/ice

The winters aren’t fool proof. There’s been posts on other forums of BMWs with them fitted still getting stuck. Modern cars have fat/wide tyes for their size. More weight in the boot can help, but adds to the pendulum effect if it goes pearshaped!

There is no doubting that BMWs are pretty poor in the snow, but other RWD marques are as well.

As noted above though a lot of it can be mitigated by switching to winter tyres.

BMW’s have pretty much perfect 50/50 weight distribution, most FWD cars are 60% or more nose heavy. More weight over the driven wheels will equate to better traction in the snow.

BMW’s pretty much always have wide, low profile tyres.

99% of the British public can’t drive for toffee, and many of these people drive BMW’s… And BMW’s are a popular car!

Can’t say I had any more trouble in my old 5 series in the snow when I had it than any other car I’ve owned… I’d probably rather be driving that than I would a great big Chelsea Tractor at 2.7 tonnes with 12″ wide tyres with rubber band profiles, in the current conditions… But yes, a small FWD car with narrow tyres is preferable to both in the current conditions.

i saw one today struggle up a tiny incline. The lady driver was very good and carefully reversed it many times before eventually going forward.It’s not the BMW’s fault, just the choice of tyre.

Not just BMW’s, any RWD car. I’ve got a Mercedes and it’s just as bad, it has 255/35/18 rear tyres and just has no grip whatsoever in the snow and ice. Luckily the wife has a Toyota Aygo so I use that when the roads are bad.

It’s the forth RWD car I’ve had that included BMW, Honda and Porsche and it’s doesn’t put me off buying a fifth!

Discuss

Wow. We haven’t had this on the forum yet this year. I can’t wait for the thread to fill up with interesting anecdotes about bmws being crap in snow. Keep ’em coming folks.

Absolutely no problem in mine, normal tyres and a driver that knows how to drive in snow.

Kind of sick of people slagging off BMW for being poor in snow. Yes they aren’t the best car but as in so many other things it’s the numpty behind the wheel who gets it stuck.

We recently drove from Cheshire up to Glasgow, then through to Dundee, up to Aberdeen, back down to Perth, up to Inverness and then down to Fort William and then down through Glen Coe home in my 5 series with no problems.

Yes we had sleeping bags, shovel, mats and rock salt onboard but the only time I needed the shovel was to create parking spaces in the huge amounts of snow in Dundee.

If you can drive sensibly and know your and the cars limits then there is no reason to get it stuck.
We would love to have got up to my wifes Grannies place but at 60 miles From Inverness and at the end of a singletrack road it just wasn’t possible.

[/url] Snowy track by brucewaddell, on Flickr[/img]

i wonder if the powers delivered quite early in the rev range too , making it harder to drive slowly, although probably depends on the model.Although if this is the case then maybe people should use a higher gear, although the average driver may not be aware of this and keep spinning the wheels.

I have to say I quite enjoyed riding past a young guy in his BMW 1 series on a hill earlier, me on my rigid 69er ss and him going more sideways than up, I smiled and winked at the not unattractive girl in the passenger seat as I rode past them. I’m not too sure if she was that impressed..

me on my rigid 69er ss

I’m sure she was wetting herself with excitement after a wink from you.

Helped 2 mercs out on friday (including my boss’ posh ltd job). One of our guys couldn’t get his BMW out of the car park! The citroens, fords and peugeots had no problems.

All our neighbours with BMWs or Mercedes Benz had to leave them at the bottom of the hill we all on and drive their wives little run arounds.

i saw an aston that couldn’t even move a flat road yesterday. It was not just wheelspinning but beached i think at the chassis.

Lots of latent jealousy being turned into kinetic jealousy in the bad weather.

I don’t know why I’m rising to soops’ trolling but I’ve just got back from Sweden and the Mercs and Beemers were getting about on the snow just fine. Marvellous things winter tyres.

BMWs are pants in the snow……..until you put winter tyres on them. I have an Alpina B5 Touring – basically a 5 series estate with a 500bhp supercharged V8 in it with 19″ wheels and big fat tyres. Last year it didn’t go out of the garage in the snow, but I bought a second set of wheel with winter tyres back in April, and fitted them a couple of weeks ago.
It’s now perfectly drivable on icy and snowy roads, and with the traction control turned off it’s a real hoot!

I own a 1 series. Invested in some jeko belts and no issues in snow. Google jeko belts if interested

jealousy not at all. I love astons. They are brilliant cars. Just very low and caught by the snow. For the same reason it has put me off lowering my car.

I think that the problem is that in this country the majority of people don’t know how to drive in adverse weather conditions, regardless of the car, and the knee jerk reaction of alot of people I have witnessed is one of heavy footed acceleration, which when in a RWD car only compounds the issue.

Rons right. The fact that some of the above cars have auto boxes doesn’t seem to help either.

http://www.mbclub.co.uk/forums/general-discussion/101073-bmw-snow-chain-fail.html 😆

I think it’s more to do with wide tyres than rwd.

Many years I used to regularly drive the A9 to Inverness through thick snow in cars ranging from Morris Minors to Armstrong Siddeleys. Never had any problem getting through. Skinny tyres were the standard back then.

Well I couldnt crawl up a 1 in 12 hill last night . Hit it with abit of momentum in 3rd , changed to second and let it chug up on idle for approx 100 yards . Fronts let go, so i was sat at 900 rpm in second gear .=stationary. Had a very cautious reverse down as a locked set of wheels might have put me in a wall / line of cars
Thats in an old Passat tdi 100 estate . Eashing lane in Godalming if anyone knows it.
So its not just rwd auto bmw’s with 40 profile tyres that get stuck

Nice idea that it’s all down to the driver. Doesn’t explain why last year I managed to move my BMW 3 metres in an hour of trying, yet I was able to get in other half’s Golf and drive it without difficulty in exactly the same conditions.

Lack of weight over the driving wheels is obviously part of the problem, but so are very wide wheels, fitted with very summery tyres. If you look at the tread pattern on the standard fit tyres on the “Sports” wheels, it’s pretty obvious why they don’t work in the snow.

This year I’ve got narrower, winter tyres on and it makes a huge difference. Not infallible, but you’ll be one of the last to get stuck, rather than one of the first.

Ive had an E36 M3 saloon which was pants in the snow and now have a E46 330 sport diesel with traction control which is better, but yes it is tyres that cause he most issue. What I can safely scoot about in with the wifes zafira will stop the beemer dead. I am absolutely sure it would be much better with narrower higher profile tyres, but I am not shelling out for them, and it could make the insurance suspect if I did. So careful driving whilst its snowing and any depth means it stays put.

Its performance in normal road conditions make up for it though 😀

I’m curious.. this 50 50 weight thing.. what if you have stuff in the boot like most people do?
marketing tosh?

In the last 6 years I have owned a 3 and a 5 series.

They weren’t bought for their performance in the snow!

Eh, 50:50 when there’s nothing in the boot per chance? I don’t think they’re suggesting it’s the case whatever the configuration of passengers and luggage; although if they are that’s impressive engineering, even for the Germans!

Funny how people find so much joy from seeing BMW’s struggle in the snow…

So as a balanced view – I’ve owned a 325 coup, a 528, and the missus currently has a 118. All are/were pants in the snow. Embarassing bad. Especially with speed bumps. Until someone somewhere mentioned winter tyres. Even then they just about equate to a normal car in the snow.

Since then we had an A3, A6 and a passat. All awful to get moving and dangerous if we ever did.

Nowadays we’re back to 2 cars. A dingtastic japtastic fwd with winter tyres and the 118 that hasnt moved since Nov 26th.

The best combination imo. Even if you spend 20k on a 4wd some other idiot is going to slide into it in the winter. I’ve spent the last few days pushing / towing transits, civics, quasquais and faux 4wds. Fexk that. I’ve shut the blinds. Buy proper tyres.

I’m curious.. this 50 50 weight thing.. what if you have stuff in the boot like most people do?
marketing tosh?

So then angryratio enlighten us. What do you carry in the back of your car that would upset the 50:50 weight distribution of a 1.5 tonne car significantly?

Even if putting a couple of people in the back moves the weight distribution, starting with 50:50 distribution is a good starting point especially as in this country at least the driver is usually the only one in the car.

If you look at the tread pattern on the standard fit tyres on the “Sports” wheels, it’s pretty obvious why they don’t work in the snow

They’re also rated to stay in one piece at 150 mph in summer which probably means they are considerably harder compound than standard tyres of years ago.

The fact that some of the above cars have auto boxes doesn’t seem to help either.

Utter cobblers. Autobox means you can feed the power in more gently than a manual, the changes are smoother and if you need engine breaking going downhill then the box can be manually restricted to lower ratios. There’s a reason the Icelanders put autoboxes in their glacier travelling 4x4s you know.

mr. Toab works for bmw in the corporate leasing bit and is fielding a lot of calls from people struggling- he’s getting very bored of telling people to turn off the traction control, put in second and go easy on clutch (or just overide into second if auto) which is what head office in munich told them.
1 series seems particularly bad, we can across one of his colleagues who needed pushing up a fairly small ramp yesterday.
There are rumours of a front wheel drive one next year though