I think it is a really bad idea when the “go/no go” decision is made in the affirmative based on the vehicle you are driving. We are not talking about extremes like one car has bald tires and one car has a set of Blizzacks on it. What I mean is stay home when it is so bad that you are tossing the idea around “well the FORD has traction control so I guess that will pull me through”
At my last mid-west BMW Dealer (in Milwaukee) people picked Blizzacks for their BMW’s by a wide margin and 90% were on dedicated steel rims. Strangely I can only recall one BMW X-5 (all wheel drive, no choice of transfer case range in the models I worked on) with Blizzacks (or any other dedicated snow tire). The rule was do not drive those Blizzacks very far or very fast after the pavement temp. went up as you will ruin them quickly. They develope a high/low tread pattern that causes alot of vibration. BMW’s need (and always have needed) all the help they can get in regards to winter traction.
In Switzerland we had people have the slip percentage in their rear diffs. changed in an effort to find some traction. This was after the tires and the sand. I always carried a large piece of carpet just to get the car to where it was already plowed as I have seen cars parked, it snowed, the owner tried to drive away and was stuck simply because there was snow on the ground. Here in the States I saw a Dodge dually parked on the side of the road (overnight) and it snowed. Well this snow and the shoulder incline was enough to prevent the driver from pulling onto the roadway. At times it is amazing how little snow it takes to halt all progress.