Dont know rear wheel drive VWs would push snow.I always had one wheel drive Ford pickups and didnt have that much trouble in the snow,(6-8 inches) not a hundred inches,one of the poorest vehicles I had in the snow was a 2000 Ford Focus(you had to turn it around and back up the hill) so each to His own,lets not start another big arguement about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin(Remember Von Richtofen" Its not the machine,but the man in the machine" the biggest fault I find with FWD,is the lack of directional control when they break traction)-Kevin
I’ve owned two RWD cars that did well in the snow–a 1947 Pontiac and a 1961 Corvair. I had a pair of 6.50 x 16" recapped truck tires wit a snow tread on the back of the 1947 Pontiac. It also had a good percentage of the weight on the rear wheels. The engine was the 6 cylinder and sat back against the firewall where most of the Pontiacs that year were the straight 8 engines. Most of the modern cars of the early 1960s did not have as good weight distribution and I could handle snow covered hills that the newer cars couldn’t handle. My next car after the 1947 Pontiac was a 1955 Pontiac and it was terrible on snow and ice. The 1955 Pontiac was followed by a 1954 Buick. The Buick had a higher percentage of its weight on the rear wheels, due in part to the closed (torque tube) drive and was a little better than the 1955 Pontiac, but was not as good as the 1947 Pontiac. The 1961 Corvair had great traction in the snow due to the fact that the rear engine was over the drive wheels.
We had the same experience as Wha Who? when we bought a 1985 Ford Tempo which had front wheel drive. It was much better in the snow than the 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass we owned at the time and I was really impressed with the FWD.
One of my former colleagues who had a 25 mile commute to campus had a front wheel drive Oldsmobile 88 that he drove until it was pretty well worn out. He traded for a Mercury Grand Marquis which he kept less than 2 years as he was really disappointed in how it handled on ice and snow. He went back to an Oldsmobile with FWD.
The best vehicle we have ever owned for handling snow is our Toyota 4Runner. We just had 12" of snow and we got through our road which hadn’t been plowed to a main road. Very few other vehicles were moving. I grew up in the country and got my driver’s license in the late 1950s. I drove in a lot of snow in RWD vehicles. I sold the last of our RWD cars over two years ago and I don’t want another RWD.
I don’t know why this thread is having so many confusing issues. So My life story’
Grew up in Duluth MN as a kid, lots of snow,hills, bias ply snow tires and chains
Learned to drive in Northern IL, bias snow tires, but no chains.
Moved up to all season radials and survived snow etc in the midwest with mudgrips on the truck, and all season radials on the rwd car.
Got a Front wheel drive windstar, does fine, four wheel drive on demand trailblazer, does better,
My conclusion, front wheel drive is better than rear wheel drive, four wheel drive is better than 2 wheel drive front, 2 wheel drive front is better than 2 wheel drive rear, but since 25 years of 2 wheel drive rear took a little work sometimes but was not the death knell I am just getting lazy with 4 wheel drive on demand, gees you would think 2 inches of snow and everyone was stranded in the 70’s, not true.
Sorry if I sounded contrary. It isn’t like I don’t like front wheel drive cars. There are some really great ones out there. But I thought I was stating something obvious. . I get that a lot of people have problems with rwd cars too. But IMO, it’s for a couple of reasons. First, they are usually higher powered cars with low ground clearance with attributes other then rwd ( wider tires etc) that make just about any drive system impractical in snow. Secondly, you see a lot of rwd vehicles that should be better snow, mostly rwd trucks, t hat aren’t because they aren’t prepared.
Fwd has a unique advantage of weight over the drive wheels. That helps get the car started. Other then that, they do nothing inherently better then a properly prepared rwd vehicle. All the rwd car owner has to do, is pay more attention to weight distribution and good tires obviously. So, other then Vettes and a bunch of other low slung high powered rwd cars, he can reap benefits that in most situations, make them equal to or better then their fwd counterpart. Every argument I have made, even though I throw a little dig in there ( I apologize ), is based on logic. Hills are murder on fwd traction. ( going up) Traction is easily displaced off the front wheels and any spinning looses steerage. Lost steerage is IMHO, the single worse thing that can happen in slippery conditions and under all conditions that require you to accelerate, up hills curves, intersections, merginging etc. fwd is at a lost comparably.
I have no bone to pick with fwd. I have owned them and will continue…they make great cruising cars that travel on flat roads in a straight line. ;=) very well. I have owned thes cars…SAABs Corollas, Accords, Civic for fwd cars.
On every other tropic, Whitey and Cig, you guys are my heros…
@MikeInNh
You have a 4 runner, I have a 4Runner with snow tires. I can leave it in rwd, throw tube sand in the back, or, load it up with people and no fwd car can touch it goingup hills.
Btw. When a fwd car fails to make a hill. We turn it around and back up. Or course, now it’s rwd with good weight distribution…but hard to control.
@Triedaq
Rwd cars of old were all very poorly weighted. You can’t put 60 % of the weight over non drive wheels and expect any car to go well in snow. My dad had an old Chevy bscayne, 6 cylinder. Snow tires, extra weight in the back, it was awesome. I drove a Criwn Vic in snow with lots of weight in the back. Again, great in snow. We can all generalize about how poor rwd is, but any car traction can be improved by poper weight distribution and snow tires.
With fwd, The problem is, front weight bias works against them on hills, up or down and especially when you start putting people and cargo in the back. Might as well drive by yourself and not use the back seat and trunk. Also, with a light rear end, down hill braking suffers a lot. Abs tames it but weight in the rear adds stability for all braking. I’ m not inventing the wheel here. This stuff is just common sense, I thought ?
Because I have a tractor with a loader and live on the side of a mountain, you learn very quickly. With 600 lbs of rock in the loader going down hill, you back down with most of the weight bias on the uphill side. Weight distribution is a big key to safety regardless of the drive train. With rwd, like Awd, you have many more options. With fwd, you’re stuck, literally, with one. But, again, if people in general are unwilling to do anything about weight distribution, drive a fwd car.
I’ll make one last comment on rear drives. My last one was a 1988 Chevy Caprice V8 with Positraction. With the large rear overhang, this car had decent weight distribution. I put regular snow tires on it and it always got me to work or the ski hills. The Positraction did wonders.
During a particlurly violent snow storm I got to work while some of my JEEP owning colleagues went back to bed.
On the business of weight distribution, Tom McCahill in his book “What You Should Know About Cars”, published in the early 1960s, commented about a road test he had done on snow covered roads in a car with a continental spare tire (a tire mounted outside the trunk). The car (I think it was a Rambler) climbed the snow covered hill without difficulty when the tire was in place. However, when he removed the tire, the rear wheels would just spin. Almost all cars back then were RWD.