Did you put the narrow snow tires on the front? One of the (many) problems with wide tires in the winter is that in snow of ant depth, the non driven wheels buikd up a wedge of snow in front of them, much like a wheel chock. The wider the tire, the wider the chock.
Yes, the snow under the narrow tire is compressed like under the wider tire, but it is compressed more and is firmer, giving better traction.
Nope. RWD 59 Pontiac. When I bought the car it had the wide ovals on the back but standard size on the front. I just replaced the bald wide ovals with standard size snow tires. Firestone recaps, 2 for $50 on sale back in 1968. It was kind of a right of winter to put snow tires on but I held off as long as I could due to cost but was kinda disappointed at the results, but at least they had tread on them.
My only guess would be that those recaps were hard as a rock.
In the early 1970s I had M&H wrinkle walls on the rear of my 1955 Chevy Bel-Air hardtop. It rained lightly and it would not climb a not that steep hill!
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Even wrinkle walls have more tread design in them than racing slicks, which have no tread pattern at all.
Looking at the picture of a racing slick, itâs easy to see why they have more dry traction than a normal tire, but very little wet traction, if any at all.
Compare that to a tire that is designed to repel water, and itâs easy to see how wet traction and dry traction are competing interests.
Tread design is a big part of wet traction.
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GM cars in the 50s had lousy rear suspensions that mad it hard to start out slowly. If you gave it just a little gas the rear axle would twist instead of the car moving and if you gave it just a little more the axle would untwist and spin the tires. That is why they had to put traction bars on them to drag race.
If I remember right that was because GM used coil springâs instead of leaf springâs on the rear.axle.
The two very narrow grooves on my tires only purpose was to make them marginally street legal in my state. They were not a tread pattern. That is why they were called âcheater slicksâ. They were unable to shed water and have any usable traction on the incline.
While the hand books out here say otherwise, I was taught you ride in the left or right of the lane, even when riding alone because the middle is where cars are dripping most of their oil.
I was under the same assumption, but agree with @Whitey that the oil will be a dangerous factor at the beginning of a rain.
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I agree. I survived owning 7 motorcycles. The last one, a Honda CB750K, 4 cyl, was parked in the back of my northern garage in 1987. Itâs still parked there.
There are old motorcycle riders and there are bold motorcycle riders, but there are no old bold motorcycle riders!
CSA
Oh I agree, makes sense that oil would collect in the middle of the lane during the dry periods tho.
On the other hand, Iâve noticed some roads get a âvalleyâ in the left and right of center where cars tires travel. Water can pool there, so youâve got issues riding a bike there as well.
Best bet, donât ride a bike in the rain (if possible) 
I hated it the few times I was caught in the rain anyway.
I was thinking the same thing. Most of our old rural roads around here fit that description.
CSA
Yes, they used coil springs, but nothing to stop the springs from bending or the axle twisting, both of which stored and then released the power rather than transforming it into linear acceleration.
Didnât Buicks have a drive shaft tube connecting the rear axle to the transmission?
Yes, I had forgotten that Buick did not drop the tprque tube until 1961.
Called a torque tube. Lots of early era vehicles had them.
Back to GM coil springs, didnât they use a trailing arm suspension which would prevent the axle twisting?
Many of them were fairly simple C channels (some had an extra flare on either side but were still open) and werenât very good at stopping axle wrap under higher horsepower conditions. You could box them or install tubular arms to improve the rear suspensionâŠ