The argument was simply that RWD cars can be fun in the snow, and aren’t completely pointless. In some ways they can be more fun (more of a tendency to stick their butts out) and in other ways AWD is more fun (high speed drifting and snownuts).

I don’t think she was making an argument that the BRZ will win races in the…

That last picture is indeed Lake Sinissippi :)

Yes, sir :)
Smartphone picture too, lol. Turned out real good.

Yeah. It is very overbearing. Which is why I drive with all the aids completely off in the snow in my BRZ, lol. Having said that, for an idiot, or someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, they are VERY good at keeping you out of throttle. I can be on glare ice, pin the throttle, and saw the wheel back and forth…

I totally agree with that. I just think the common myth, on average, is “OMG, YOU DRIVE RWD IN THE SNOW?! YOU CRAY CRAY!” So I go out of my way to tell people that RWD is totally acceptable when properly equipped, since that’s the false assumption which annoys me the most.

If you leave all of the driver aids on in the BRZ, it will be just as difficult to break loose. Both are fine for winter driving unless you live in the mountains, or routinely have to plow through more than 6" of snow.

I think this article is more geared towards the people who think RWD is completely useless in even…

For what its worth, an AWD car won’t stop any better than a RWD car. Nor will it turn better unless you do the ol’ Scandinavian Flick and drift your way through where you want to go, which most people aren’t doing on public roads. In fact, often times they turn worse because they tend to understeer under initial…

While that is definitely a true statement to a certain degree, it’s worth noting that if you REALLY want to, it isn’t hard to figure it out. Even if it means storing them in your basement, or the basement of a friend’s place. You only need to swap them twice a year. Laziness definitely plays into it. If you live in a…

I daily drive my LOWERED BRZ year-round in Chicago. It really isn’t an issue at all. I had to commute 30 miles from one end of the city to the other every day for two weeks, including in the middle of more than one snow storm.

In fact, here are some clips from one of my daily commutes.

Why? It’s actually kind of accurate... AWD is great, but it isn’t anywhere near as necessary in most cases as many people think.

Oh, I didn’t say I don’t get sideways every chance I get driving around in the winter (where appropriate!) I’m just saying it’s completely controllable. He made it sound like driving a RWD car in the snow is scary on public roads because it just fishtails wildly all over the place and you can barely control it, lol.

There is quite a bit of clearance around the stock tires at stock height, but I’m not sure how much clearance you need to safely run chains - especially with regards to clearance between the tire and the spring perch. But the stock wheels are 7" wide, and you can go 9 or 10" in the rear on stock suspension without…

That’s no different than, say, driving on a racetrack in the summer, and driving on real roads in the summer. You don’t drove 10/10ths on public roads... A RWD car can behave perfectly normally in the snow when you aren’t purposely trying to hoon it. Especially with modern traction aids. It’s literally all but…

I daily drive my BRZ year-round here in Chicago, and it’s an absolutely blast in the snow! And yes, I go ice racing up in Wisconsin too! (I’m on plain ol’ studless winter tires, which have come a LONG way and will surprise you with how much grip they can offer, even on ice.)

Exactly! Planes are a great example. Commercial aircraft, and private aircraft are self-correcting (overdamped), and will always have a tendency to return to level flight. It’s actually sad how many times pilots have become disoriented in the dark, or in bad weather, and crashed, and the investigation determines that…

Sounds like a Viper, lol.

Yup! I take my BRZ ice racing up in Wisconsin. It’s such a great way to teach car control since everything happens more slowly, and nothing is better at teaching the whole “the car knows what to do” thing than a slick surface like that!

Too many people fight the wheel. I always tell them, “The car KNOWS what to do. It WANTS to correct the skid. It will steer where it needs to go. You just need to catch the wheel, and bring it back the other way to avoid snap oversteer (simplified statement). Work WITH the car. Don’t fight it.”

Correct. And more importantly than acceleration/braking is resistance to steering input due to the larger gyroscopic force. Larger wheels/tires = heavier steering = less nimble car.

And even worse than acceleration is steering, which gets heavier as a result of the gyroscopic forces acting on it. When I had my steelies with winter tires, it felt like the power steering motor was dying at highway speeds, lol.