Says who? Only snow depth prevents winter driving in a Miata with decent snow tires.

I’m all for AWDing performance cars, not for snow but because we’re seeing power levels that launches and corner exits are traction limited.  At 155-181hp, that doesn’t apply.

There’s a retiree that drives his Miata up Little Cottonwood Canyon all winter. This is one of the most snowy roads in the US. Anytime it’s a big storm, he’s running chains. Dude has expensive ski gear(relative to already expensive gear) so he’s got big bucks. He can totally drive something else. But his late 90s Miata…

I DD my ND, but I run Pirelli Snowcontrols in the winter. Never been an issue - I don’t want a heavier, slower Miata.

Make the Miata AWD and you lose a lot of what makes it fun and endearing. You’ll have a fairly ordinary car, but one that is significantly less practical than other, less-expensive ordinary cars.

The obvious unspoken point here is that a TT absolutely needs winter tires just as much as a Miata does. Or, to the point of this article, adding AWD does nothing to reduce the need for a set of winter tires for your Miata. If you can’t accelerate then you can’t decelerate or turn either, so paying thousands extra to…

I got a decent set of winter tires and had an absolute blast in the worst weather that we had had in years.

....you’ve never driven a miata have you? 

A year ago, my wife was five months pregnant with our now-daughter, and we had two cars: my Mustang, and her Miata. We had to trade in her Miata for a 3 series to accommodate the baby.

The Miata does not have enough power to justify it, you can only spin the wheels so much before you’re going fast enough to grip with rwd, and with less understeer and more grip at the front you can carry more speed through the corners and need awd even less because you have more speed coming out of them.

The Miata isn’t a high powered car, it has no issue with putting the power it has down.

That car is doing it without AWD...

Or it could just add weight, ruin balance, and make the car slower as a whole just to appease people who can’t properly control their vehicles.

I like you. A star for your 100% accurate comment that I couldn’t have written better myself.

I don’t see any value whatsoever in this proposal. How many people are DDing their Miata in areas that get snow? I did for two years and never once wished for AWD or more grip in general. I got a decent set of winter tires and had an absolute blast in the worst weather that we had had in years.

Rally all the Miatas!

Exactly. It’s like a Spyker wrapped in a Gemballa-tuned Porsche 924.

This is the most bipolar car I’ve seen for a while. The outside says PBR and Taco Bell and the inside says Hennessy and Ruth’s Chris.

At my standard purchase price target of $.05/brick this is a pretty affordable VW campervan.

Yet another Microbus concept that VW won’t follow through on.