Ill have you know that the N54 in my 1 Series has only exploded 3 times. If thats not the picture of reliability I dont know what is.

the FDNY responds to four car fires every day during winter

I'm actually from Sparta and it's a strange town. We have Jersey Shore types, yuppies, Jerseybillies, and basically everything in between.

The trouble with diff locks is that they exacerbate the issue of slippery sideslopes. I.e. if you are on a slippery sideslope and you have your diffs unlocked, you will spin a few tires and not move forward...but also not move too much sideways. With all the diffs locked if you do slip at all, you are going sideways…

Only if you are using the front diff lock to back out of trouble with the steering pointed straight. Seriously I've never heard of anyone using the front diff on the QSW, because the car runs out of ground clearance first.

The rational of making a car that has a useless feature purely for possibly advertizing it is beyond sarcasm. It's like the CRV's AWD badge, which shows that customer bought it thinking it was AWD, but really it is only FWD and lousy at the that too.

Having gotten only worse stuck in the snow with all 3 of my diffs locked than I probably would have leaving the front unlocked, I can say that there is a time and place for triple locked, and im pretty sure snowy roads are one of them.

How? The 4000Q is almost impossible to get stuck, unless you high side it. I think that VW was planning to do their own version of the Audi Quattro ski jump commercial, which involved driving a 4000q with ice racing tires up a ski- jump. Strangely they had to use a guide cable due to employee safety requirements, but…

I don't which is worse, but the best AWD System was on the VW Quantum Syncro Wagon. It was the twin of our Audi 4000Q's but had a locking differential for all three diffs, while the 4000Q only can lock the center and rear diff. The best part of the Syncro Wagon is that with all three diff.s locked you can't actually…

Any system that started life as a FWD drivetrain is the worst.

In Winter:

Me too

This is what's commonly known as an "appropriate reaction".

It's good to be the king.

Exactly what i thought when I saw that!

Looks like my wife has been driving. I get in and wonder why the hell I'm still hot or cold, and it's because she's aimed the vents away...

Excuse me sir. Well thought out and concise comments are not allowed here, please leave.

because MPG is a top priority when shopping for a sports car? There is no silver lining here. It's dissapointing.

Damn this was a really good, very informative article. Now to import a brown wagon version of a Miata.