After sorting out my style on my first FWD car, an Audi 100, I got to appreciate them in the snow and have had several since. The current Yaris also has traction/stability control linked in with the ABS. I push it to see what it will do and it's pretty impressive. If you get to crazy it does tend to park itself until you can drive like an adult. Ain't no donuts in a snowy parking lot happening on its watch. It doesn't like my dirt road technique either. I guess it's time to grow up.
My wife did that one morning. She'd spent enough time putting up with my antics that she went on with her business although I expect her pulse rate was up a bit.
Lat time I did something like that I was going down the road backwards at about 60 wondering how much it was going to hurt this time. Fortunately the Geo backed itself into the snow berm in the median with its front tires on enough pavement to paw its way out. Note to self: winter driving in a Geo with nearly bald tires isn't a good idea. Things happen fast with a short wheelbase.
I spend most of the winter avoiding sliding 4WD F250's. Some people think 4WD/AWD is a magic bullet that negates the laws of physics. My secret -- I run studs and most of them don't.
They're sort of pricey for what you get. The new Beetle is a little better than the old New Beetle but they're pretty much a Golf in drag.
At the moment? 64 degrees and cloudy and it might get up into the 80's. It's supposed to be back up into the '90s next week. I think it might have hit 100 one day this summer but low 90's are more typical. It's a dry climate so even when the days are in the 90's the mornings are down in the '50s.
This part of the state is called the Montana Banana Belt. It might get a little below 0 a few times over the winter, but teens are more typical getting up to the 30's during the day. Snowfall is variable in the valley. A lot of times it doesn't snow below 5000' so you can see the bathtub ring on the mountains around town. Last winter I never even got the x-country skiis or snowshoes out. It's not hard and fast, but I figure on mothballing the bikes around Halloween and putting the studs on the car on Thanksgiving. I keep on bike ready to go and may get out several times during the winter and more regularly in March or April depending. The studs come off in April. By then the roads have been dry for a while but the roads up to trailheads are still snow packed.
I grew up in upstate NY and all in all the climate is a lot easier to take. The longest winter of my life was when I lived in Bristol VT.
I'm not a real fan of winter but except for a few winters I spent in AZ I've always lived in the north.
The body shops rub their hands in glee every winter at the first snowfall. It snows and we have a week or two of driver training. Every year.
It's like rain in SoCal? What's this stuff? I don't remember this ever happening? Crash!
One of my kids had a Geo tracker. It actually was passed down to the second kid with the first one wanted another car. Kid #2 did it justice and one day mashed it into a concrete pylon in a parking lot which caused quite a bit of damage, but oddly enough, it wasn't that hard to fix it up again.
Golf in drag! That's funny!
It actually sounds like a nice climate. I don't mind cold temps as much as I can't stand the heat, so I don't get out much in the summers. Well, my body can't take the heat for long. One day I was outside working on something and had been sweating bad, but then a breeze started to blow and I cooled off and stopped sweating. I thought it was because of the breeze that I stopped sweating, but about a half hour later I started feeling odd. My vision got all blurry and I couldn't focus on anything. All this time I had been drinking water, too, so I didn't think I was dehydrated. I ended up stumbling into the house and finding some Gatorade to drink and I kept sipping on it for like the next hour or so. Eventually my vision stopped being blurry, but that scared me straight. I add some salt to my water now if I'm out mowing the lawn or going to be sweating a lot.
A lotta ppl do not realize the importance of tires. I've seen studs,
4WD, etc, mentioned, but not tires. A true tale follows:I was driving my mom's Toyota T100 back to CA from CO, in early Spring. A major snowfall had stopped ALL southbound traffic on 80 at Truckee and turned it back to Reno for the night. Next day I started out early and was allowed to pass cuz the T100 had 4WD and Michelin all season tires.
Damned if the next 40 miles of roadway were not extremely snowy and icy, despite it being a beautiful sun-shiny day. I could see green ice beneath the snow on the roadway, so started out carefully. Those Michelins never lost traction, even when I switch to 2WD for a short stretch. I even carefully applied the brakes on one icy section to see what would happen and the truck slowed and stopped as if it were on a dry roadbed. I slowly sped up. By mile 20 I was passing everything on the road, reaching a nerve shattering 50mph. Never slipped, slid, or lost traction for a second. To say I was astonished is an understatement.
Oh, one vehicle DID pass me. Another Toyota p/u. Didn't see what tires he had. ;)
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How come, Golf has many options. GTI is very good small sports car.
Geo Tracker was a Suzuki and Geo Storm was a Toyota...the latter being the better car.
...a sports car has two seats...maybe you mean sporty car?
Hard to believe. FWD has tendency to over steer and front heavy vs. 4WD (what kind of 4WD?) If you are a driver you can manage any car under any condition pretty well. We always laugh when watching Southerners driving in snow. They don't even seem to know which way to steer when car is going out of cotrol on slippery road. We're used to driving in COLD weather with snow and black ice. "Always drive for the road condition" I started driving when I was around in grade 6. Dad had small trucking co. At age 75, one accident, one crazy teen age girl ran a red light hitting my car's passenger side. If it were driver's side, I could've got killed. Since I have a habit of not trusting traffic lights blindly.
Since when? Are you saying that a Porsche 911 isn't a sports car?
If you start going out of control, you put the gear in N and concentrate on steering. You know which way knowing which way rear end is heading. Racing professional drivers seldom use brakes to control cars in normal driving. Poor drivers always wear out the brakes quick. The brake riders.
Many have 4 seats.
If you're a purist it is a 2-seater:
Exactly! They are called a "2+2".
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