Rear wheel drive?

[Snorri]

Hi

Do any of you have experience with rear wheel drive in winther conditions using studded tieres?

I'm contemplating getting a rear wheel drive car but something in the back of my head keeps nagging me.

Any advice?

Cherrs

[riku2]

I have a BMW 520d with rear wheel drive. No problems in the winter (studded tires) but if you put your foot down then the ESC works hard to keep the car straight (you can see the ESC light flashing). It's almost impossible to make the car skid, no matter how hard the acceleration while turning. I think ultimately it will brake on one side of the car to cancel out sharp turns of the steering wheel and too much acceleration - in these situations (when I try hard to make it skid) I can feel the car snap back onto the right line thanks to the ESC.
But I once drove a jeep without ESC and that was a nightmare, you must be really careful about too much power, otherwise the back of the car wants to overtake the front!

[DMC]

I have had several RWD cars here (also FWD & 4WD). I have never had any problems with RWD and wouldn't worry about it. I live in the countryside, a few km down a forest track, and for me any car is OK if driven sensibly. Modern cars with some form of stability/traction control do make things easier but even driving old "classics" I have had no real difficulties.

Having said that, I have seen other posters on here say that RWD can be tricky in cities, particularly getting out of parking spaces where the car is surrounded with piled-up snow. That is something I have rarely had to deal with and cannot really comment on.

[Upphew]

Hi

Do any of you have experience with rear wheel drive in winther conditions using studded tieres?

I'm contemplating getting a rear wheel drive car but something in the back of my head keeps nagging me.

Any advice?

Cherrs

Without electric brains, fun. With one, as riku2 said, boring.

[Upphew]

Having said that, I have seen other posters on here say that RWD can be tricky in cities, particularly getting out of parking spaces where the car is surrounded with piled-up snow. That is something I have rarely had to deal with and cannot really comment on.

When I had trouble, so did other people with FWD cars. I had shovel in trunk though.

[orys]

Having said that, I have seen other posters on here say that RWD can be tricky in cities, particularly getting out of parking spaces where the car is surrounded with piled-up snow. That is something I have rarely had to deal with and cannot really comment on.

Once upon a time I was regulary traveling to Norway or Switzerland in winter on Mercedes Sprinter with "all season" tyres and usually quite light load, coming back empty, so the rear axle had almost no weight on it.

Living parking spaces or even car park entrances when the snowplough piled up snow can be tricky, but if you rock it forward and backward couple of times you will usually be able to get out. The biggest issue is mountains, steep hills can be tricky. I once had to get a detour of several hours because I was unable to drive up the hill, despite that double artic lorries had not a slightest problems with it.

I did quite a few miles in winter conditions and got stuck only once in a parking space and get into the ditch once only as well... And the latter situation brought an important fact to my attention that I was not aware off before:

In some vehicles, such as Sprinter circa 2009, it is impossible to switch traction control off. Ok, you have a switch on the dashboard, you press it and it says it is switched off, you can feel the difference as the computer is not trying to get between you and the road.... ....until it will make its mind and decide that "now it's danger". Then it switches it on again without any warning. This is how I landed in ditch, I was driving with electronic switched off (as it was making pulling off nearly impossible) and I went over a bend little too fast, rear axle went slightly outside but nothing I would not be able to manage, I actually even managed to put the van sideways and when I was already sure that I am safe, the computer kicked in and put me back into the line. Into the straight lane... The only problem was that the road was going right. Result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUSN0aUXUGw

I used to drive RWD car when I lived in Poland, we had quite a decent winters there and never had any problems even without studded tyres and electronics. So unless you live up the steep hill, you should be all right. Personally I would be really happy to live somewhere where there are proper winters (as Scottish winters are getting more crap every year) and have RWD car again (with traction control that can be switched off) - as someone said, it is lots of fun

[Snorri]

Hi all,

Thank you all for input

It turns out that "Etuveto" means Front Wheel Drive (who should have known, eh?) So the car has FWD

Thanks again.