What's your rear wheel drive car like in snow?

[MissAtomicBomb1]

Experiences welcome please.,,Just looking at new cars & have seen one I like the look of but it's rear wheel drive (estate type car)

For context we live on a gritted main road where if only snows a couple of days a year at most but when it does I have to drive a 10 mile round trip to work which includes a couple of smaller side roads. It was a bit stressful this yr in my trusty golf!
Our other car is also rear wheel drive so no back up option there if it snows etc.

Would winter tyres make a big difference or am I just overthinking the whole thing?!

Can concur as we are on our third 3 series they are shit in the snow. Gave my colleagues a good laugh before Xmas when I was sliding round the car park.

If you get the x drive these are 4 wheel drive so much better, worth a look. Love them as cars though and suffer for the odd day or two of snow we get where we are.

Exactly. It depends where you live, obviously, but here in Leicestershire it snowed properly once this winter, and the roads were bad for one day. That’s a normal winter here. Some friends of ours live in Sussex, and they get disruptive snow about once every four years.

Ask the Germans?

If you weight the back that helps, if not get. Better tyres.

We had a 1 year old Jag estate last winter. Dipshit DH just had to go out in the snow on an important mission (it wasn't). He got half way up our hill and decided he wasn't going anywhere so parked it up and set off walking back down the hill. One of our neighbours then shouted him ' your car is rolling down the hill' and unfortunately it was. An auto car which was parked on a slight incline and it was in park and locked up. Rolled into the front of a poor young lady in a Fiat 500 who had nowhere to go to get out of the way. So I wouldn't recommend jaguar!

I've had a 4 series X Drive and it was OK but not great in the snow. Merc C Class estate was horrendous in the snow, much worse in my opinion than the RWD 3 series and 5 series BMW.

What about an Audi A6, A4 or A3 Quattro (Audi 4 wheel drive system) if you're certain you want a car that is better in bad weather? I've had a TT Quattro and it was great in the snow.

I used to have a 1 series and I couldn't even drive it in London in the slightest bit of snow*. It was just awful. To get up my parents drive in the countryside was even worse. You'd normally barely register it as being a slight slope, but I had to build up speed to have momentum and then DF and DB had to start pushing once I was halfway.

I bloody loved that car, but never again.

Why is SUV the only other options. Plenty of other makes of estate cars out there?

*I also was not the pp who took out three cars!

Mine looks gorgeous on the drive with the snow all around it. Can't get the fucker off it til every drop has gone

BMW 5 series estate here. Honestly, it hardly snows in this country and if you are on a main road you'll be fine. It's the freshly fallen snow that's usually the issue but ideally you don't want to be driving any car in those conditions. I panicked when we had the heavy snow in December and decided I was going to walk for a few days and by god was that more dangerous. I went over twice, so did my kids. Paths were absolutely treacherous. In the end I realised I'd be safer in the car. It was just getting out of my long un-gritted road, but after that, the main roads were absolutely fine. I love my car. You can turn on traction control. I actually felt more in control than I did in my manual front wheel drive cars.

I tried to drive to work in mine (not a BMW tho)... it was snowing slightly as I left... 15 mins later tit was coming down thick and fast and 25 minutes in I was doing a Torvil and Dean, only with less elegance and a look of sheer terror on my face.
Never again.
I now have a tiny 4x4 Fiat Panda as my daily car and bloody love it. Drives through anything, and have had the last laugh a few times at Rugby training when the big SUVS are stuck in the mud and my little car nips out...

Also if you do like the 3 series estate and are really worried (about a few days a year of heavy snow) you can look at the x drive models which are all wheel drive. I much prefer touring cars to SUVs.