Originally Posted by SigmaHyperion (Post 1149583)

A-freakin'-men.

How quickly people forget that, until just the past three decades or so, almost every vehicle on the road was RWD. And tire technology sucked. And people still made it to work everyday just fine.

I drove a 400whp GTO for 5 years of some of the worst winters Nebraska ever had. With the exception of a 22" snowfall that kept me from driving because I simply couldn't clear the snow, I never so much as had even an uncontrollable slide with consistent 4+ months of snow/ice on the ground -- that's more than I could say for my wife's Mazda3 or my previous Mazda6 which were 'superior' FWD. The difference? Proper tires (which includes the under-appreciated proper SIZING as well). With a good pair of meaty snow tires (-3" from my summer wheels), that GTO became a mountain goat and I pulled more than a few trucks with embarrassed owners out of snowbanks with it.

As for rain, your average RWD vehicle is almost certainly (and definitely should) going to be equipped with Summer Performance tires that are actually usually the best Wet tires you can buy as well. Driving rentals (I travel all-week, every-week) rain is always a far more un-nerving experience than driving my own high-horsepower, RWD vehicles is.

For some reason the tire industry has convinced people that All-Season is the way to go for tires. It's not. "All-Season" really means "No-Season". They're a series of compromises that makes a tire okay-ish to drive all-year round, but not very well at any of them.

Shitty drivers with shitty tires -- sure, that's a recipe for "unpredictable" car behavior. My RWD vehicles, even with over 400whp, have NEVER acted "unpredictably" in snow or ice simply because I recognize that I'm operating on snow and ice and change my driving behavior appropriately. The act of hydro-planing occurring is obviously a lot more unpredictable, however that is not to say that the way the car reacts is. I've hydro-planed several times in vehicles, including twice in a FWD one -- I found the RWD vehicles (including a rental I had little experience with) not only no more "unpredictable" or "uncontrollable" than the FWD one to handle in such loss-of-traction conditions but were actually easier to get back under control.

Manufacturers have moved to FWD simply because of the uneducated, uninterested, or totally retarded masses who just want to get to Wal-Mart. It's just easier most of the time because they don't have to think as much about what they're doing. Kinda like how "All-Seasons" are just easier than trying to get people to remember to use the right tire for the right season. But for those who have some clue what they're doing, the ability to have full range of control over both your steering and your throttle independently of one another makes RWD superior even in ice and snow. The only real issue that RWD vehicles tend to have is that they're, on average, too low to get around well in the snow and, on average, sports cars (generally RWD) tend to be quite light, which is a very undesired attribute for either snowy or very wet conditions.

I don't think I've ever seen an loss-of-traction accident involving a FWD vehicle where the emergency responder didn't show up in a RWD one -- and he does it, day-in, day-out, all winter long. It's the driver, not the car.