Snow anyone?

[Scionshaun]

How has your frs/brz handle snowy weather? Please submit your input and pics.

[Clembo]

A couple of inches can be fun, especially in a parking lot. More than that, well, best of luck. If properly set up with winter tires they are just OK at best. Luckily, I'm retired and can wait for it to melt (unless there's an empty parking lot nearby!).

Fun:



Not so much fun:

[cmspooner]

I found that with decent snow tires and a 40lb of kitty litter/sand that the BRZ handles snow relatively well. Take your time and keep accelerations and decelerations smooth and steady. On an early snow push the car around an empty lot in all modes and it will show you how much the TC is doing and let you know how bad you can get and it will still catch you and keep you in control.

[Justin.b]

The biggest problem with this car in the snow is the tc/vsc systems. They are awful. We had three or so big storms in a row, dumping 24", 12" and 12" on the roads so I got a few chances to drive on snow-covered roads. The vsc makes the car take a turn incredibly wide. IMHO, that's more dangerous than just letting the rear slide a bit. Trac in some cases just won't let you move.

Granted, I have been driving rwd cars in this snowy climate for a long time and none of them had nannies.... so you probably want to have some experience under you before doing this. I ran the car with VSC and TC off entirely and had no problems because I'm used to a car behaving the way this car does with the nannies switched off. If you're used to fwd cars that plow in the snow, then you may be more comfortable with them turned on.

In any case, you're not going anywhere without snow tires, so order a set mounted on some steel wheels from tire rack or someplace similar (the set of steel wheels is going to be cheaper than having a tire place swap snows on/off your stock wheels the first year).

-Justin

[JackTrasher]

Winter in Calgary (Canada) was fine in the city with winter tires. I used another vehicle to go into the mountains though... If you plan on doing a lot of snowboarding/skiing or drive on sketchy highways during storms you might want to consider something else.