I just finished plowing my driveway. Around here I appreciate AWD

or 100 or 50.

Yes. I used to live in a place with a lot of snow and ice. Dedicated snow tires and AWD helped me to get the kids to school and back and forth to work. Yes, AWD mass costs braking distance and fuel economy. In lower-traction situations, I prefer it to 2WD, front or rear.

I can't wait to finish my project. AWD with 3 LSD's. 2 clutch type, and 1 Quaife.

Built for snow.

And launching. :)

My family van is only 200 hp and fat, loaded up with crap. When I need to jam on that gas to get it going, I can hear a little bit of sequel then the computer takes over and calm things down. Tell yo u the truth, I like it when it burns a little rubber when I wanted it. I never need it, but I like to know it can.

I want it living in socal :D but don't need it.

My 4 runner is full time all wheel drive until I get into the nasty stuff, then I have the option to lock diffs and all the good stuff. I was glad to have it last week in Yosemite going up to the ski life with a couple feet of fresh snow. We danced up there, never needed to put on chain while others were crawling with big old chains getting dirty putting them on on the side of the road.

I laugh when I see Subaru drivers driving flat out in the wet. They think the 4WD (all wheel drive - whatever) will save them. It doesn't occur to them it's all up to the tires to keep them on the road. AND they probably bought the cheapest tires they could get.

They forget that it still has to stop be it wet, snow, or what ever.

15 percent grade, 2 miles long street. Swiss Alps. No 4WD = no winter driving.

Long live my 964 C4

Brakes, tires, steering make safety. Even when I lived in the snow and ice there were only a handful of times I could have used awd over fwd.
I've never understood the awd phenomenon given where 80% of the population live.

We've had snow and ice on the ground since well before Christmas. The major arterials are plowed and de iced. The other roads are a combination of ice and snow. AWD is much preferable to driving around switching my Tacoma in and out of 4WD. My fiance's AWD Lexus RX goes and goes. I wouldn't have her in anything else. I have winter tires for my C4S but due to some construction activities in my yard I haven't been driving it yet this winter. If it didn't have AWD I'd have to park it for 4-6 months out of the year and I'm not a big fan of that.

When I lived in Texas, during a week long freeze, the bridge on 105 below the dam on Lake Conroe was pretty icy. I was driving a 240SX at the time, and slowed way down to go over the bridge on Monday morning. Guy in a brand new Chevy Tahoe goes by about twice as fast as I was driving. He hit the bridge, did a 630* spin and hit the side hard. No plates, still had the window sticker on it.

For a sporty car, I don't dig the AWD for two reasons. It is heavy, and I want the front wheels for steering.

To a large extent, I would have to agree with Sugarwood. FWD with excellent snow tires will get you through 99.5% of the conditions one might encounter in my area.
When I was on the road as a sales rep, for a while I had a Quattro and I can think of a couple of times when I believe it saved my bacon. As it has been pointed out, if you have no momentum at the bottom of a snow covered slope or the water you are driving through upsets the stability of your vehicle because the torque to the front or rear wheels upsets the lateral stability, AWD might have been a good thing.
Is it necessary? obviously "No" most of the time.
Is it nice to have for when you are in one of those situations? An emphatic,"Yes".
If you drive like an old man and have the luxury of avoiding the worst situations, forget it.
If the male must go through, (see what I did there?) AWD and the appropriate tires might save your life.

Best
Les

The biggest difference I've encountered is when leaving a stop sign, trying to squirt across an intersection between oncoming cars. I had a 1995 Ford Explorer that I left in AWD all the time and I was used to the extra traction. One of my employees thought he had to turn AWD off on dry pavement. He would turn it off and I wouldn't notice until I tried to accelerate fast across an intersection. I was caught in the middle of an intersection with rear tires spinning and cars bearing down on me more than once because of him. I like AWD.

What everyone else said, I'll add that you do not have to be moving fast at all on slippery pavement for the benefits of AWD to kick in. Sometimes just backing up a small hill or parallel parking, any situations where one drive wheel starts to spin. With snow on the ground, its superiority is quickly evident. Obviously, the right tires are critical in snow and can make a 2wd car a lot better than it was. This effect doubles on AWD cars. Locking or ltd. slip differentials make a huge difference.

It's all about traction. It's not rocket science. :)

I actually think AWD is a hinderance in normal sports cars and makes alot of sense for luxury type cars.

When the power goes up to ludicrous level in some of these modern cars Im back to being a proponent for awd

My wife is an Ob/Gyn, mother of twins, and occasional HPDE participant who hates large soccer-mom-mobiles. For her, the C4S was fantastic because the AWD allowed her to get to the hospital for deliveries quickly and in a higher degree of inclement weather (rain, snow, etc).

My wife drives a Infinity G-35x. She loves the 4 wheel drive in the slippery conditions. Granted the way she drives it is mostly useless to have 4WD. In the rain or icy conditions she feels much safer and zero doubt, she has more traction to get around in the winter.

The only reason she wanted a 4WD was for the occasional icy road. She always was on the edge of freaking out in slick conditions. Now she feels much safer and that alone is why she wanted a 4WD.

99.85% of the time she does not need it. Those few days she does she is totally happy she paid for the 4WD.

I've probably owned more AWD cars than anybody here. Between 15 and 20, over a period of more than 30 years, some low-powered, some very high-powered and all manner of drivetrains and differentials. I've learned a lot and I prefer to have AWD in my daily driver.

In the old days, I started out with early Audi (turbo coupe) quattros and 4000 Quattros. Similar drivetrains, the only notable difference (apart from power levels) was that the 4000 Quattros allowed you to lock only the center diff, or center and rear together while the early quattros locked them both only. They did well in snow, and in rain. With good snow tires, the 4000 Quattro would go anywhere. I never found a hill it wouldn't climb up or down, in most snow conditions I could accelerate at full throttle in first gear, I could plow through snow 2 or 3 times deeper than the ground clearance I had. The quattro coupes were similar, but I preferred the sedan variant. In rain, the extra weight in the front substantially increased the hydroplaning speed and locking the center differential gave the cars much greater stability in the rain at higher speeds. Wet braking was much better with the center diff locked.

Later Audi quattros were also pretty capable, and they offered some advantages with their torsen diffs, ABS, ESP and traction control and all that. Some (the early V8s) had some funky brake systems that changed brake force distribution in corners. If I had to pick one car to get somewhere in snow, it would still probably be the 4000 Quattro.

Part time systems from VW and Mercedes are ****ing useless, dry or wet. In hard driving in the dry, the switch to 4wd would slightly upset the chassis and you could half spin the Benz in the wet before its other pair of wheels woke up.

In a high performance car, the advantages are great in the wet, but also in the dry. An astonishing amount of power can be put to the ground without wheelspin.

Why do I want AWD for my daily driver? I live in an area that sees heavy rain, some snow and ice, plus I travel somewhat. I like a car that will get me from point A to point B in any weather, anytime. I don't have to fit snow tires to get around in the winter (I use all season tires, biased for wet traction and snow performance, as opposed to dry performance). I just hop in and go. Performance at highway speeds in heavy rain is better. You tend to forget how sketchy some high speed rain driving can be in a RWD vehicle. And I won't own a FWD vehicle, as they perform so poorly. Worthless concept, that.

Even in the dry, and especially in the wet, if I have to accelerate to get out of some fool's way, or to take advantage of a small gap in traffic, I just plant my right foot and steer. I have enough traction that I never spin a tire, or require the intervention of ESP or traction control. It's a huge advantage in certain situations. It has been said that you have only so much traction. You also have only so much attention span. You' be surprised how much of that you'll burn up trying to keep two wheels on the edge of traction when you are in a hurry, say pulling into a gap in heavy traffic, or accelerating in the rain. Not having to think about it frees your mind up to pay attention to other things.

The downside to extra weight? Meaningless, really. My current AWD Audi weighs no more than an equivalent RWD sedan from Benz or BMW. The AWD bits weigh about as much as a half tank of gas, or one female passenger, so it's not a huge number anyway. At higher speeds, Audi learned long ago that the added friction was less than a RWD car pushing two non-driven tires, so look up that little data point if you want.

JR

As anyone that has driven the Somerville Circle in NJ will tell you......

I really notice it on any wet day. Punch it to pull into traffic, and without AWD the rear tires just spin....