[Porsche virgin]

Thanks for all of the thoughtful responses.

"well it deopends on where in nj you are coming from"
She'll be going back and forth from roughly White Plains to Teaneck, so the GWB and Tappan Zee bridge will main routes. I know how sloppy the Tap can get, and the visibility is terrible too.

"Now that being said fwd is really good in winter as well, the only issue is it can "track" the ruts in the road (i.e. you have the wheel fully turned and the vehicle still goes straight)"
Um, I hope she never gets to experience this thrill...

"Remeber that the braking ability doesn't change with AWD and that's where most people get into trouble."
Agreed. The extra weight of the AWD system hurts handling and braking. I will have to remind the Missus of that.

"AWD systems are not equal."
This is something I knew but didn't think about enough. Thanks for bringing that up. I'm pretty darn sure that the CR-V's system is FWD and then (eventually) sends power to the rear wheels when slippage is detected. I think the Subarus are AWD all the time. I don't know about the RAV4.