New Fit on slippery surface

iceracer wrote: Misleading. You implied that you drove through 3 feet of snow. And another: "I drove all winter without snow tires" I drove my '96 Contour all winter on all-season tires. Never again.

i'm going into my 25th winter of driving in MN, and i've never had snow tires on anything... never been in a ditch, never been stranded anywhere.. gone thru some pretty serious E36 M3 in cars that shouldn't have been able to. there was the 92 Caprice 9C1 with baldish tires plowing thru 4 foot drifts, the 79 Mustang notchback with ok tires going thru 2 foot drifts of heavy wet snow on top of ice, the 79 Pontiac Sunbird with G60-14 bias plies going thru everything...

honestly, i hate driving newer cars in the winter. ABS is fine when it's unobtrusive, but traction and stability control always make me feel uncomfortable in ice and snow.

that's why most successful winter drivers seem to be turning those off when driving on snow or ice …

no TC on my Suby ('96 Impreza) and I never had any problem with the snow ('course we don't have to have the mad skills you have … we don't get feet of snow … ) snow tires for the win

the F150 doesn't have either TC or ABS … just snow tires

'course it helps a bunch if you don't have to drive on the hills and mountains we have here … non of those vehicles with the tires you describe would have gotten to my house with as little as 2 - 3" of snow

this will give you some prospective … this driveway, even if only a couple of inches isn't passable without snow tires, if not shoveled (though it can be handled with AWD and no-season tires)

I have many years of driving on regular tires in the winter, before all-season tires or snow tires were invented. Weight in the trunk and chains when it got really bad. So I know a little bit about winter driving. Then I found the present day winter tire. Once you have driven one winter on real winter tires you will never go back.

Note: On my Fiesta I find the traction control and stability control unobtrusive. I can turn off the traction control, never do. I find that driving with the habits I have learned over the years help.

What people dont understand is that snow tires are made to handle not only snow, but to handle the lower temperatures that come with it. Some all-season tires will become hard in the cold weather, and if you're running a summer tire, that thing is going to become a rock. Say goodbye to any concept of traction! Winter tires are designed to stay soft and grippy despite the 0 degree weather. So even if its not snowing, a winter tire SHOULD perform better, and when it does snow, you'll be that much better off.

For FWD cars, you can get away with all seasons, but for performance RWD cars, unless you are purposefully wanting to drive to work completely sideways the whole way (which is fun, dont get me wrong), you would be silly not to invest in some winter tires.

I had a friend say "Ooh, Im going to run my summers in the winter. It will be so much fun!" My ideology is that you run the snow tires, and you can STILL hoon around and throw the back end out, only you can tell it when to come back, and you can carry more speed because you have way more control with the softer snow tires.

kazoospec wrote: I wonder if it could be an issue with the wheelbase of the car as well. I had the misfortune of test driving a Cooper S in the snow/ice a couple years ago and had exactly the same experience. I've been driving in the snow/ice for about 25 years now and the experience was enough for me to write off a Mini as a DD without further consideration. It just felt like it was constantly floating. Nothing serious, just never felt totally connected to the road. FWIW - it also had tires wholly unsuitable for the conditions, but it felt like an issue with the dynamics of the car, not the tires.

Try a MINI with proper winter tires. They're great fun in snow, or even on hardpacked snow. I enjoy hooning in my CooperS a lot.

<<<< Also from Canada here.

<<<< Also drove Hondas in winter here.

My '77, '78 and '86 Civic used to do the same thing in really icy conditions. Never checked the alignment though. Statistically, for me, it could also be operator error since it was ALL of my Civics.

DLC wrote: We recently bought a 2015 Fit for our commutermobile. I'm very pleased with it so far overall. However, I was driving it through some of the nasty weather we had here in NE Ohio last week and noted some odd behavior. I was on the highway driving over some very icy sections. Traction was pretty low, but not zero. The car felt like it was oscillating between left and right oversteer, just very floaty, but not quite right. I grew up in Canada and have a lot of experience driving on ice. It was the kind of feeling I'd expect right before a spin, but the car never needed correction. I got to thinking that maybe this has something to do with feedback of some sort in the electric power steering. Anyone ever had this experience before?

My Golf ('89) would dance like that. It would get rather unsettling on rutted roads.

Dragging the brakes would settle it down tremendously. Plus, this would make the car steam from the wheelwells like an Audi S1 when Audisport was experimenting with water-spray brake cooling.

Desmond wrote: For FWD cars, you can get away with all seasons, but for performance RWD cars, unless you are purposefully wanting to drive to work completely sideways the whole way (which is fun, dont get me wrong), you would be silly not to invest in some winter tires.

My S40 came with newish high performance tires. It was entertaining to make all the little warning lights come on like a disco party for the day or two it took for my snow tires to arrive. Now the trac light only comes on in the first three gears.

I had a longtime customer tow his new Hyundai to me so I could install four Blizzaks. Apparently the OE tires on a r-spec Genesis are just that useless when it gets cold.

Also, I want to find the person responsible for the trend in rubberband tires on Conestoga wheels and throttle them.

Never felt any weird behavior in my 1993 Civic in Canada, but it also ran on real snow tires.

However, my current 1985 CRX has a similar odd characteristic. On one two-mile section of grooved concrete nearby, it's constantly wiggling. Not high amplitude, just a little constant twitching. It would feel pretty sketchy if it did the same thing on a snowy surface.