I had lots of fun with my RA last winter. Had one morning at -34C, car started no problem. Make sure you let the trans warm up before you go on a tear tho. I crossed a frozen lake at 100kph as if I was on pavement. There is some skill involved, however, if you're not used to driving an AWD vehicle. It, like mentioned above, makes people overconfident. There is a limit, and many people find out where that limit is the hard way around where I live.

Also, winter tires make a HUGE difference when you're braking on hard-pack snow or ice, but the A/S tires work fine in every other situation.

Do yourself a favor, take the car after the first major snowfall to an empty parking lot, and find out where the limits are in a safer environment.

 

Well technically if you're pointed where you want to go on a curve and you floor it, there's a certain amount of power that your wheels (all of them) have clawing away at the pavement to push you to where you want to go that a FWD can't do.

 

That is not exact. Let's make it simple so you can get it. Each of your tire has a certain amount of power he can get to the ground, this amount is higher on dry pavement and lower and the "quality" of the road degrades (i.e.: water, snow, dirt, etc...)... On all-wheel drive, the power you want to deliver to the road is split among 4 wheels instead of 2 thus, it takes (let's make it simple) twice as much power to loose traction...

That's looks good, so you might be tempted to say, I made your point, you can go twice as fast... Which is not exact... Something you probably forgot, is that most of the stress your tires have to go thru when you turn is the inertia: your car wants to go straight, so most of your tires ability is used to changed your direction. So, if you floor it, changes are that you'll ask too much from your tires (especially on snow) so they'll spin... Oups, practically zero traction, hello the ditch...

Cause here comes the difference between your FWD and AWD car... The rear wheel on the FWD car, can regain traction pretty easily since to a turning freely which is not the case on the AWD where even on neutral, the wheel are spinning a lot of mechanical parts...

Also, when you floor it, your front and rear wheel are NOT facing the same direction... Say once they start spinning, they won't go the same place........

The ralliart is really fun in the snow at low speed, the car's reaction is predictable and you can enjoy letting the rear-end slip a little (like a little close to 90 degrees ) and straighten it quite easily (your *** might go right then left than right a few times)... But at 70-80 Kph, it's a different story...

And by your comment about "flooring it" it is clear you never had some serious experience drifting a car... I'm no drifter either but I had some fun with my cars... And when it comes to handling a car, flooring it is very rarely part of the game...

Why don't you take winter driving lesson and then come and then we'll see if you still want to floor you ralliart when you loose control in a curve...

 

Rather than trying to post a vaguely disguised insult to try to make yourself feel better because I used the phrase "floor it" as an enthusiastic euphemism for "applying power" after you woke up on the wrong side of the futon and someone on the internets dared to offer a differing opinion, let's share some knowledge and get on with the program.

Anyway, let's assume I have no idea how to control a car and I know nothing about automotive mechanics.

Can you please then explain to the OP, and me for that matter since I'm pretty confused right now, what the difference is between a FWD car with a standard diff, LSD, standard AWD, 4WD, and the type of AWD the RA has and it's advantages/disadvantages in the snow so we may all learn something and perhaps make a better decision.

I'm not doubting your experience but I suspect that you may have driven a lot of FWD cars with a LSD because otherwise, if you tried to apply power (esp in snow) going around a turn with the type of FWD that most cars have, you're not going to end up where you want to go (I sure didn't in my Dodge LandBoat). I also suspect that you're talking about what happens when you overcook entry into a turn rather than accelerating through a turn. In which case, my advice to the OP is that AWD or 4WD helps diddly squat since these systems help you accelerate, not decelerate.

BTW: while I tend not to push my road car 10/10ths on dry/wet/or snow, I have driven Karts with a power/weight equal to that of most ferrari's at 10/10ths on the track. So I do know a *little* bit about car control when I'm going 2.5g's around a corner, "floor it", overcook, and have to correct for it.

I also go up north a lot to snowboard (I usually rack up ~30 lift tickets in a season) in the winter and frequently find myself on narrow twisty backcountry roads in snowstorms (which coincidentally makes for the best boarding). So I do have a *little* bit of experience driving in the snow too.

 

Hehehe, flooring = applying power? Let's say you just used the wrong word... Cause to me, and all people I know, flooring means pushing the pedal to the floor, thus going WOT and achieve the "maximum" power your engine could provide at a certain time.

Hum, I'm no school teach and no car engineer so I won't start lecturing you about the difference between the different types of drivetrain. But I do know, from experience, the difference on how they react when you drive them.

I'd like to remind you that the carts you drove are rear wheel drive thus, on your corner, your front wheel were maintaining a certain amount of traction and could be used as pivot point. Also, considering the size of carts playgrounds, you were certainly not going 70-80 Kph on that corner... Carts are not cars and they're not being driven in real-life situation, you drive them on a controlled environment.

If you want to know what type of cars I drove/drive, just take one minutes to look at my signature... At the moment I have 1 AWD, 2 RWD and one motorcycle... The signature only includes the one I owned, so it exclude all the borrow, rented, rented at track, etc...

Ho, and if you go "up north" 30 times a winter chances are that up north for you is where I live... And I do go up north relative to where I live...

 

Actually the biggest difference in the karts is the rear brake only setup. They actually go a lot faster than that. On some of the larger road tracks, you can be going 140kph down the straight, lift a little and still carry 120kph into the corner. A lot more fun than playing internet armchair quarter back with semantics on the internet.

So chill out. No one's questioning your experience driving whatever floats your boat. But I guarantee you, if you take any FWD vehicle with a good amount of power and "apply power" or just literally floor it going around a corner in the snow, it will not go anywhere near where you intend for it to go.

Now let me know where I can mail you your "Forum Hero" trophy.

 

Just to refresh your memory, you're the one who started with the following comment:

"Well technically if you're pointed where you want to go on a curve and you floor it, there's a certain amount of power that your wheels (all of them) have clawing away at the pavement to push you to where you want to go that a FWD can't do."

Which has a little bit of sence but very little. Since you proposed that someone floor his car in a snowy curve which is incredibly dangerous (and don't talk about skills, skill come into effect when you use the proper throttle level, not WOT...) And since you're turning, wheel are not pushing in the same direction, so unless you just slide, you rear-end will push somewhere and the front end will push somewhere else...

FWD will pull you where the wheels are oriented...

But anyway, if you want to send me that trophy, good... But remember, when you do a comment be ready to receive a reply if it is wrong... Especially when it is reply to someone else's comment...

 

Tires are key. Your GTS wasn't bad in the snow; it's tires were. Same goes for any car on the road. AWD (alone) won't save you; the tires will. FWIW, I live in Rochester.

 

... and the driver. Practice (like it has been said) is the Key. I have 'unstuck' cars by using tricks. Got my 2wd pickups into and out of places 4wd got stcuk because i used my training (and the 4wd bubbas were just mashing the gas and slinging around.

And in that 'too fast for conditions curve' you need to already know how the car (any car) will handle and how to respond.

Practice

 

RA + Conti DWS = Like a BAWS: http://youtu.be/JdzFZiNrT6Q

I was also lowered on coils about 2.2" all around. So the undertray was mostly plowing snow. Couple other snow action vids there too. But they're all equally boring

 

Nice practice, did you try doing 360? (Like, the staying practically at the same place but rotating)... Feels as if you were in a roller coaster...

 

Thanks for everyone's info, it helped me decide to get one. Been driving it for about a week now and I love it. The turbo made me forget about my truck in an instant! I'll get around to posting some pics eventually.

As for various other comments...I appreciate everyone's input. I am very familiary with 4wd/AWD systems, and I regularly took my truck snow driving and offroading. I just wanted to make sure the ralliart wouldn't be a death-trap compared to my 4x4 tacoma. Also, I do realize snow tires would have helped the GTS I had, but a 4x4 was a more economical decision at the time instead of messing around with snow tires...long story short, we had 3 cars and I was looking at unemployment for a short time when leaving the service...had to down-size and the GTS had the short straw.

 

its gonna be nice seeing another RA in rochester.

 

As long as you have snow tires....it is EPIC in the snow!