dfinnegan

I'm just back from a three day trip in my '91 C4 where it snowed pretty much the whole time. Thought I'd share my driving experiences for those who are interested in how the p-car goes in the snow; the C4 anyway.

I traveled from New York to Mass along Rte 84 and the Mass Pike. About 250 miles each way. It snowed about three inches the night before I left. It started as rain, then turned to freezing rain, then to snow. The roads were treacherous. In the first 100 miles I saw a tractor trailer and seven or eight cars off the road. Many sections of the highway had standing ice with snow covering.

Speeds varied from stopped, waiting for the wrecking crew to extract the tractor trailer from the road-side, to nearly 60 mph in some stretches; and everything in between.

I have outfitted my C4 with a new set of Nokian Hakkapeliitta RSi's on a set of 16" D90's. They performed admirably.

I can honestly say that I've never felt more at ease in poor driving conditions. The car rivaled my 4WD Suburban for traction to get going and traveling slowly in deep snow (4" unplowed side streets) and easily exceeded it for handling at speed on the highway and definitely exceeded it for stopping distance (weight difference, I'm sure). I expect it would also out do it on a slippery uphill ascent.

Upon my return home I found my driveway, which slopes downward, covered in about three inches of wet slippery snow. I actually didn't think much about it and just drove down to the bottom and turned around, as usual. Never even slipped, though, I'm sure the traction control was engaged. About an hour later my mother-in-law arrived with her front wheel drive Acura with all season tires and promptly got good and stuck where I had just been. It took me about 20 minutes and a good deal of shoveling to extract her.

In all, I couldn't be happier. I was itching to see how this baby would handle in the snow and have found that it has exceeded my expectations; again.

By the way, I broke off my rear wiper the night before I left trying to make the wiper fully contact the glass during its sweep. It was virtually a non-issue. With the rear defrost on, at speed, the snow melts and the glass remains clear. Only when stopped, or going very slowly, did I miss the wiper.

Cheers,
Dave

ttAmerica RoadsterAWD

Congrats on your roadtrip. I too love to go cross country on my machine. I've never hit snow tho.

Jaime

Kigiin

Couldn't agree more. I just drove my C4S with snow tires in snow for the first time ever. Wow! My other car is a Lexus LX470 (Toyota Landcrusier) which is full-time all wheel drive, however I would feel much safer (as long as snow depths aren't too great) in the Porsche. Absoutlely no slipping or sliding... the most sure footed snow driving I have ever done. While I didn't try it, I honestly think I could have floored it and the car still would have pulled away smoothly. Plus it was so cool to be driving a performance car in snowy conditions. In the past I always dreaded driving in the snow, not for fear, but just because you couldn't dirve spiritedly. In the C4S I can actually enjoy these driving conditions and take advantage of them.

Nutbeem

Great trip, thanks for sharing.

My wife and I took the cab up to Monterey for our anniversary a few years ago, and we got caught in a torrential downpour on the drive home on the 5. That car was sliding all over the place, the windshield wipers weren't up to the task, and there we were getting passed by Hondas all over the place.

The likely culprit was the tires, the other was probably my wife, who's chorus of "we're going to die" didn't help much.

I drove the new C4S in the snow and rain a bit coming down from Pennsylvania last month, no problems though.

dfinnegan

I'm sure you know this, but there are three wiper speeds. It took me a while to figure this out as I've never seen anything but intermittent, slow and fast speeds before. I thought the wipers were not up to the task of removing heavy rain and one day I pushed further on the arm and found the third speed! That did the trick.

Cheers,
dave

RallyDogRacing

I too love my RSi's on the D-90's, although we've had only one dumping of snow. But before everyone gives up in their SUV's, if you really want to compare apples to apples - put dedicated snows on that beastie!

I've been running a set of 3-season tires/wheels & a set of winter tires/wheels on cars for the last 10yrs (always Audi Quattros) and it never ceases to astonish me how many people drive cars with lesser raw tractive capability (2wd), with lesser tractive tires in the winter - AND complain about it.

I may get flamed here - but all season tires are simple marginal tires all year long. I think they are a real dis-service to the entire motoring public. At least the ones where there is a winter...

Doug&Julie

That's because you are much safer in your Porsche. Like any other area of performance, weight is the enemy of any AWD car in the winter time. Any vehicle with AWD and good snow tires (and I agree w/Rally Dog about "all season tires") has plenty of weight for "go" traction. But where the behemoth SUVs suffer is in the handling and stopping because of all that (high CoG) weight that has to be handled by the chassis. (Yet another phalacy about the "safety" of big SUVs..)

InTheAir

Let's hear it for the C4.

JRRSA

Just keep in mind that AWD is not same in all cars that put the "AWD" badge on the back. Most of those vehicles start as FWD and only power the front wheels until they lose traction or slip one full rotation. Then it will route power to the rear wheels via a transfer case through a complex power delivery route and only until the front wheels stop spinning. As a result, these are really front wheel drive vehicles under nearly all driving conditions.

In addition to the outstanding system in the Carrera 4, if you want real AWD, look at Audi with a Torsen system that responds to torque. As long as your foot is in the throttle, you have power to all four.

Then you have Subaru with several systems that ALWAYS power all four wheels all the time under ALL driving conditions even when your foot is out of the throttle. In fact, Subaru's more performance oriented vehicles (turbos) even have a rear bias set-up that is truly amazing. Power is routed via their horizontally opposed boxer engine to a longitudinally mounted transmission for direct flow of power to the rear wheels (all the time). Put Blizzaks on a Subaru and tell all others to get out of the way.