The Venting Thread

I love my AWD Subaru, with winter tires on that thing you can make it just about anywhere. With the combination of mountains and snow we have here, I just can't imagine having a 2 wheel drive car. Lots of people do...they also get stuck a lot and often can't make it down our driveway.

Yeah, there's no way I could afford a truck and gas is the biggest reason. Ir would be nice to have this time of year though!

If I could just sleep all the way through the night at a normal-person time (ie, not at 9am), and without nightmares, that would be EXCELLENT. Taking a crapload of melatonin/natural sleep supplement and stress reliever and still waking up every half hour or having sleep paralysis is starting to get really annoying.

I love that my jeep is all "Snow? What snow?" but I don't love the 9-10 mpg. I realllllyyyyyy want to trade it for a V6.

SUBARUUUUUUU!

I would get around ok when I had 2wd, but holy unstoppable now that I have the XT.

I don't really care what kind of vehicle you have, you aren't going to get very far on ice. OR you'll get plenty far and that's exactly the problem. Straight into the ditch or rolled over on the side of the road, like most of the LOL I HAVE A TRUCK people did this morning.

Exactly. 4WD is moot on ice. Why do people not understand this simple concept?!

I think 4wd does help, a tiny bit, on ice sometimes (or at least I always slid less driving on ice with one but maybe that was just the cars I had to compare to)...but yes, not really enough to really make it worth having one just for that.

The physics of stopping is the great leveler--because ice trumps all. Being able to retain control while in a forward motion is something else entirely.

Agreed. I have really good AWD and winter tires, plow through the worst snowstorms with relative ease. But the ice couldn't give two licks about it. If I move a hair too quickly on ice, I'm going where I don't want to go.

The Buick actually treats me better on ice than it does anything else. Rain and snow I slide everywhere, but ice is no issue at all. Dunno how or why, I don't question it out of jinx. I have pictures somewhere of me driving a couple hour stretch in Wyoming on nothing but ice. One reason I am a little scared to give up BossTankBuick. Then it rains or I try to shove Zander in the back and I remember why I AM getting rid of it.

I made the mistake of stopping in the wrong spot at a stop-sign the other night. And no matter how amazing my little cavalier has been in the snow this year, we were not moving ANYWHERE. Luckily I had SO to push me and give me that little bit of forward momentum.

As for the LOL I HAVE A TRUCK people. They drive me INSANE. It's like good for you, you've got a vehicle that you think can handle this weather. I don't feel as confident so I'm going to drive a bit more cautiously (And I don't drive *that* slowly).
Get off my ass and stop honking and flashing your highbeams at me....Just once I'd love to have one of these jerks that flies past me to end up in a ditch so I can point and laugh as I drive by.
I never get to see it though *sighs*


On an unrelated note: I hate working with second year university students on group projects. I've done all the work of spearheading the project and dividing up the work so each person really only has to answer one question. That was a month ago, think I've heard back from them yet? The thing is due in a week and they haven't even said which parts they want to cover.

Hahaha, my friend drives an old Mitsubishi and he keeps saying he doesn't understand how it keeps starting every morning. His girlfriend has a newish VW and whenever it's, like, below 20 degrees (which has been almost every day since Christmas!) he has to jump her car in the morning. But the old Mitsubishi starts every morning for him.
He says "Sometimes she just starts out of love." He doesn't question it. It just works.

See I don't understand why more people don't have FWD or at least AWD, an AWD Subaru gets great gas Milage

I would get one myself but I haul a lot of **** and I need a truck, unfortunately, can't haul a gooseneck with a Subaru lol

Honestly if you're in the suburbs or city up here, 2W vs 4WD doesn't make a big difference. Once the roads get plowed, it's all pretty much the same... and one thing we are experts at is plowing roads. I wouldn't choose a car solely for that reason for the handful of days per winter it might make a difference if I have to go somewhere before the plows have gone.

Ice don't care about nobody.

Absolutely, in the city it wouldn't be as important to me to have AWD. Out here, the plow often doesn't make it for days and if we get a big dump of snow, you absolutely need the AWD to make it around. We have a long driveway on a hill, and with 2 wheel drive we wouldn't make it up and down for a good portion of the winter. Having to park at the top and carry everything is suuuper lame.

Ice though, for sure, AWD isn't going to help that much. We tend to not get too bad of ice, most of the time.

FWD is front wheel drive, 2 wheels.

Subarus have improved with the CVT transmission, but the rest are usually under 30mpg. The manual XV Crosstrek is 23/30. Ford Focus is 26/36. Ecoboost Fiesta now hits 45.

There is still a trade off against similarly sized cars.

Every Subaru offered has at the very least 30 mpg highway (excluding turbo models). CVT will trump manual in the gas mileage department every time. The auto Crosstrek gets 33 highway, with plenty of people pushing that upwards of 40.

Illinois is really flat until you get down south (and I'm talking almost out of the state south) so we don't really have a lot of hills and stuff to worry about. But even in the country, the plows usually get to you before too long - you might be stuck for a day, but by the second day you'll get plowed out. In the country, though, because it IS so flat, your biggest problem is the blowing and drifting. So even though the roads will be cleared, snow will drift back on and visibility becomes an issue. But that's usually not a "CRAP THERE'S STILL TEN INCHES OF SNOW ON THE ROAD" thing - you just can't tell where the road starts and stops and surprise, you're in the ditch because you just drove straight into it. You also have the problem of your vehicle just straight up being blown off the road, too.

Normally we don't get a lot of ice (actually, we normally don't get this much snow - in January alone we got more snow than we typically get during an entire winter) but this year has been really bad. As soon as it starts to get above freezing, the snow starts the melt - then the very next day it's down below freezing again, and for more fun it dumps snow on top of what just melted so you're not even sure if there's ice underneath it or not.

They do a fair job of plowing the roads (unless you're on a little side street like my parents) usually, but they've had major problems being able to keep up. Normally they are out with the salt trucks, too, but the salt doesn't work when it's below freezing so... yeah. It's a mess. This is the worst winter I can remember and I'm nearly 30. Even the year we had the big ice storm... that was just the one time. I asked my mom and she said she knows we've had storms, but she can't remember a time we had storm after storm after storm like this. It's just bad all around.

I'm moving to Hawaii. Auggie and I will buy an island and we will call it Sheltie Island and we will get sheepums and there will be NO SNOW EVER and it will be lovely.

That's what I have read, too.