As some of you know the East Coast was hit with a lots of snow In Lancaster, PA we had ice and 3-6" of snow on the ground before we left for a 150 mile drive to my families' house.

Cars were off the road, in ditches, saw several flipped over cars and my wife's Protege5 kept trucking. I felt the rear maybe loose traction once or twice, but lightly lifted on the gas and the car caught.

What was supposed to be a 2 hour drive turned into a 3-3.5 hour drive. Got there safe and sound.

I'll have to say this car amazes me with it's winter traction on the stock Dunlops.

We did see a Jeep Liberty flip over infront of us, a Subaru on the guardrail, Ford Focus in the ditch, and some other SUVs pulled over. Kinda funny passing them in our FWD wagon

 

hey

im from toronto and we get our fair share of snow in the winter. to me the stock dunlops do a decent job but i got winter tires anyways just to be on the safe side. better safe than sorry

cheers.

 

The Pro5 is amazingly agile and controllable in snow. The stiff rear suspension tuning makes understeer very manageble and the car very balanced. When it understeers a bit, I just let of the gas and counter steer a bit, it always turns around.

 

Two girls in my area were just killed when their car lost traction traveling in a straight line (in the snow) and slid sideways into oncoming traffic. Passenger was killed, driver still in critical. Anyone else think their life isn't worth 500 bux?

Stocker.

 

Its only snowed a couple of times here and I also think they do an alright job. One thing I noticed is that I can very easily get the rear of the car to slide when I am turning if I jerk the wheel in either direction (I was doing it on purpose to see how the car handles in snow and I have never slid like that on accident). In my parents minivan if I do that the car just slides straight.

If it snows I just don't drive, and I am going to be moving next year so I can't really see spending 500 dollars on a set of snow tires that I will use for one season. And the season is already half over and we just got our first real snow on christmas eve.

As for the two girls, what happened to them is sad. But you can't blame that on not having snow tires. Even if that car had snow tires it probably still would have went out of control. The driver had to have done something to make that car slide, because cars going in a straight line on ice don't just slide out of control for no reason. If they were on a curve then its understandable but not in a straight line.

 

I completely agree. We just got about 8" - 12" here in Okla. Not once did I have a 'moment' during the two hours it took me to drive the would-be 30-minute drive. Oh, I also got some really nice pics of the car in the snow (hides all the dirt hehe). I'll get them developed tomorrow and post them!

 

It was a corner. Tires let go. Snow tires would have helped. Probably saved their lives.
Stocker.

 

Over the last 20 years, I have owned all types of vehicles: rear wheel drive, front wheel drive, 4 wheel drive, etc and I live in Canada and I have to admit I have not been impressed with the stock Dunlops in the snow. I don't really find them that great in the rain either; in the dry they are fantastic. I put a set of winter tires and steel rims on my P5 and the difference in the snow is night and day. They cost me around $650 CAN and will probably last me 4 or 5 winters; a small price to pay for peace of mind and safety. You may be able to get decent traction to get the car moving, but you do have to stop sometime and the stock Dunlops are garbage if there is any snow or ice on the road. Just wait until you have some sort of panic stop to make on a snow or ice covered road, then you will realize what crap the Dunlops are in the winter.

 

Ditto
And Ditto they suck in the rain too!
And the car needs a limited slip diff

 

LSD on a 130hp car?

 

Hell yeah!
The car just spins it's tires in the rain even under moderate throttle. It spins it's tires easily on the tarmac too!

 

i dont have problems with my 99 lx, it's a beast in the snow. and i live in maine, so we get lots of snow.

 

You also don't have P195/50-16 Dunlop Sport 5000 tires either.

 

Ice and snow can easily cause traction loss in a straight line, especially with an open diff, but really, a limited just makes it more controlled loss....

Hell, when TheMAN and I went to the Mazda 6 ride and drive thing in Houston a few weeks ago, on the way down *on cruise control* at like 70 or something, one of the wheels broke traction. Now he still has his stock Dunlop's, which are ok in the wet, but not amazing, and they are shall we say broken in..

But imagine, this was basicly a no torque constant speed situation, one wheel broke free (you could hear it spinning and he held the wheel in place and we saw the tach and speedo go up even tho we were going same speed or so). After that he took it off cruise.. it happened like 2 more times on the way there, while he was controlling the gas manually.

That's just water, with no wait shifting, or sudden torque to any wheels, just a slight irregularity in the road surface, on 'broken in', but still normally safe, Dunlop's.

Ever heard of "black ice" ?

It's ice you can't really see..

Not only could you lose traction in a straight line hitting a patch of ice or snow, it would be even worse if the patch wasn't across the whole lane.. what happens when one side of the car is sliding and the other gripping?

People lose control going in straight lines all the time, and while a good driver might be able to maintain control in some situations, sometimes even a good drive would just have to pray his car is crashworthy... and an average driver is probably quite up the creek without a paddle when hitting such conditions at any amount of speed.

Hell my dad was going in a stright line once when he still had his 911.. he was going only 20-30mph due to the weather conditions going down I45 and hit some black ice, he ended up going into a real slow spin he couldn't get out of until he slid into the grass.. like 2-3 seconds to do a 360..

 

That is pretty freaky. But, of course, you are not supposed to have your cruise control on in the rain or the snow. For reasons like that.

I will say this about the Dunlops. They work pretty good for stock tires in the snow. We were up around Roswell when that storm hit, New Mexico state police were closing roads all around and I never once lost traction. Even got some humor too. I was driving nice and sensibly and some dumbass in a new C1500 (very new, had the different headlight design they switched to this year) passed me going MUCH faster than he should have been. Watched him fishtail, spin, and go off the road. Unfortunately, the moron was okay (otherwise would have been another success for Darwin).

To me, the car is very easy to handle in the wet weather or snow, mainly because I've owned so many trucks. My Ranger was a total handful in the snow. If you didn't put two bags of cement or sand in the bed there were times I could not even start to release the clutch without the back end of that thing fishtailing out.