Northern Illinois got blasted with the first snow of the season over the weekend. I am a bit irked by this. It was only a few weeks ago when I last went swimming in Lake Michigan! I currently have one of my summer cars stored outside because I’m repairing something on it. I could have sworn I had more time! Ugh, well, winter is here, whether I want it to be or not. Which has me wondering: What’s the most fun car to drive in the snow?
For the purposes of this question, I’m not asking you about the best car for snow. No, I want you to give me the most entertaining car to drive in the snow, no matter how impractical it may be. Maybe you like drifting in a Ferrari? Or maybe you want to roll around in a Honda S2000 with the top down in the blizzard? You tell me.
While I am not a fan of winter, I do like using the time to do silly things with vehicles that are normally pretty tame.
My old 2005 Volkswagen Touareg VR6 didn’t have enough power for any shenanigans on pavement, and the permanent four-wheel-drive system killed fun when you weren’t off-road. But in the snow? Then it was a ton of fun. I used to wait until a fresh snow, go to an abandoned parking lot, crank the steering wheel over, and then let the throttle rip.
The result was usually that the Treg spun like a top. It was silly, it was stupid, and it was often nauseating, but it made me feel like a dollar store version of the late Ken Block. Sometimes, I’d chain spins together and dance all over the parking lot. But the beauty of it was that my Touareg had decent tires and didn’t have a ton of power, so it was easy to keep in control and easy to stop and regain traction. Once I got done, I just hit the brakes, steered straight, and left the lot.
My second favorite pick for snow fun would be a small, low-power car. Think something like a Dodge Caliber, Chrysler PT Cruiser, or Chevrolet Aveo. Honestly, the crappier the car, the more fun it is.
Back when I was a teenager, it was a total trip going into a snowy parking lot, ripping the parking brake, and then drifting. I was big into Top Gear when I was a teen, and I thought of myself as a bargain Jeremy Clarkson or Sabine Schmitz. The really glorious part is that these cars are so weak that all of these drifts would happen at 20 mph and were, most of the time, within the abilities of an unskilled teenage driver.
It also just felt awesome because these cars couldn’t even spin their drive tires on dry ground. But in the snow? They were epic! I think this is part of the reason why I have an appreciation for the crappy cars of my youth. If you tried hard enough, you could have fun with them! Sadly, I fear that future generations might miss out on this fun. I haven’t yet found out how to replicate the same experience with an electronic parking brake.
So, that’s my story. What about you? If given the chance to drive any car in the winter, ignoring road salt and other nightmares, what would be your winter fun car?
Top graphic image: Dodge
The most fun car in the snow depends on what you want to be doing. Want to drift around back roads; you need awd or 4wd and a manual. Want to power through deep snow; lockers and ground clearance. Want to get to the slopes rested and comfortable; awd sedan or wagon with heated seats. If you just want to whip shitties in a parking lot; rwd and a heavy foot or fwd and a cable parking brake.
I always like RWD and good winter tires. They grip when needed, or the slip when you get rowdy. My truck now is fun, but in the past I liked my audi or my 95 civic with snow tires. That civic could get through most anything winter throws around here.
I have even taken a long trip in the snow and deep freezing temps in a Prius. It was perfectly cromulent on mountain passes in CO with chains.
Same as the fastest car for RallyCross, the one you care about the least.
my e91 325xi was super fun in the snow, turn off the stability control, drop the clutch and the rear bias would kick the back end out. Stay on the gas and the front wheels would hook up and pull you back straight.
I have a 1996 80-series Land Cruiser. It will never be rally-cross fun in the snow, but winter tires and a modest lift mean that thing is an absolute TANK in any kind of deep snow that Minnesota can dish out. When the weather news people recommend no travel and roads have not yet been plowed, that’s my time to play.
Anything RWD or AWD, but a personal favorite is a 2013 Charger R/T AWD.
I took one rallying on slushy, snowy dirt roads back in late 2012 (the car was almost literally brand new – it only had a few thousand miles on it at the time). My buddy thought I was out of my tree, and maybe I was – but I had an absolute riot.
In the winter of ’90/’91, I was a young lad on a learners permit. My dad took me into a parking lot with his manual ’84 Firebird (with the baller 2.8l V6), and made me do donuts and drifts with it – he said it was so I could understand how a car will react on snow/ice and how to correct it. Though he never said it, I know that was a complete lie. He did it to teach me how to be a proper hooligan.
Anything RWD and old enough to not have stability control. When I had my learners permit my dad would take me to the empty grocery store parking lot in the early morning to learn how to modulate brakes, control skids, and steer with the throttle. That was with an early 80’s Oldsmobile 98. My first vehicle was an 87 Jimmy which was fun in the snow as was my wife’s 86 Ranger.
My favorite snow driver was a 2000 Ford F-150 work truck – standard cab, 8 foot bed, V6, 5 spd manual, 2 wd, open diff. – with Blizzaks and 200 lbs. of water softener salt securely strapped over the rear axle. It was acceptable in the snow, and quite the drift monster!
I’m sure that surprised more than a few people seeing a big blue truck drifting effortlessly down the streets.
I had the similar formula, just a few generations older — ’83 F-150 work truck, standard cab, 8-foot bed, 300 inline-6, 3-speed manual, 2wd, open diff, sand in the back and snow tires. Tracked reliably straight until you put your foot down, then the straight six’s torque would break the tries loose in an instant and you could fling it around by the rear end — until you let off the gas and it would snap right back into a straight line and trundle along like nothing was amiss.
I love my Geo Tracker in the snow! So light it’s almost impossible to get it stuck (I haven’t managed it yet, despite bashing through unplowed driveways with the snow coming up over the hood, or out in empty snow-filled gravel pits towing a snowmobile)
RWD for easy drifts with the light weight and short wheelbase.
4WD for actually getting places
Manual parking brake
Manual transmission
No traction control
Lots of sidewall and ground clearance, just in case
We had some snow fall here in Ontario today, and I was hoping it would be enough to get the tail sliding, but not just yet
If Jason is reading, he has one of the most best snow cars ever built. The fun bit is driving a 2cv very slowly past all the folk that do not have a2cv.
The second best is a Bristol Fighter, please buy it and prove me wrong I am sure it would be awesome in the snow, money up front and no returns.
Third thought, a BSA A10 with a big sidecar, a steep learning curve but rather fun once mastered, skinny tyres, low power and low weight, basically a one wheell drive 2Cv.
Also an old Unimog, not fun ever but very useful for recovering all of the fun cars, which is fun.
For me, so far, it’s the 986 Boxster.
I had a Bugeye WRX and then a B5 A4 Quattro in college, and while those were fun, it was a bit scary to actually *try* to have fun, since the AWD systems would cause understeer and oversteer at the same time, in a way I didn’t have the skills to handle. Maybe if I drove one now, after some instructed high-performance driving events and more overall driving experience, I’d have a better time.
The M235i was okay, but the open differential combined with lots of power and brake-vectoring traction aids made it unpredictable in a frustrating way. The lack of steering feedback also made it pretty hard to dial in opposite lock.
The Boxster is just right, it still has an open diff, but the lack of traction control makes it a lot more predictable, and the steering works with me to keep the front end exactly where I want it regardless of what the rear does. The rear, for its part, is very tractable, with the engine sitting on it and with relatively short gearing. As for comfort, the cabin is tiny and heats up really quickly, and the heated seats go a long way as well.
I would really like to experience an air-cooled VW in the Winter some time, I bet that would be fantastic. A friend of mine has a type 3, but – tale as old as time – it has a 2300 with big, plain headers, and the heater channels are rotted all the way off anyway.
I had snow tyres on my S1 Elise. It was epic in the snow. My mk3 MR2 was more fun, because it had an LSD and I could afford to damage it.
But the most fun was my S12 Silvia Turbo, with a welded diff. Such huge beautiful slides, everywhere, in the snow.
My favourite car for snow was my 2015 Mitsubishi Outlander GT. The AWD lock was a blast to drive, fitted with the Yokohama winter tires I was running on it.
My fondest snow-driving memory was while working for a Mazda dealerhip back in 1988. My demo was a little 323 hatch with a manual and a handbrake, and we got about a foot and a half of snow in a place that didn’t know how to clear it, so everything was basically closed for several days. Rare was the turn I made without handbrake assistance 🙂
My ’02 WRX set up for rallycross was fun. Powerful enough to be fun without too much to get me into trouble, AWD, decent snow tires, loud brappy exhaust. All my WRC fantasies came to life.
A(ny) rental with a manual handbrake? 😉
An easy one, but a bad old days (we’ll say pre-2005) Mustang. They’re not hugely overpowered or heavy like today’s, so your chances of getting into catastrophic trouble are lower, yet the basic package gives you everything you need to effortless enjoy the less the perfect traction. Summer tires are more fun, though it gets annoying fast when you’re actually trying to purposefully get somewhere.
This is a loaded question. What constitutes “fun” in one snowstorm can be terrifying in another.
But 30 years ago I had a Volvo 240 with a manual transmission and really crappy tires. Tooling around a grid of streets in the suburbs, in a snowstorm, I could hang the rear end out on every turn and hold a drift all the way down the block. At the next intersection, I could flick it like Loeb, reverse the turn, and drift all the way down that block too. It was uncanny how controllable the car was even when the tires had almost zero traction.
I credit the steering range, with a very broad lock-to-lock that put the front wheels almost perpendicular to the direction of travel. Pretty much what drifters spend a lot of time dialing into their cars.
Back when I lived in Dallas I had a 2011 WRX. On Summer tires. We got snow for Christmas in 2012 and I remember ripping around some parking lots with tires that were basically hockey pucks in the cold. It was fun.
In college, my near-stock 1995.5 Tacoma Single Cab, 2.7 5 speed 4WD was a RIOT in the snow. 4-Hi and it would just claw or slide its way anywhere. During blizzards, it would just dig its way to wherever I needed to go. Loved that truck.
Anything RWD and pre-dented under $1,000 so you can gleefully wall-tap snow banks when nobody’s around.
In the Atlanta area where I am we started getting the same arctic blast air you got in Illinois overnight last night. We don’t get all of it of course but it’s damned cold for Nov 10! And we got some snow flurries here which I can’t say I ever remember getting anything this early in the year. This weather system is bringing some wild stuff.
I remember getting my GTi out in the snow. The only way to get the FWD beast drifting properly and it was so much fun. Needed a pretty big lot because control was not really part of it, at least for me.
I do miss that. I’m less inclined to try in the Boxster. Higher repair bills and all. The Macao might be fun with the AWD setup though. If we get significant snow this year I just might be tempted…
I have two. One would be anything with a mechanical handbrake. Can’t do a damn thing with these electronic brakes that most cars come with now.
Second would be my Mach-E. Rear-biased AWD, 428 torques. I could rip silent donuts in my cul-de-sac and would barely get any wheel slip from a snowy dig.
Fun, as-in, no drama and I can get to where I want to go quickly and without leaving a stain on my seat?
Small hatchback with narrow winter tires.
On the other side I had a RWD open-diff manual transmission pickup truck that I drove sideways through every roundabout. But it was aggravating anytime I wanted to go somewhere without drama when the roads were frosted over.
The most fun I’ve had in snow was with a 2003 Suburban Z71. The long wheel base gave you extra control with your sliding. Never had to worry about getting stuck because popping it into 4wd got that thing through anything. Every time it snowed we took that thing out hooning.