Truth is people who live in a city/town really don't NEED AWD....If the city does a halfway decent job of plowing. It may be nice to have it but they don't really need it. I drove around Houghton, MI for 4 years, in a front wheel drive Plymouth Horizon. I never got stuck or even close to stuck. If you can get around in a town with 200"+ of snow per year in a front wheel drive Horizon....

Its nice to have for controllability on ice. I actually have the 4WD Escape (the drive system is the same... they just call it 4WD on the Escape and AWD on the Mariner for marketing reasons) and I'll admit I've never needed it.

This is SO true. Canadians don't buy AWD vehicles like Americans do. What does THAT say about real vs. perceived need? I like AWD, but I only really "need" it here in Denver a few times per year. As long as I don't venture too far.

Also, some markets just don't support 2WD SUVs. Buying 2WD here is unwise unless you plan to drive the wheels off it. Most people won't buy them, and dealers either won't take 2WD trades at any price or will offer about half the real value. They sometimes stock few 2WD Escapes, stripper models as price leaders, but there's almost no such thing as a 2WD Explorer, Expedition, 4Runner, etc around here.

I have a FWD 2005 FEH and it did great in the Denver winter to remember of '06-'07. I've even been off road on Jeep trails with mud and slush and it did fine. The scariest part for me was the different feel of going downhill on steep wet / snowy / muddy trails, since the car always tries to use regenerative brakes first. I felt a little out of control going downhill ( at 20 miles per hour ) but it was great going up.

Only one time have I used tire chains up front, and that was in a Wyoming ice storm that was blowing cars off the road sideways! But that was like an ice skating rink that day, and the road did close about 1 hour after I got onto it!

-John

Isn't that one of the times they recommend using "L"? If so were you using it? Did it seem to help or make things worse?

I drive an AWD and I love it. I drove a FWD as a tester and it understeered bad. The AWD corners like it's on rails. I hate FWD, never owned one, never will. There is a reason all the best cars ever developed have RWD or AWD, it simply works better.

Yeah.... #1 It's cheaper. #2, it's easier.

Teester, yes. And no. L gear helps with slowing, but still is regen first, brake pads second.

Nothing wrong with FWD. I've driven them both. On ice I'd rather have a FWD all the way. The weight is over the drive wheels so I can pull myself out of problems. With a RWD when you loose it, you've got no way to recover. Everyone claims a FWD will go straight into a ditch on ice if you pull off the accelerator.... I've never been in the ditch and I've never even felt the effect described and I've been driving these things for 20 years. I've had the front end slide on me once and a slight bit of gas and no problem, pulled myself right around the corner. You just have to know how to drive them, there isn't any more danger to them.

The only issue with FWD would be the CV joints in my opinion.

That is a really big "if" around here.

My work is off of a 4 lane highway. It usually takes them 2 days to get around to plowing 2 of the 4 lanes, and about 10 days to get around to plowing the remaining 2 lanes.

At home, it takes them about 10 hours after it stops, to plow my street.

Best single LD trip: 35.3mpg

Agreed... thats why I put the *IF* there

In Ann Arbor MI, Burlington VT, and Houghton MI, I've never had a problem except during the blizzards we've had in those times. Those, admittedly are smaller cities with less streets to plow.

Yeah, that's going to be my problem when I go to get rid of mine. Everyone around here buys 4WD. The dealerships only stock 4WD Escapes. I'm planning on keeping mine for a while. I'll worry about that problem when the time arrives.

PENNDOT sucks. My dad used to be a manager of a mobile home dealership. 2 days after a snow storm they tried to deliver a home from St. Clairsville, OH to Morgantown, WV. The roads were perfectly clear until they got I-79 S. The road was so bad, they had to turn around and go back.