Anyone else just drive around in Track mode all the time?

[John777]

Ah, my Canadian friend! Not all winters are the same!

Our “winter” here in central Texas is a bit, shall we say, “milder” than what The Great Frozen North experiences. Our average daily low temp in January is still above freezing.

So yes, my Emira can be a year-round car!

I get that.. absolutely.
I'm thinking more about the ones that drive in ice or snow with or without snow tires etc. I had a few "sports" cars ..or high hp cars etc.. and it was a nightmare to drive them in the snow.. The width of the tires would just plow through the snow. We would get a SnowStorm/Blizzard and easily get 1 foot of snow or more at times. 1 inch would be possible if carefull..
Fresh snow is especially slippery. I'd get out of work on afternoons or midnights and get stranded.
Or the car was too low and hit hardened snow ruts ..you could cause damage etc. Or your front end would turn into a snow plow..
Then you have ice/black ice etc to deal with..sometimes hidden. Especially scary when you hit an ice patch thats hidden under some snow before a stop sign.. Gotta drive like a turtle. Then add in driving a stick.. can help or hinder at times.
Or if you go up a sloped hilly road or down one. You would just slide down the slope.. brakes won't help at times. Take an exit ramp/curve a little faster then you should and you're in trouble.. It was nail biting at times.. I did it once and that was it.. They also usually salt heavily around here...not good for the "investment" with rust etc.. I've owned many.. But I prefer to just buy myself a winter car instead and store the sports or exotic for winter. Mild winters sure no problem. Any snow or ice.. not worth it to me. And I consider myself a really good experienced driver.

 

[cyanmauve]

I learned a hard lesson about winter driving.

10 years ago or so I was living in Dallas. We had multiple consecutive days of freezing rain with temperatures that did not get above freezing. Dallas is completely unequipped for such weather, as it happens very, very infrequently, and the investment in equipment to deal with it isn’t work the price.

Anyway, the whole city had been shut down for a week, and I was going stir crazy at home on a Friday. I decided I would drive my lowered 2006 Mustang GT, with summer tires of course, to the gym to lift some weights. I was the only car on the road, and in absolutely no hurry. 25ish MPH at most on deserted streets. 4 lane road divided by low concrete curbing.

I’m puttering along thinking I have a good handle on car control, and all those suckers at home are just too scared to drive, when I hit a patch of ice, start sliding sideways across the road, hit the dividing concrete, and turn my car into a see-saw, with the rear tires off the ground.

A friendly guy in a truck pulls over and offers to help me. I throw a tow strap around what I thought to be part of the frame of my car. The guy successfully pulls me free of the curbing, car grossly unscathed. Then I see the neon green-yellow puddle under my car against the snow and ice. I anchored the tow strap in a way that cracked my plastic radiator end tanks.

I limped home, pulled the car into the garage, cursed and swore many times, and decided then and there I would never drive in snow and ice again unless I had a suitable vehicle to do so with winter tires, chains, etc.

Lesson learned!