Are Quattro Audis good in snow?

[Don]

Hello Audi owners!

I'm absolutely barking mad. Or am i.

One of the four cars in my stable needs replacing. It's a shagged out Vectra Estate. The roles it plays are:

Bad weather car - snow in particular. Not because it's good but because I don't care if I prang it.
Autumn holiday car - great for dealing with ste roads in Cumbria, Cotswolds, Yorkshire etc.
Tip run car. Although tip running has now been transferred to the Nissan Leaf.
Long journey car that we don't want to use the sports cars for.
Run guests around car.
Mrs drive it to the rail station leave it all day car.

So I put in the following criteria to Autotrader. 4WD, Petrol, four plus seats, and, for a laugh and because we love convertible cars, I added Cabriolet.

Autotrader found:

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/2016...

Now I have to say this looks brilliant. Ticks every box. Clearly there is manthinking going on here but that looks like a fab daily IF

1) It's good once the traction gets nasty on snow, crud and crappy British winter road slime.
2) The cabrio luggage space in the boot isn't ridiculously small.

Any Audi owners on here? Am I bonkers or could that be a good idea?

[Don]

I'd probably get some all-season tyres for it rather than full winters.

Wouldn't do the sticky summer tyre, though, the Boxster has those and doesn't have to go out in the winter nasty...

[Don]

CoolCurly said:

I did notice that it used to go slightly at an angle in the snow on straight roads but driving past the rest of my team who had opted for BMW 3 and 5 series at the time on the hill into our office was awesome...

RWD on summer tyres in the snow = useless. I have two RWD sports cars that live on summer tyres. They just don't go out if it is snowy at all. BMWs tend to be daily cars rather than toys so you do see them in use in winter and if they're RWD on summer tyres it really isn't pretty however nice they may be in the dry.

If we do the Audi it will likely be shod with all-season tyres. I'd best go check some reviews of those now...

Thanks for your comments, everyone.

[Don]

LeoSayer said:

Summers in snow on the 993 was an experience I don't want to repeat. Getting the car out of the garage was impossible without a run up due to camber of the kerb outside. Traction and braking were, I guess, 5% of of normal and any slope seem to reduce that to 1%.

Getting our TVR Chimaera back from Basingstoke rail station in the snow was an interesting challenge. To get it up our drive I had to clear the drive of snow almost completely and then have two mates sit on the boot and/or push the damn thing. That's when we decided it would never go out on a day with the chance of snow ever again...