Comment by phil21
5 hours ago
AWD is a luxury outside of the most extreme of extreme locations.
I grew up in Minnesota driving rear wheel drive cars to start. They worked fine even in the olden days where plows would take a couple days to clear the country backroads and even rock salt was applied sparingly due to the expense.
Not a single one of my vehicles had winter tires - all seasons were perfectly serviceable. You’d get stuck once in a great while but that’s what the bag of sand and shovel in the trunk were for.
Front wheel drive came along and made it easy mode.
All wheel drive is certainly something I love these days, but it’s an extreme luxury that makes winter driving laughably easy.
A basic utilitarian work vehicle does not need to be 4WD in 90% or likely even 99% of use cases anywhere in the country.
>AWD is a luxury outside of the most extreme of extreme locations.
Only in the most strictly technical "I'm not touching you" sense.
Either AWD/4wd is necessary-ish when you're going to other people's property because you can't guarantee any given property isn't an icy shithole and when you're a professional being paid by them to be there for a specific purpose the last thing you wanna do is slip out trying to do a 25-point turn on their stupid sloped driveway and put a tire in the landscaping.
Even if it's some megacorp's facility that "should" be plowed and salted, it might not be when you show up at 6am on the dot to service something.
>I grew up in Minnesota driving rear wheel drive cars to start. They worked fine even in the olden days where plows would take a couple days to clear the country backroads and even rock salt was applied sparingly due to the expense.
>Not a single one of my vehicles had winter tires - all seasons were perfectly serviceable. You’d get stuck once in a great while but that’s what the bag of sand and shovel in the trunk were for.
I completely agree but the past isn't coming back. Those standards of performance are unfortunately no longer acceptable, especially in business settings.