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Originally Posted by rick3000
I've driven my dad's 4x4 Jeep in the same snowy conditions as the Boxster. I'll admit that the 4x4/AWD helps, but I actually felt safer in the Boxster because it doesn't lean as much in curves, and has a similar amount of traction.
But it doesn't matter what drive system you have when you hit a patch of ice at 40mph in a curve, which I did in the Boxster and recovered from very well because once it gained grip I was able to maneuver quickly back into my lane.
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You're talking about two different things. Handling and traction.
Jeeps have traction with their high weight and ground clearance. I've been riding along in Jeeps driving through snow that I would have thought impossible to get through. However, they cannot handle worth a damn. They're numb, crude, and physically challenged. You have no idea what's going on underneath you beyond what you can see from the windshield. Even the little Jeep sucks. I don't understand why people drive those stupid things all year round, or any SUV for that matter. But back to the subject.
The Boxster just oozes with chassis feedback, it gives you confidence in it's handling abilities, which on dry roads is very high. Even when it's slippery out, you know what's going on with the ends of the car almost before anything happens. After living with the car for a while, you can predict how it will behave in certain situations and you will know what to do when the situations come up. This man/machine coordination is a thing of beauty. All this makes it more confidence inspiring when you are in conditions where traction is low, but make no mistake, it has less traction than the Jeep.
Now combine the two, put AWD in a 3000 pound car that on dry roads can tell you what the chassis is doing and that you can feel like you can control. Something that doesn't feel like your driving a 10 story building ready to tip over. A car that communicates and has AWD will have a combination of traction and feedback that you can't get in a RWD or FWD car or a Jeep. The chassis may not be as easy to rotate as the Boxster, but it's a world away from the Jeep. You can drive up slippery inclines, move from a dead stop without spinning the tires and loosing steering control, and maintain control in an emergency situation much better.
I spent several years driving a RWD Mazda Rx-7 in the winter. I'd switch to snow tires when it would snow and I could get around pretty easily, but still had to be careful of understeer/oversteer transitions and there were some places that I just couldn't go. Then I switched to a FWD sports coupe and left the sports car in storage during the winter. Less oversteer was nice to have and the car only weighed 2600 pounds, so it was pretty fun to drive in the winter, but as soon as I bought my first Impreza, I knew I wouldn't buy anything other than an AWD car for winter driving.
As I've mentioned before, there's no way I'd buy an Audi or VW as a daily driver, from my past experience they are very expensive to maintain, especially once the value of the car gets into the "I don't want to fix that" range. Things go south fast. But as far as AWD vs RWD in the snow, there's no comparison.