The C - A Gutless Snow Machine

So far I'm pretty impressed with how well the C gets around in snow. I've only had mine about a month and this is the second time we've had snow, 5-6 inches last night. I'm running stock Turanza tires and steel wheels at 41 psi, I haven't felt them slip at all while accelerating or braking. Overall the handling is WAY better than the Civic I traded in for it, that car was scary sometimes in snow.

 

Wow, this thread has a lot going on. Some of it's pretty funny stuff. I loved the... driving a Prius c with factory 16 inch wheels and tires during a snow storm with 200 pounds in the hatch load area and then deeming the car dangerous in snow. Dangerous indeed!

Four good aggressive snow tires, properly sized, will turn any front wheel drive car into a snowmobile. Of course, some driver skill and a dose of common sense is very good to have, along with a good deal of luck.

I lived up a fun mountain road in western Montana for over a decade and worked rotating shift that allowed no missed work for any reason other than verifiable death. I commuted year round in a tiny '92 Suzuki Swift with a tiny 1.3L 4 cylinder engine. No traction control, other than that provided by go pedal and steering inputs with some help from the manual transmission and 4 snow tires got me through some epic snow events.

That little car would climb the access road to the Whitefish Ski (Big Mountain back then) resort under the worst conditions, and it did that often since I was a pass holder and lived only a few minutes away. Snow storms generally dumped fairly good quality powder on the mountains for us skiing fans! So equally equipped, I can't see why a Prius c would be any worse than my old Suzuki snow car.

I also have a small part time 4 wheel drive truck that I use to cart heavy or bulky stuff out to my current house in the hills of Maine. I only use it when I have to. '98 4 cyl, manual Frontier with around 78,000 miles on it. Bought it new after I moved to Maine. The Suzuki was my sacrificial anode to the Winter salt gods, and it eventually rusted into submission, replaced by a 1999 SW2 Saturn wagon that I have owned since 2001. This front wheel drive car was also equipped with 4 aggressive snow tires and has done excellent Winter snow duty commuting both to work and to the ski hills in northern New England during many very sloppy nasty snow storms that make road surfaces slick as butter on warm teflon.

One thing that I've noticed, too many people drive out to the mountains on "all season" tires out here. Luckily, road crews do an excellent job of clearing the roads to bare pavement within hours of a snow storm, but during snow storms, too many cars and SUVs end up in ditches and in accidents that often take out other cars.

I was traveling home from Portland area as the last "big storm" had just started up a couple of weeks back, and passed by 2 accident sites. One was a Mazda 3 into guardrails and a couple of miles beyond that we came upon a new Jeep Grand Cherokee, gorgeous deep red color, but it had rolled onto its side. That stretch of road was fairly straight, so I have no idea how that happened, other than too much speed for the slick inch or two of snow cover as evidenced by the trajectory and distance this vehicle covered before coming to a stop. Luckily they didn't hit anything on the side of the road. Emergency crews were already there removing the occupants.

Last year we had a fairly mild and snow deficient Winter here and I cheated by taking the snows off after only a month of Winter. This Winter's snow started to arrive very late, but in the last couple of weeks, the snow has been falling at more regular intervals, and it's snowing right now. I'm sure a lot of vacationers will be driving home from the mountains tomorrow ( Sunday, end of school vacation week and it will be snowing ) on their "all season" tires. It will be a circus out there. I try to drive as little as possible on snowy weekends. Just trying to increase my "luck".

 

We finally had a decent storm and the C (with snow tires) was just fine. I didn't do anything fancy - just drove it the way I would any car in deep(ish) snow.

 

Thanks for the input Bruce! Just what I though... that with snow tires installed, a Prius c in Winter will do fine under real Winter driving conditions. No dramatic outcome. Perfect!

 

Crazy thread.

So now (early 2013) that we've had some major snow storms, I think anyone living in Ontario or the upper right quadrant of the US should probably have a pretty decent idea how the C does in the snow. I'm still truckin' around with the Michelin X-Ice tires and have now experienced the C in a variety of snowy conditions, including mild off-road / gravel road conditions that had ice/hard snow. The C isn't awesome at snow but I found that it did okay.

Most of the city here completely shut down during our one major snow-in. I went ahead to the office in my C so that I could test it out, and did fine. The snow in the parking lot drifted between a foot and a foot and half. I had some problems getting started, but with a little removal ahead of the tires I was fine. The key is to preserve momentum once you get going and plan your route ahead of time. Nobody in a news-event-generating storm should reasonably expect to travel much faster than 60km/h, and in the worst of it I was doing about 30-40km/h without any scary moments.

That said, the rumour of an AWD Prius is appealing.

Let's not kid ourselves, for those of us who do outdoors-type activities year-round and live in snowy areas, the confidence of would be nice in a car like this. As it happens, I tend to get out of the city every weekend and did run into some rather crazy conditions north of the city on a recent weekend after a night of intense snow. Instead of risking getting stuck somewhere, I opted to drive to a meeting point and carpool with a friend with an AWD Touareg heading to the same location.

 

In some cases, I agree that you need to turn off the traction/stability control. For really severe Winter driving in hills and ice, a set of fully studded snow tires will help a lot! The problem with fully studded snow tires, is the constant loud noise they produce on pavement once snow and ice are cleared away.

When Indianapolis had first built their infield Formula 1 track, I watched a demonstration ride given for the press in an AMG prepared Mercedes wagon. (Might be on YouTube, and if anyone finds it, please post it! ) Formula 1 driver Heinz Harald Frentzen was driving the Mercedes at speed down the front straight toward turn 1 of the new course, and as he turned this car into the sharp right hand curve, the car shut down completely, surprising the F1 driver and occupants. The traction/stability control system was armed and it decided that Frentzen would not drive this car in that manner.

After a couple of moments, they figured out that the traction/stability control system had determined that Frentzen was about to put this car into an attitude that it did not like and not would allow. They restarted the car, and after switching the device off, continued at speed to complete the demonstration laps.

Traction and Stability controls are there to try to help keep an untrained driver from getting into trouble in most cases. That track incident was a great example of how good these things can be. It was pretty funny to watch.

 

Glad to hear you are happier with your PC. I had a little adventure yesterday. NYC and Northeast got slammed with 5-10 inches of snow overnight, depending on where you are. Morning commute was a mess. I saw tons of cars, SUVs, pickups spin out and sitting in the banks. My commute takes me over Bear Mountain from PIP to route 6 to route 17. Going up the mountain, traffic stopped because of a stopped minivan. I'm halfway up the hill and when we started moving, the car in front of me could not budge and moved to the shoulder. I tried to get going, and the traction control kept engaging(i hate the clicking sound). Didn't floor it, and babied the gas and started inching up. The road was covered with snow, but even without snow tires, I made it up the mountain. I was sweating like crazy. I was very very lucky. I feel for all those folks that got stuck on the hill. I'm definitely going to disable the traction control when it snows from now on. Thought it was all over, but the storm caught us all by surprise. I miss my SUV on days like this. However, the Prius C is very capable. Whew~~~~~~~