Car shopping soon...advice?

[OakLeaf]

I don't claim to be an excellent driver in bad conditions, but my DH definitely is, and he's all for the AWD.

It's obviously true that there are people who will look at any safety measure (helmets ...) as an excuse to drive or ride stupid. That doesn't mean that the feature won't make you safer if you drive/ride the same way you do without it. And I'm not even primarily talking about safety ... way before that, just the ability to get from point A to point B with your car pointing forward the whole time and not having to abandon it in the middle of your lane because it just. won't. climb the hill (btdt).

AWD just means that your engine's torque is distributed among four wheels instead of two, so the amount of torque being applied to change your vehicle's velocity is halved at any wheel, and the amount of traction available to distribute that torque over the road is doubled.

When it looked like we were going to have to stay here for the winter, the first thing DH suggested was trading the Prius for another Subaru. It's true the reason we didn't get a third 'Ru was the fuel mileage. We got 25 mpg overall, in mostly hilly rural driving which is pretty much the worst fuel consumer there is (accelerate to 60, drive two miles, stop at a stop sign or stop light, repeat). But when you can't even take the vehicle out because of the conditions ... sure you're saving fuel, but it's not doing you much good.


ETA: in our eight years of two 'Rus, we never had any unusual issues, and in fact my sister is still driving our first one. It passed 150,000 miles a couple of years ago IIRC.