Driving a BMW Rear Wheel Drive in the Winter Snow and Ice

How come the world’s best car is rubbish, dangerous and useless when a bit of snow and ice appears?

This article explores some of the reality of BMW winter driving, looks at reasons for their poor performance, and considers the solutions.

It is written from a UK perspective where we have occasional snow, winter tyres are an unfamiliar concept and the four wheel drive BMW is a rarity rather than the norm.

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First of all, a couple of experiences of the lunacy that a BMW on ice represents.

My neighbour attempts to drive to the shops in her BMW One Series.

She gets stuck on the camber of the road with the car sliding all over the place. It is going sideways rather than forward, and cannot get over the massive incline that a normal road camber suddenly represents.

She gives up, car is in the middle of the road, and asks me for help. I am confident - I am an experienced (and rather good in my opinion) driver, and she is a woman. I don’t say that of course.

I don’t drive a rear wheel drive.

After five or ten minutes of gently trying to persuade this piece of utter crap on wheels to navigate the icy road I give up. I reverse it into a passable imitation of a deliberate piece of parking – it’s off to the side of the road, no longer blocking it – and there is no hope of driving it anywhere or putting it back on her drive.

When I use my front wheel drive Toyota, no problem at all. Any skidding is purely for fun – I love doing handbrake turns when the roads are iced up. Yeah OK, I’m just a big kid – but when no ones about, and the roads are sheet ice – it’s an opportunity to practice controlled idiocy.

A colleague of mine has driven about one million miles over thirty years.

If I were to point to what I would call an experienced driver, he would be it.

He has had a variety of company cars – one every three years for thirty years – and does thirty thousand odd miles a year.

Two years ago he got a BMW 3 series – good mileage, low CO2 and all round ticks the boxes for company taxation benefits.

He says he will never get a BMW again. In winter it is an absolute menace with loss of grip, a no goer in the ice and snow – he sees it as dangerous.

His company won’t stump up the extra money for winter tyres so he will suffer this car until it is time for the next model.

I can’t believe that BMW’s are rubbish cars. They are desired by many drivers, and they are great to drive.

So why do they turn into an object of ridicule over winter?

The BMW driver is the one parked up, or sliding across the road – while the theoretically crappy 1.1 Panda sails serenely along – unaffected by a bit of snow or ice.

One theory is that BMW drivers are badge obsessed morons, who don’t know how to drive properly. Well, OK, that’s a theory, but it doesn’t help much when you have gently tried to negotiate a road camber in the ice using years of driving experience.

Let’s ignore that and put it down to the opposite of badge obsession – badge jealousy.

The main problems are…

Rubber - the compound for summer tyres is effective down to about 7 degrees Celcius. Below that it hardens rapidly. The winter tyre silica rubber mix is optmised for lower temperatures.

Rear wheel drive – an eye opener for someone like me who drives a front wheel drive. I could not believe how much harder to control a spinning back wheel is compared to a spinning front wheel.

Weight distribution – the perfect 50/50 of the BMW’s is not as good as the engine over the front wheel drive arrangement for winter conditions.

Tyre width – there are complex (to me) arguments about grip distribution and the actions on snow. I’m not a physicist.

Run flat tyres – I am dubious about these anyway. They seem like a compromise to me, or maybe I’m just being old fashioned.

Performance – the BMW tends not to be a gentle car to drive, it is a power machine.

One of the key elements, and one that is hard to get round, is that in cold weather the rubber of the summer tyre hardens. It becomes naturally less grippy, at a time of year with leaves, wet, ice and snow when you need it most.

There are a few short cuts which might improve things, or might make your car even more dangerous.

These are purely down to you, and your experimentation.

Driving technique. All the old boring stuff about starting in second gear, being gentle, leaving lots of space, anticipation. All very well and good, but if the car cannot negotiate an icy camber on a road, it doesn’t really matter how skilled a driver you are.

Weight in the boot. Sandbags, cement, kerbstones – anything that gives a degree of extra weight over the rear wheels will probably help traction. At first I thought that would be a great idea until I read about weight distribution and the need to be able to steer as well as move forward!

If you overload the rear weight, you may compromise the steering at the other end.

Deflate the tyres slightly. It might help, but it is not an area I would want to get into. You buy a perfectly made balanced driving machine, and then fiddle about with it to persuade it to run ‘safely’ in winter conditions. I don’t believe this is a sensible or safe solution.

Wheel gloves. These are emergency, get you home, solutions for a bit of snow. They do not offer months of safe winter driving, they will last for a few miles that’s all.

I believe a set of winter tyres for a One series comes in at about one thousand pounds. That includes wheels as well, because they have different dimensions to the usual wheels.

Note. I'm not sure about the dimensions being different. It may be because they are run flats, see below.

At first glance that seems ridiculous, and of course it is, but then you get used to an amount of excessive pricing with BMW. It’s how they make their money.

Winter tyres would appear to be the right solution, although costly.

In Germany, they are required by law to change to winter tyres for several months. Overall the tyre wear is half as much as normal, because you change twice a year, so the total cost is not much more than just using one set of normal tyres.

There is no such law in the UK, and winter tyres are still a bit of a rarity. Unless you have been struggling with your BMW over the last couple of hard UK winters.

It might be possible to pick up a set of second hand winter tyres for your model, or to cut a more reasonable deal with a local garage.

In my opinion, having read as much information as I can bear on the subject, winter tyres are the only option to keep running through the bad winter periods.

Get rid of your BMW and buy something else. After the experience of winter driving this is an attractive idea. But it’s costly to change for something that should just work.

Buy a winter runabout – a secondhand front wheel drive anything – that works in bad conditions. In all seriousness, a piece of ‘crap’ like a 1.1 Fiat will out perform your Beemer. Five hundred pounds and up, plus road tax, insurance, and so on.

Don’t go anywhere. “I won’t be in today, I have a BMW” – a great excuse (not) for avoiding work and social engagements during the winter months.

A little bit more info on these.

Why do you have to buy steel wheels, steels, when it would seem all you need to do is swap the summer tyres with the winter ones and then back again?

It's because run flats are special. They 'might' come off and back on again perfectly well. Or they might not.

So the proper way to do it is to get a spare set of wheels with the winter tyres on, and swap the whole lot come spring or autumn.

The price these tyres are anyway who would want to risk having a few fail when it comes to putting them back on?

If you are stuck on an incline with loss of traction it ‘might’ be possible to gain extra traction by using the handbrake.

Apparently it is possible that one rear wheel can be slipping, while the other is not doing anything due to the slip differential (whatever that is).

By using the handbrake, gently!, it can slow down the spinning wheel and divert some power towards the non moving wheel.

In theory this might enable both rear wheels to put some effort in.

I haven’t tried this, it sounds a bit ‘rally’ style to me, but I am prepared to be very impressed if someone masters it.

A lot of cat litter was sold last year. And salt.

Buy now while stocks last.

The cat litter is not for use inside your car if you are, er, stuck without a toilet – it’s for scattering under the rear drive wheels to get some quick grip and get moving.

I’ll add to this list when I get stuck and remember the things I should have brought with me.

Winter coat, drinks, something to wee in, torch, charged phone, keep that fuel topped up, and so on.

For overseas visitors.

The UK doesn’t normally get a lot of snow.

We are unable to deal with it.

One inch is enough to cause absolute traffic chaos.

I believe we had two whole inches a while back and drivers were stuck in their cars for twelve hours overnight.

That's probably why the Ancient Britons built Stickhenge....

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