View Single Post
      08-09-2017, 02:51 PM   #19
AtlasM
Captain
AtlasM's Avatar
United_States
285
Rep
615
Posts

Drives: '11 E92 335xi 6MT
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Rockville, MD

iTrader: (0)

Garage List
The advantage the Impreza has over most of the other cars you listed is it has a real center LSD with a starting 50/50 torque split and varies torque front to rear as needed, while the others are more "on demand" type awd systems that are fwd and send power to the rears when needed. Some are better than others at predicting when to send power to the rear. When you get in deeper snow, that center diff helps keep both the front and rear wheels churning.

I know this from experience when I had a Mazdaspeed 6 with a similar on-demand awd system. Even though that car also has a rear LSD, because there's no center differential and it's up to the computer to decide if/when to send power to the rear wheels, awd systems like this aren't as good at pushing thru deep snow.

My wife drives a 2016 Impreza and it's great in the snow, now that it has proper tires on it. She wasn't interested in the Crosstrek because she didn't like the higher ride height and tacked on black plastic body cladding.

The one big knock against the Impreza is the tires Subaru equips it with from the factory tend to be garbage in the snow. Which is frustrating when "this car is good in the snow" is central to Subaru's marketing. We drove my wife's car in the snow with the stock garbage Yokohama S34D tires and with 150 hp and a CVT it would step the back end out with giving it even a little bit of gas in turns. They were awful so we decided to ditch them. The truckier tires that come stock on the Crosstrek tend to be more acceptable in winter conditions.

Even though I have summer & winter sets of wheels & tires for my 335xi, and I told her I'd swap summer & winter wheels on her car for her, she didn't want to have another set of wheels & tires taking up space in the garage, so we replaced the stock tires with BFGoodrich g-Force Comp-2 A/S which are a sporty all-season tire with good winter test ratings. Huge improvement in all conditions including snow. They cost about $400 and I sold the shitty stock tires for $150 on craigslist.

Winter tires would of course be better, but this will do the trick since I couldn't sell her on them. So if you go for the Impreza, be prepared to get winter tires, or at least replace the shit factory all-seasons for something better in snow.
Appreciate 0