Everyone had warned me that I didn't want a rear wheel drive car for winter driving, so when the first decent snowstorm hit Rhode Island, I decided it was time to see what they were talking about. I grabbed the camera, jumped into my 1991 5-Series BMW (without ASC!) on Pirelli P6000 All-Season tires, and headed for the snow.

Since this is my first rear wheel driver car, I had a lot of learning to do. Following my friend Josh's lead, I went to a deserted parking lot with about six inches of snow. This was a mistake. The parking lot had a very slight incline, but it was enough to render my car immobile. After kicking some snow away from the rear tires, I was able to back out of the lot (downhill).

Lesson 1: The fiver gets stuck in deep snow, especially on inclines.

Next I found a lot that had been recently plowed. This lot had about a 1/4" layer of snow and ice. As a bonus, it was enormous, lit, and totally without cars or poles. This was the environment the fiver needed.

The thin layer of snow was sufficient to allow me to easily lose traction by applying the throttle. After a little practice, it became easy to detect an oncoming loss of traction and control the spin and recovery.

Once I became familiar with the car's behavior, we put out a cone to work on improving control (see movie). If you are looking for winter driving amusement, it doesn't get any better than this (well, maybe ice racing). Since we only had one cone with us, I had to satisfy myself with trying to keep the cone about a foot away from my front driver side wheel while doing as many 360 degree turns as possible. The picture shows an early attempt where the cone didn't fare so well. With another cone, we could have set up figure eights which would have involved more entries as well as turns in both directions.

Lesson 2: Avoid the situations the car can't handle and you should have nothing to worry about.

So what did I learn after a couple of hours in the snow? In controlled settings, I was able to find out that there were a few things my car simply could not do. In addition, I learned about the behavior of the car once traction is lost. Apart from the obvious benefit of knowing how to recover, this also helps me know how fast I should drive in a given snow situation, since I have an idea of how easy or difficult it will be to recover should I lose traction. Finally, by riding in my friend's M3, I learned that there is no substitute for winter tires and ASC+T.

So will I be buying Blizzaks tomorrow? Maybe if we end up having a bad winter. Do I wish I had ASC? Of course. And if anyone knows more about safely driving the older BMWs in the winter, I'd love to hear from you. But overall, I had fun and learned a little more about my car.