Practical vehicles for tricky surfaces

[mtbc]

Someday I shall return to the US and probably will again have to plan for harsh winters. In Ohio we bought vehicles accordingly. For example, each winter I would have severe snow tires put on my AWD car. More excellently, our first-generation Mazda MPV had high ground clearance, 2WD / 4WD switching under manual control and I could also manually lock the center differential. On the back of one of the sun visors it had a chart of terrain types (swamp, sand, whatever) with recommended settings. Also, it had significant towing capacity.

In modern times it seems that vehicles that can handle difficult ground conditions are at the expensive end at the market, being flashy SUVs or pick-up trucks or the like. Also I do not want automatic mode switching, as the Honda Element at least had, because when I am driving on slippery roads I do not want the vehicle handling to change without warning. Have we lost the market segment of capable yet modest vehicles? Naturally I always seem to want features that usual search filters do not offer.

Comments

[goldibehr]

I don't know what your previous experience is, but mine is that today's combination of anti-lock brakes and 4WD-on-demand is very good, plus the technology is mature.

These features are available on cross-over and small SUV in the $25K-30K price point. At least here in NJ, these have removed the necessity for changing over to snow tires.

[mtbc]

Thanks, that's encouraging actually: maybe SUVs got cheaper. As I recall even a decade ago something not-exciting like a Ford Five Hundred cost not far off $25k!