nate

My first drive in the snow this season!

Diztek

How'd she do?

nate

Well -- good, overall. I traded in a 2013 Focus and a 2009 4-door Jeep Rubicon on the S3. The Jeep was by far the best vehicle I've ever driven in the snow. Partly because it weighed so much and partly because it had 32" balloon tires, so if you did hit a curb, etc, there was really no issue unless you were going fast or sideways. It handled like a tractor but it was an unstoppable ice and snow machine.

Anyway, these are 18" Michelin X-Ice 3 tires, 225/40-18. I never had any issues getting going, acceleration is quite good even on ice with a little dusting of snow. Stopping depends on conditions, the S3 is not a very heavy vehicle but it was easy and controllable overall.

I have noticed that the S3 tends to oversteer on corners if you give it a little too much throttle for the conditions, or if you abruptly get off the throttle and tweak the brakes. This is a big difference from the last Audi I drove, a 2000 S4, which would always always always understeer in those situations. So that's something new to get used to, and I did oversteer and slide a bit. I'd rather have a little oversteer in those situations since you can then use the throttle to steer a bit and make corrections. Traction control is very good at doing its job as well.

Here's some dashcam video. The first one is 4-5" of powder on a dirt/gravel road, then merging onto the highway. It's probably 20 degrees out in each of these.


In this next one, at about 30 seconds I start to slide. Just a tiny bit of oversteer, but I also got off the throttle and messed around a bit before recovering:


And this one is just fun on the highway, with ****ty MSNBC telecast audio:

DennisMitchell

I used the X-Ice 3 tires last year. They worked well, but I really didn't drive in heavy snow that much.

What is up with the rugs/cardboard by front left tire? Loss of traction?

nate

No that's a sheet of ice that fell off when I opened the door.

Diztek

Thanks for the write up. I too would rather over steer. I'm coming from a b6 a4 and I've heard that Audi has made great strides in reducing the nose heaviness of their cars. I imagine this could be part of the reason why the s3 doesn't under steer like the s4. My s3 doesn't get here till February. It's killing me.

Diztek

did it feel like an awd car?

nate

Absolutely, you can feel all the wheels moving and get a 4-wheel drift going pretty easy on slick corners. Very fun.

Totally agree on the nose-heaviness helping. My 2000 S4 was *very* nose heavy for sure, and I think a lot of that weight was even in front of the front axle.

Timgo2003

That looks like an over the river and through the woods kind of trip, were you at Grandma's house?

Storm982

Where in Ohio are you Nate? I'm in the Akron area. We didn't get any snow yet but I put my winter setup on just in case after I got back from Orlando over the weekend.