Woodsie0520

I have a 17 A4 Quattro and as far as I have been able to find out you can disable the ESP fully, at least in the Canadian market. When you push the button once it turns off the Traction Control, so you can spin the wheels freely to help you out of snow and ice, but the Stability Control stays on helping you stay in a straight line. There is a G sensor around the center of the vehicle that measures the angle of steering input with the direction of the vehicle to make sure you are not sliding sideways. When you hold the ESP button and it turns off that disables both the Traction Control and the Stability control allowing you to slide around and have lots of fun. Though with Audi there is a lot more weight in front of the front wheels which likes to promote under-steer a lot though it's still easy in loose conditions to get the car out of shape to have some fun.

IMYM

I think that is an indication on how good Calgary is at clearing up the roads than anything else. :-)

Most cars are effectively one-wheel drive if you understand how the car deliver power from the engine to the wheels. All you need to get a car stuck is a thin sheet of ice under one of the driving wheels. Before TC you just keep the gas on and the wheel spin will move you out of the slippery patch. With most TC it cuts power as soon as it detects wheel slip so your car aren't go anywhere. Quite often people who are new to TC don't know that you have to turn off TC in this kind of situation.

Wires

Typically we luck out with sunshine after a snow which tends to get rid of residual ice buildup.

I have been in a situation like you described with my 4wd truck though. It had a locking diff, but in 2wd (locked diff), you were screwed until 4wd was engaged. It pre-dated TC so no computer intervention.

bigHUN

At my club we have a nice big flat parking lot, one of the coldest day in February after a snowy night and just before the snowblowers arrived, nobody was around, it was almost like a foot thick heavy snow...I wanted to have some fun and I tried to make doughnuts with my quatro, no way...best I could purposely do was some larger pancakes but more looked like drifting sideways...perhaps I chose some pretty decent winter tires