Doc H

-13, all systems go. Very toasty cabin, very quickly, and snow/ice handling was exceptional (comparing to BMW AWD).

PlainsOil

It was drivable, but the suspension was locked in the fully down position. Obviously, you don't want to drive that around a snow-filled town.

Besides, on really snow-filled days, the Acura's SH-AWD is vastly superior to the Audi's quattro system.

TrueAt1stLight

I'm in field sales and drove over 600 miles this past week in my 2017 Prestige. Handled the weather like a champ although the crap washer fluid the dealer uses froze in the tank and the washer nozzles were useless. I was staying overnight in WI and the vehicle started without an issue at -24 below. A few weather-related notes: my standard steel suspension felt completely frozen the whole time and my Q7 rode extremely rough and choppy. Also the seats were literally frozen and took a long while to soften up even with the heaters on high. The HVAC kept up just fine, even when leaving home in Minneapolis and it was -29 below with -52 below windchill. I got fairly abysmal mileage at approx. 18 MPG avg down from 24-26 MPG avg. Overall, my vehicle performed as it always does in the Northern Midwest at approx. 50,000 miles per year.

MoInEd

I had this going in a separate thread. Here in Alberta our winters are long and streets often covered with snow and ice. All our vehicles have snow tires. Our 10 year old MDX with old snow tires works WAAAY better than our 2018 Q7 with new snow tires. The Acura's system is just superior to Audi and other similar cars; hands down.

PlainsOil

Yes, I followed your other thread closely. Having just put 130,000 miles on a 2013 MDX Advance (fully optioned) and a new 2018 Q7 (fully optioned) for a few months, I had many points of comparison I thought to put in that thread. I still might.

Just one quickie, in case Audi Product Development reads this forum (they should): If you're going to have a stylish, heavily canted rear window like the Q7, you need a much much much much more robust window heater and wiper than you have on the 2018 model. During snowy days like today in North Dakota, it's a complete joke. The rear window is 100% covered with snow, completely unaffected by the window heater or the ultra-wimpy wiper blade.

arU4ic

Sorry to hijack my own thread, I had an MDX too in 2011 - it was better in powder, I was pretty shocked, but not even close in the heavy, wet stuff, and the MDX got hung-up all the time. But the real difference was on the highway - the quattro killed it on bad roads at highway speeds, always felt more secure in our Q.

arU4ic

Word.