I was running down I-90 in the left lane. Four lane highway in Wisconsin... two lanes in each directin. Sixty miles per hour... it's lightly snowing. Ha, I don't have those Dunlops everyone complains about in the Wheel and Tire Forum... I have Pirelli's... Pirelli's are great tires and I have trust in the company... I have trust in Quattro... I have trust in my driving skills. Other people are going faster than I am. But then I turn the wheel. I don't turn. Zero steering feel. No brake feel. Into neutral, handbrake, the tail turns out, handbrake down. I'm off the road down the grass embankment by the side of the road, into gear, floor it. I pull back up onto the road and smile at the patrol car at the top of the road. I give the cop a wave and he runs up to me, "Are you okay? How the hell did your car get back up here?"<p>"Fine. Recaros. Quattro. ..."<p>I looked over the car and it appears to be fine. Absolutely fine. Not a scratch on the System S front air dam, Rich Quinlan's skidpad helper piece worked though it's scraped up. The embankment was probably -20 or -25 degrees relative to the roadway. No punctured tires, my 17 inch rims look undamaged, the car is covered in mud and grass (hood looks like I'm guilty of a hit-and-run with Swamp Thing)... oil pan checks out... what else do I need to check out? Acceleration is good... braking is good... all of it feels normal. The System S bumper is 5 inches off the ground, and the overall ground clearance is that bumper cover minus some given amount of space. Is it possible that I clean off the car when I get back to Chicago and everything's okay...<p>Help me out here... what's going on? Am I missing something?<p>The good news is that it works. You're in deep trouble, put Quattro in gear and floor it. It'll get you out of even the dumbest situation in the middle of the night -- and amaze the local police.<p>Cameron

 

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When you say skidpad helper, you mean the little metal that hangs down under the lower control arm, just aft of the front tires?<p>I'm glad you're ok.... I had thought when I get my system S spoiler to take a big 'ol 3/8" sheet of aluminum and cutting it to fit the bottom of the spoiler, for just such an event.. the Carbon-fiber on my Abt unit has saved me several times!<p>Question, though: why did you pull the e-brake?<p>Rich Quinlan

 

I have Q myself, by the way. Lots of people with 4WD and AWD get the impression that they have lots more traction than they really do. The ability to climb hills, not get stuck, and get out of bad situations like Cameron did can give you the impression that you can also stay out of all kinds of trouble with superior braking and cornering. (With cornering including slalom-type maneuvers to avoid collisions). These types of activities are dependent on TIRES, not your drive system. That's why lots of people recommend real snow tires, even with Quattro, especially with Quattro, even. <p>This isn't a bash Cameron post. I would hope that he even agrees with the above. You really can't drive significantly faster, safely, in a Q-equipped car than non-Q, because of the stopping and turning problem.

 

I'd rather have the rear hit stuff if worse comes to worse... more metal in the "me and the tree equation" as Road & Track once put it.<p>Second, I was worried I wouldn't be able to pull around the corner at the base of the embankment if I had been facing downhill. As it was, I had a pretty straight climb for Quattro to deal with. Quattro doesn't guarantee that you can corner on icy slants at radical angles, but does a good job letting you go up hills in fairly straight lines. Seemed like facing back toward the road would be the right place to be, and wheel hard left with the handbrake pulled was a good way to do it.<p>In retrospect, I could have cornered to face back up and made it.<p>Cameron<br>

 

Ironically, this accident happened shortly before I was going to put on the 15-inchers with Blizzaks.<p>By the way, for a long time, I thought Blizzaks were Blizzerks. Between "blizzard" and "beserk"... if anyone out there is designing a snow tire, I thought that was a cool name until a couple years ago when I figured out it was "Blizzak".<p>Cameron<br>

 

I spun out a couple years ago in a freak April storm, jumped a curb, and quickly extricated myself. A few weeks later I had to replace the tires after failing to notice just how misaligned the front end had become.

 

The car doesn't pull. 40 miles per hour, let go of the steering wheel, zero pull to either side, it just sits in the middle of the lane. Tire pressures check out.<p>Where I left the road, the angle between the shoulder and the grassy embankment was sharp, but the shoulder was paved and in good shape, and the grassy embankment started no more than a centimeter off from the highway... no curb or anything to contact.<p>I'll get the alignment checked... but the car appears to be in perfect shape.<p>Cameron

 

I've slid STRAIGHT OFF the road with a Quattro due to overconfidence/carelessness in slippery conditions. All anyone has to do to feel the difference between FWD and Q in the dry is try your favorite bumpy/dippy sweeper in both back-to-back: the Q DEFINITELY STICKS longer than the FWD. The FWD runs out of ***** before you, you run out of ***** before the Q.

 

Cameron, remember a while back when I said you wouldn't own your A4 in 10 years.. this is why! (nt) ;-)