Everything’s so much the same now that many don’t know it was once different. And in some ways, the same — again. They also think they know about some things — because they’ve never been hip to contrary things.
For instance, what’s best in the snow?
Many people will say: all-wheel-drive!
How about skinny tires — and rear-wheel-drive?
If it sounds incongruous it’s probably because you’ve been told that the wider the tire, the more the traction — and that it is preferable to pull than push. There is some truth to both, but there is also something else. Wide tires do increase traction, when they have it. Which they don’t when they’re not in contact with the road. Which they’re not when they are riding on top of the snow that has covered the road. Then it won’t matter whether you’re being pulled (front-wheel-drive) or pushed (rear-wheel-drive) or even if both at the same time (AWD).
One of the most capable snow-day cars ever made was not FWD or AWD and did not have wide tires. In fact, it was because it had very skinny (and tall) tires and the weight of its engine mounted over the drive wheels (in the rear) that it was able to keep going in the snow when almost everything else was getting stuck.
That car was the old VW Beetle — as distinct from from the resurrected (and recently cancelled) new Beetle that was styled to look like the old one but that’s about all it had in common with it.
The old Beetle had a low-mounted “boxer” engine that drove the rear wheels and all four of its wheels were very skinny, very tall: 15×4.5 inches. These concentrated rather than spread out the weight of the Beetle, cutting through the snow to the pavement — and traction — below.
With snow tires mounted, a rear-engined Beetle was almost unstoppable.
And it was simple, which modern all-wheel-drive vehicles are not. The latter are also the victim of cross-purpose design in that on the one hand, they are designed to transmit the engine’s power (torque) to all four wheels, thereby increasing potential traction by using all four wheels to establish it. But — on the other hand — all four wheels are often very wide (8-9 inches is currently typical) and shod with tires chiefly meant to enhance traction on wet or dry pavement that are not particularly grippy in the snow and which often have little grip anyhow because they’re steamroller-wide and so ride on top of the snow.
Adding to the cross-purposes is that many modern AWD vehicles have not much ground clearance, a factor as important in the snow as being able to swim is in the water.
. . .
Here’s another one: Filling your car’s tires with nitrogen is a waste of gas (and money).
The idea — which has been sold to a lot of people — is that using pure nitrogen rather than just “air” to inflate a tire will keep the tire inflated at the correct pressure for longer because nitrogen molecules are larger than oxygen molecules and so the former gas is less likely to leak than the latter.
The non-reactive nitrogen is also said to enhance tire longevity.
But, the catch is that “air” is already nearly 80 percent . . . here it comes . . . nitrogen. So you’re paying extra for what you’ve already got, mostly. Secondly, while it is true that nitrogen is non-reactive, the oxygen the outside of your tires is exposed to isn’t. Besides which, most tires wear out long before they fall apart from oxidization. More here, if you’re interested.
So why do racers (real ones, on the track) and commercial airlines often use nitrogen to inflate tires? Because in those uses, minor variances in pressure (as little as half a pound per square inch) can mean a lot and nitrogen does have the potential to maintain air pressure more exactly and consistently. But your street car is not a race car — or a commercial airplane — and regularly checking the pressure is just as effective at maintaining the correct pressure.
It’s also free.
. . .
Electric cars are not “the future.” They are the past, rebooted.
The distant past.
The first rechargeable battery-powered cars were produced back in the 1880s, decades before the first Model T Ford appeared in 1908. Studebaker — which was a carriage-maker — went on to build electric cars before giving up on that to focus on making better cars, the same as Ransom E. Olds, the man whose name became a brand of car sold by GM. Most famously, there was the Baker Electric Car company and the Detroit Electric; both were still being offered as recently as the 1920s.
They stopped being offered for the same reason it is necessary to force electric cars onto the “market” today:
Better alternatives were available.
The Model T cost much less and it could go much farther because it was not tethered to an electrical cord. Even if there were no gas stations wherever you were headed, you could carry a can of gas with you to assure you got there — and could get back. It is not easy to carry spare electricity with you, nor to walk a can of it back to your out-of-electricity car.
Today’s electric cars have lithium-ion rather than lead acid batteries and they can go farther than the electric cars of 100 years ago, but they are as “new” as vinyl LPs only no one is being pushed to buy vinyl LPs as the only way to listen to their favorite music.
Eric Peters lives in Virginia and enjoys driving cars and motorcycles. In the past, Eric worked as a car journalist for many prominent mainstream media outlets. Currently, he focuses his time writing auto history books, reviewing cars, and blogging about cars+ for his website EricPetersAutos.com.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
