The trick seems to be to keep the power on more than you would a 2wd car. In the 2wd, if the driven wheels start to spin when say climbing a hill, you tend to ease off and try and match the wheel speed to the road speed and regain traction, but in the quattro it seems better to actually ease on the throttle a bit more if you detect a loss of traction. It seems you need a certain amount of power - albeit small - to 'lock' the centre diff and lifting off a bit seems to defeat that but your mileage may vary.

Agreed: great for getting you going and keeping you moving: not so good at helping you stop, especially on packed snow/ice where you're changing direction…:(. That's when the laws of physics tend to get the better of technology, and a very heavy '8 will tend to go straight on when you want it to turn!

Overall, I'd say it's great as long as you use common sense and don't assume it makes you invincible.

Also agreed - the combination of quattro and winter tyres makes it more likely that you'll keep the laws of physics at bay!. I lost a (summer) tyre and alloy three years ago to a kerb on a bend in snow, which was what converted me to winters, not had a problem since then :o.

agree with Tintin, changing direction & breaking on dense snow/ice will disappoint you, it will slide around like any car. I came into my road which was packed snow (maybe ice underneath) from the main road which was salted and mostly clear. ESP off, some bad tyres, and instead of slowing really down I went into my road as usual, it held through the turn so I felt confident, but then I tried to straighten out, slid sideways, turned steering wheel the other way, kept sliding, but then as it slowed down to about 5mph it gripped and straightened out. Perhaps it slid a bit less than a front wheel drive car, but it felt a bit hairy, came close to some parked cars.