I may have an opportunity to get my hands on a 2003 M45 to replace my G20 this summer. I absolutely fell in love with the car after taking one for a drive once, but living in New England having an RWD car is a concern. Has anyone had any experience in winter weather with an M45 and if so how did it do? I'm confident that I could keep control of an RWD car in snow, but my sister may need to drive the car occasionally and I don't want something that she would crash within 30 seconds in snow.

Edit: Also, what kind of gas mileage are Y34 owners getting? I'm not expecting the 26mpg city I get out of my G20, but I don't want to be driving a gas guzzler....
Modified by MattB at 8:28 PM 11/9/2005

MattB wrote:I may have an opportunity to get my hands on a 2003 M45 to replace my G20 this summer. I absolutely fell in love with the car after taking one for a drive once, but living in New England having an RWD car is a concern. Has anyone had any experience in winter weather with an M45 and if so how did it do? I'm confident that I could keep control of an RWD car in snow, but my sister may need to drive the car occasionally and I don't want something that she would crash within 30 seconds in snow.

Edit: Also, what kind of gas mileage are Y34 owners getting? I'm not expecting the 26mpg city I get out of my G20, but I don't want to be driving a gas guzzler....

The 2003 M45 has lots of power and any RWD car with lots of power is going to have difficulty with snow unless you get good snow tires. Then the M45 is not going to be any worse than any other RWD car! I wouldn't hesitate to drive my M45 in snow - with snow tires.

I average 16 to 17mpg, sometimes 18mpg, every month. With a combination of 65 to 70 percent highway driving, although some of that is in rush-hour, stop-n-go traffic.

Note that I have posted an interesting speed-vs-mpg rate for my M45 some time back ... please do a search for that thread! Will give you a good idea for the possibilities.

Z

Can I make do with good all-season performance tires? I'd prefer not to be paying for mounting and balancing a couple times a year...

MattB wrote:Can I make do with good all-season performance tires? I'd prefer not to be paying for mounting and balancing a couple times a year...

I'd be very hesitant. Most all-season (even the good performance ones) tires tend to still do pretty badly in snow, unfortunately.

An approach to avoid the multiple mounts/dismounts per year would be to get some cheap steel wheels and a set of snow tires for those. Then it is a simple matter of just changing the wheels out. That is how I used to manage when I lived in Boston, MA and Salem/Derry, NH!

Z

Another thing I noticed is that tire prices for this car are insane...$200 per tire is a lot of money.

You can get a set of 16in wheels from something and use thoes on the M with dedicated winter tires..

I used an all season tire that is a little closer to a winter tire than a performance tire, and i never got stuck but it wasnt really awe inspiring to drive..

elwesso wrote:You can get a set of 16in wheels from something and use thoes on the M with dedicated winter tires..

Just be careful about the wheel offset ... the new M is somewhat unusual. See the stickies I have in this forum for more info.

Z

MattB wrote:Can I make do with good all-season performance tires?

People need to learn that "all season" is a tire maker's euphemism for "compromised summer tire that is the wrong tread and rubber compound to be a decent winter tire."

If tire mounting is going to bust your budget (usually you get winter wheels for those tires), you need to find a cheaper car or get a dog sled team.

maxnix wrote:People need to learn that "all season" is a tire maker's euphemism for "compromised summer tire that is the wrong tread and rubber compound to be a decent winter tire."

If tire mounting is going to bust your budget (usually you get winter wheels for those tires), you need to find a cheaper car or get a dog sled team.

It's not going to bust my budget so much as that I would prefer not to bother with it. Paying extra for anything is bad.