There are some cars we expect to be great for winter driving. The old Quattro-equipped Audis were certainly great in the snow, as were the late 1980s and 1990s Subarus, for obvious reasons. Late ’80s and ’90s Jeep Cherokees also offered surefooted driving, even if their body panels were not fond of whatever your state was spraying on the roads, as were the old CJ Jeeps. For a while it certainly seemed that AMC wanted to corner the market on winter vehicles with its lineup of what would be called crossovers today, at least until French cars started rolling out of Kenosha. But the AMC Eagles still ruled the roads for a long time thereafter until their body panels had also succumbed to salt.
The hit parade of capable winter cars from the recent past also included small four-wheel-drive cars of all sorts, including some now-obscure ones. Remember when Mitsubishi offered the…