Villan a 98 V70 should have ABS, in fact i'm very suprised it doesn't have TC.  If you have ABS no need to treat them as if they don't work!

Oh and for the record i drove into the back of someone today!  Did about £20 damage to my car but about 2 hours of HS BS, plus i have to go to a body shop to get it repaired!!!

I have a 1.2 Corsa and a Citroes Xsara Estate 2.0 HDi....

At the moment I much prefer the Corsa, it just gives a lots more feedback on the ice than than the Xsara, you can feel when you are going to slide.

Once of the guys at work has a BMW 320d, he has not been able to drive since the snow fell (he is a bit of a muppet for leaving his car on his drive as opposed to somehwere he knows he stands a chance of moving it).

Just take it easy but not too easy when the road is wet, nothing annoys me more than someone doing 15mph on a roads that has been treated and is a busy roads so there is no ice.....

Having just written off my old car I now have a 406 for my commute to and from work

Oh and I bought an old Landy on Friday - just have to wait an age to get it.  Be just my luck that when I finally do get it there will be bugger all snow in which to drive it

It's chaos out ther; some people need to learn how to drive and understand what the handbrake is for!!!!!

Not had any problme with ice or snow in my sh*tty litte leon!  drive with care; think ahead; unsettle the car (handbrake) when YOU want it to slide and then correct as required.

the number of people I see spinning wheels wildly trying to get up slight hills!

Took me just over 7 hours to get from Windsor to Oxford last night (usually takes 40 minutes).

Yes, the roads were snow covered and slippery, but the main problem was the a***holes in their BMWs trying to nail it everywhere and spinning out, and driving 3 feet behind the car in front and wondering why they didn't stop when they put their brakes on.

Front wheel drive and a big heavy diesel engine's what you need (not just for snow, but for towing boats too).

We are currently sat in a hotel room in Jasper, Canada, in the middle of a blizzard. We have the TV on and the presenters on Canadian and US news channels are genuinely laughing at the UK “cold snap”. What they are failing to mention is that hardly any cars in the UK would have winter tyres, our gritting services are a joke and we generally are not set up for any prolonged periods of cold as we don’t get them very often.

On the other side of that when we arrived in Calgary a week last Sunday it was -30°C. We picked up the hire car and I had never driven on the wrong side of the road or used an automatic before. We drove out into the unknown, straight on to the motorway, which was an experience. However, everyone has winter tyres, knows how to drive properly in the conditions, drives courteously, gives everyone else plenty of room and as yet we have not seen any incidents on the roads.

Last Sunday we drove a road called the “Columbia Icefields Parkway”. We passed a couple of glaciers, while at -20°C, climbed to 2100m and the hire car, with TCS, ABS and full auto did not struggle at all. We’ve had some ahem “fun” on some mountain passes with the hire car (in my head I am as good a driver as Sebastian Loeb - honest), all in the name of experimentation I should add. Everything and everyone just seems to cope over here as they are fully set up for it. Even the road grit over here seems to be a different sort. The lumps are bigger, almost stoney. It doesn’t so much melt the snow, although I guess it does to an extent, but more dig in under your tyre to give you grip. All in all we are loving driving over here when, to be honest, I was really nervous about it before we arrived.

 "Why doesn't Scotland grind to a halt when it snows? "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8418457.stm - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8418457.stm  

Then a few days later:

"Snow and ice cause major problems across Scotland"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8425837.stm - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8425837.stm

Fact is, ice and compacted snow are much more grippy at -20 than at 0 degrees, as they don't melt and become slippery when you drive over them. Our conditions are actually more difficult than many 'cold' countries.

Problem with modern cars (apart from auto boxes) is that so many are cursed with wide, high speed rated tyres, and a tyre with rubber hard enough to withstand 140mph is not going to grip on ice. That lesson was brought home to me years ago when I had two successive cars identical except that one had 175/70 SR rated tyres and the next was on 185/70 HR rated of the same make (just the next speed rating higher and one size wider). The difference was like night and day - the SR tyres would go most places, the HR's struggled to get up the slightest gradient.

When I lived in Germany, I had Q-rated winter tyres. Fantastic when it snowed, but no way i'd bother having them over here - the expense, the need to store the summer tyres somewhere, and the hassle of swapping them over and back again every year, when every other year I wouldn't even get to use them on snow...

That's our problem as a nation, it's questionable if it's worth investing in more anti-snow measures. Mind you, if you look at the loss to the UK economy of all those working days lost when people can't (or choose not to be able to) get to work, maybe it could make sense, but who should pay and how?

Yes, ice is definitely less slippery at -20.... urrr ok....

The conditions at home are no more difficult than anywhere else, just we arent geared up for them at all.