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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Used car with front wheel drive, preferably traction control, put Blizzaks on all four wheels and you’ll do OK in snow unless you insist on driving on unplowed roads.

There are a wide range of cars I would consider. Say a Toyota Camry or a Honda Accord or a Nissan Altima. Lately I have been partial to Buicks. An old Nissan Leaf with a shot battery can still go 70 miles which makes it a great second or third car in a household.

Cars from the 1996 model year forward are basically modern because they support the OBD II diagnostic standard and also the database for parts was rationalized around then. My son has a 1996 Buick and there is no problem getting parts, we considered up to about 2010 when we were looking.

See the thread about his car here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39035535

Recent used cars are crazy expensive now so it not so daunting to expect some repairs on an older car, be creative looking for one that fits your needs.

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My son has a 1996 Buick and there is no problem getting parts

Hopefully the airbag in the steering wheel is not integrated with the horn in a vinyl housing.

The vinyl shrinks with age, and eventually to the point where there is sufficient pressure to continuously honk the horn.

When that happened to the 1997 Le Sabre I bought for my kid, the options were disconnecting the horn or replacing the airbag. The replacement options were NOS at around $1600 and around $800 for salvage.

Parts online not including labor, the colors were the last ones anyone would choose (non matching of course) and there was no guarantee the vinyl hadn’t shrunk to a similar point.

Eventually we bought him a Tacoma. I thought I gamed the system. I didnt.

Hopefully your mileage will vary.

That's a weird issue I hadn't heard of before.

Wouldn't a simpler and cheaper solution be to run an extra circuit to the horn? You'd then honk it by pressing a new button (or use an unused one) in the dashboard.

The difficulty mainly depends on how hard it is to get a pair of wires from the horn across the firewall into the dashboard. On some cars this would take no more than an hour in total.

After I got the horn disconnected so the neighbors would stop hearing it and so the car could be driven…that’s the theory this dad had, too.

The thinking about it reality was horn current is switched through relays, there aren’t obvious places to mount the new in-cabin portion of the horn, there aren’t well considered off the shelf options for the horn triggering system, and the horn is a critical safety system.

And I didn't have a garage; never wrenched as a vocation nor much as a hobby; and my most motörhead friend lived in another state.

Keep in mind the center of the steering wheel is designed to explode in an accident so hard objects attached to it will missile around the cabin if the airbag triggers.

The dash was a lot of curved soft surfaces covering ducts and wires were it wasn’t instruments and controls.

Cars ain’t what they used to be.

I looked up the interior of a 1997 LaSabre, there's plenty of places to add a new button.

I don't think (but I may be wrong) that US law stipulates that the horn must be operated via the steering wheel, and modifying it is trickier for the reasons you mention.

You could have a custom horn via a pull chain, see e.g. [1].

Anyway, this was clearly ages ago. I only chimed in to note that there's often non-OEM fixes for car troubles that are much cheaper, and will pass inspections.

If all you need is a functional horn you can get a working one at a junkyard. Then all you need is to mount it somewhere, a 12V power supply, and a switch.

Even if you can't do any of this yourself paying a mechanic to do it would be a small fraction of the $1600 you noted, which presumably was a full steering wheel replacement (airbag and all).

1. https://www.lalightbars.co.uk/hadley-air-horn-pull-chain-kit...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1sM29zGxeo

> Used car with front wheel drive, preferably traction control, put Blizzaks on all four wheels and you’ll do OK in snow unless you insist on driving on unplowed roads.

There's more to cars in snowy climate than driving. OP clearly wants AWD, why tell him he doesn't really want it? As someone who's lived North most of their life, AWD is clearly a big advantage both for driving and for getting unstuck.

Have you never been snowed in by a snow plow and have to spend an hour trying to get out of a snow bank because your stupid front wheels won't grip? And then they finally grip but you drive a bit too far and you get over another snow bank and the front wheels are now lifted, losing all chances of getting out without spending another hour digging?

So in the end you arrive to work 2 hours late and with wet clothes from all the sweat and snow that got in while you fell repeatedly pushing your car?

No I haven’t but it sounds like you should carry kitty litter in your car.

During the part of my life when I lived in an intensely snowy climate, I never had a vehicle with four-wheel drive, and never had any issues. Four-wheel drive is a crutch to get you into situations your brakes can't get you out of.

I’ve had all kinds of problems in the snow but I’m a New Yorker so I cope. I dig other people out more often than get stuck myself.

The AWD vehicle has a more complex drivetrain, will be more expensive to maintain and probably get worse gas mileage. Friends of mine swear by Subaru but I think they are crazy. If I wanted AWD I think I’d look for a small SUV like a Ford Escape.

I'm from WNY, I was forged in the snow. Nearly every problem people have driving in snow is a skill issue, the rest is hills.

Subaru does do a very good job with the symmetrical AWD, letting you feel overconfident and forget that you have awful braking traction.

I really would highly recommend Infiniti's AWD options.

I took my G37x to just shy of 300,000 miles with no major issues, and it wouldn’t get stuck until the snow was above its bumpers.

That's like the Buick strategy.

I don't think I'd ever get one of the premium brand cars new (e.g. Acura, Lexus, Mercury, etc.) but the premium you pay for a premium brand is a lot less in a used car than a new car. Also an older premium car is going to more technically up to date than an older entry level car.

I’ve never bought a car new.

I usually buy 2 ish maybe 3 years old, with <30,000 miles but I’ll probably go a little higher the next time I purchase.

When I bought the Infiniti though, my desired specs were based on price (I paid $18k when I bought my 2013 Infiniti g37x in 2015).

Having awd, and above 300hp. My unexpected expenses have been wheel bearing replacements. But aside from that nothing major.

My next car purchase is a convertible probably a bmw m6, or a Mercedes amg 63 s.

I can’t get over knowing however that both of those are bad choices in cars to buy.

So instead I’ll probably buy something with less hp, awd, convertible, and higher reliability/cost to own. If it exists.

Subarus have head gasket problems and in the community of Subaru owners it's just a given that you're going to replace gaskets pretty often.

Yup, same here. I delivered pizzas in northern Ontario for 3 years while in school. During snowstorms it seemed quite a few people would decide to stay home ... and order a pizza. I carried about a dozen+ bricks with me that I would jam under the wheels of my front wheel drive whenever I got stuck, often several times per storm. Fun times fondly remembered.

I'm glad snow tires and traction control have gotten so much better.

I used to crash my FWD Sienna into snowdrifts next to stuck vehicles, dig them free, then wobble my way out. Fond memories indeed!

That being said, I would not trade my AWD Mazda 3. I've had to rock it once so far this season the morning after I plunged it into an unplowed slot during the last lake effect storm.

AWD isn't a necessity, but it sure feels like a cheat-code. No bricks, no kitty litter. I haven't had to exit my vehicle in the last years I've been driving it around upstate NY.

I drove a 2wd pickup for years in a mountain town and I did ok. But now I have 4wd and it's great. It's not necessarily a crutch, but it can become one if one isn't smart about how they drive.

Grew up in New England, on what passes for a major highway in those parts (i.e. still a 2-lane road with stop signs and unprotected turns, but a numbered route so it would get plowed regularly). We'd get plowed in 2-3 times per year. The way we dealt with it was that I'd wake up early with my dad and break out the snowblower and shovels, and we'd shovel the car & driveway before taking the car out. Driving straight over a snowbank strikes me as an exceptionally bad idea for multiple reasons, the most mild of them being having to push for an hour to get unstuck. The least mild would be successfully driving over the snowbank, then skidding out as you hit black ice on the other side, spinning into opposing traffic that didn't see you coming and also can't stop in time, getting hit, and dying.

The sibling comment that says "Four-wheel drive is a crutch to get you into situations your brakes can't get you out of" is right. It always seemed like the stuck & crashed vehicles on the side of the roads were 4WD and AWD - because their owners had a sense of invincibility that they felt exempted them from the need to take extra time and drive slowly and carefully in the snow.

It snows heavily but infrequently here. I love 4wd for when I have to get somewhere on unplowed roads. I'm a very cautious driver. It's also nice for to / from the ski lifts in sketchy weather.

> An old Nissan Leaf with a shot battery can still go 70 miles

My 2012 LEAF could only drive 35 city miles to a charge in winter when I sold it at 6 years old.

Nobody has ever said they’d consider a Nissan Altima unless they had no other options.

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