i'm gonna toss a reminder out here. someone up the page a bit mentioned awd being more dangerous on ice.
do you all realize that you cannot drive a roadworthy car on just ice?
Dude that's a load of crap. How are people driving on ice roads daily (read: roads made on frozen lakes or sea)? Sure it's a bit slippery but with winter tires you get enough grip. Forget about summer tires though. I drive above the arctic circle regularly and roads there are frozen 100% solid. I'm making 60mph top speeds on them, sometimes even faster.
An AWD is superior in every way on winter conditions. Of course it won't make you corner any better (you'd have to be a retard to speed in a bend at winter anyway) but the sheer acceleration on ice/snow is what it's all about. When I was driving my rwd e-mercedes passing trucks was like this:
Turn on turning signal. Push gas moderately. See traction control flash while passing outside the drive track (usually snowy, mounds of ice). No acceleration basically, any more push on the gas results in wheel spin @ 50mph - too much push on the gas can actually lead to slowing down because ASR will really kick in. Not possible to accelerate much at all while turning steering even slightly, will attempt to slide despite ASR/ESP due to tires sliding sideways on tire grooves in ice. Takes an eternity to pass an 18-wheeler. Especially if oncoming traffic appears through the pitch dark DAY and powder snow the 18-wheeler pulls up.
With the Jeep it's like this:
Turn on turning signal. Smash the accelerator. Get almost summer level acceleration with a couple traction control light flashes, control limits on the engine power to stop the little wheel spin but the car still accelerates good. Pass confidently and rigorously. I can tell you that a 500 mile trip on pure snow/ice surface is about 80% more relaxing with AWD compared to the RWD.