Snow Button?

haventrader, May 14, 6:05am
We're looking at a Toyota Wish as the everyday commute, and also the holiday-away car. Set my eyes on one, then saw another that has a "Snow" button on the dash. What's its purpose! I'm sure it does not mean you can take on a slippery, snowy mountain pass with the magic button depressed. We do enjoy the odd weekend away over winter in the snow, so anything to add to the winter experience would be great. cheers
andrea_w, May 14, 6:06am
<<----- Use the search feature on the left, you're definitely not the first to ask this
foxdonut, May 14, 6:15am
is it an auto!
ryans, May 14, 6:16am
It will mean your gearbox will take off in 2nd gear, rather than 1st, so you won't wheel spin.
saxman99, May 14, 6:18am
I had a car a while back with a winter button.From memory it avoided first gear entirely and moved to a short shifting program, in order to avoid putting through peak power and torque in an attempt to prevent the car from skidding on a slippery surface.Probably it would work quite well in conjunction with snow chains, ABS and traction control.
haventrader, May 14, 6:26am
Ah bugger, and there I thought it would convert it into a Range Rover. Enough said. Cheers
gunhand, May 14, 6:33am
I tried the "Snow" button outon our AWD van not that long ago when we had a few inches on the roads nicely packed.Didnt do nothin at all as I spun and almost hit the curb, And yes I checked my surroundings, and did it outside my house, checked for small children and rampet Snowmen. Plus loosing control is a fogiveable offence Im sure at 20kph.So lesson learnt was, no it dosnt turn into a snow mobiile at all.
kaymay88, May 14, 7:01am
if youre going to reply, why not actually be helpful!
what a dumb reply from you
andrea_w, May 14, 7:10am
Nice bit of hypocrasy there.you're telling me how useless my post is yet you posted that ONLY to have a pointless, trivial dig at me. My post was pointing the OP in a direction which would find the answer, I'm not really sure what your post was trying to achieve.!

How is that a "dumb reply" as you so quaintly put it!
The topic has been covered many times before, if the OP searched they could have found the answer faster than the time it took people to reply (the search feature is there for a very good reason). Also, people do get frustrated when they need to answer the same question over and over again. we aren't here to hold the OPs hand, a bit of common sense and doing a search BEFORE starting a thread can save a lot of time for everyone.

Next.
rob_man, May 14, 7:19am
x1
I pushed the snow button in my Honda and it only rained, maybe they only work in the northern hemisphere!
v8_mopar, May 14, 7:22am
yea thats telling them lol
zak1998, May 15, 3:06am
Good in wet weather at the lights or junction
alwaysnice, May 15, 6:56am
I'm thinking of installing a 'beer' button in my car.Will let you know if that works any better.
deviant.s, May 15, 7:23am
Air con! Haha
matarautrader, May 15, 7:39am
If you installed a MIL button would it eject her!
richardmayes, May 15, 8:46pm
I've taken a 3.6 tonne VW campervan over snowy, slippery mountain passes. You don't need some sort of mega 4WD SUV - or even a "snow" button.
klrider, May 16, 7:49pm
Thats right, people should be monitoring the threads 24/7 in case you have had a comment on a topic in the past, because they have no lives and can do that, and these are your boards so they have no right to ask questions anyway unless its OK with you, oops, apologies, did this without your permission, better be off to hammer my tongue with a hammer for being so presumptious.
richardmayes, May 16, 9:27pm
While it IS always worth searching for old discussions, and that is good advice, the downside with the "search" function on here is that now it only looks back through the last year's worth of posts.

So it's not always very helpful to someone who's posted a genuine question, when the reply is "just search". Or even, as we occasionally see, "Go away we've already discussed that, use the search function and stop being so lazy."

I see this on more serious car forums too, I've always found it strange that people who hang out on a car forum can be so resistant to an opportunity to talk about cars.

Out of curiosity I had a brief scan thru threads with the keyword "snow button" and the most enlightening thing was a thread about Nissan Stageas that had a heap of posts deleted.

Based on that it sounds like on *SOME* Jap imports, the snow button *MIGHT* be an electric front windscreen heater.

No idea if this applies to a Toyota Wish, sorry.(But judging by what type of car a Toyota Wish is, I think it's probably more likely to be something like this this, rather than any kind of high-tech traction control system with multiple settings for normal driving, snow etc.)

Anywayit looks like there is definitely a need for this new thread, to get to the bottom of this matter. So andrea and kaymay should probably kiss and make up now and stop ruining the discussion with unnecessary fights ;-)
andrea_w, May 16, 10:13pm
That's quite a rant. are you done!