[brucepick]

Snow tires. Put four of them on any FWD diesel you happen to like. Take them off when snow season is over and you have a nice fuel-economical car again.

In snow, I usually end up passing most other cars on the road, and that was the case with my RWD Volvo as well as the FWD Civic if fitted with four snow tires. Most cars around here have "all seasons", and some of them are pretty worn. Not good; no wonder the owners think they need 4WD. Bunch of hoooie.

Any version of 4WD or AWD gives you a serious fuel economy hit, regardless of the weather.

My Michelin X-Ice4 2's did excellently on various kinds of ice and hardpack, like what you get in parking lots. Also they are Low Rolling Resistance so they didn't hurt my mpg as much as old-school snow tires. If you get more snow than ice, you might select some other kind of snow tire that's optimized for snow.

In any case - be sure to get the real thing, a tire model with the mountain and snowflake symbol. Those actually have to pass a performance standard to get the rating. The "M+S" = mud and snow rated tires are just rated based on the percent of open space in the tread. That's the best we had, many years ago.