Had an interesting experience last night ... We own a 2011 BMW 328i Hardtop Convertible, which has a well deserved reputation for not being good to drive in snow ... My wife and I were attending a Lenten service at our Church and when we left home it was raining fairly hard ... the forecast called for 1 - 2 inches of snow overnight, so I figured it was fine to use the BMW as the Church is about 5 miles from home ... the Church service was barely 1 hour, but as we walked out we found that heavy snow had fallen and the flakes were so big and thick it looked like about 3 inches of snow on the ground ... As we traveled home the snow kept falling very heavily ... most of the ride was fine and fortunately a town plow was clearing the first hill I had to go up ... but when I came to where I had to turn into our development, he went straight ... the road into our development goes downhill quite a bit and then a sizeable uphill and obviously the town was taking care of main streets first ... I kept a steady pace going downhill and tried to maintain it on the uphill until the car started to slip ... another vehicle was coming behind me so I had to try to pull to the side and then I lost any traction I had ... I tried using the optional 'manual' shift in low gear but that did nothing ... fortunately, I was close to a side street that had an incline but not nearly as steep as the one I was on ... thinking about the fact that front wheel drive cars handle these conditions better than rear wheel - I believe it is the 'pulling rather than pushing' the vehicle that helps - I put the car in reverse, backed into the side street and drove in reverse until I got to level ground and could drive to our house ... I have to say that driving in reverse handled the snow better than driving forward ...