Firstly, snow tires make all the difference, even 4WD can't make up for poor traction from tires that can't grip.
On the flipside, my truck is RWD until kick it in to 4x4, and despite having snow tires, it's not as easy as I would of thought it would of been in 2WD, but it's just the physics, with the rear wheels driving the truck, not only is it lighter and having less weight over the wheels to help with traction, but it needs to push the front tires, and since the front tires aren't helping, they're literally just pushing against the deep snow, almost like a snow-plow effect (that's probably worse with the weight of the 4x4/front drive system, a truck that's 2WD only should do better). Put it in 4x4, and the truck just dominates the snow, but I can feel it when I stop and put it in 2WD...the rear tires basically sink more into the snow and it had a hard time moving, put it back into 4x4, and it just pulls itself out with ease.
Now, with FWD, I've had snow tires on the 626 and Mx-3, and they've gotten me through anything, and I would say that those cars in deep snow did better than the Xterra does in 2WD. With FWD, the weight is over the drive wheels, and they're up front; they dig into the deep snow and uses that to pull itself forward. The rear wheels just follow in the path that the front wheels make. The Escape, although it's AWD, is naturally FWD, and the rear wheels kick in only when the fronts lose traction (or you turn them on), but as far as I can tell, even in FWD-mode, it does an awesome job as well with ease.
The benefit with RWD, is the fun of power drifting and doing donuts
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)