A lot has to do do with driving technique, there are lots of drivers who never had much experience in snow over recent years.

My wife never missed a days work and had DSG without winter tyres. Best option if you are spinning wheels is to turn off ESP and drive gently in manual mode.

I never had any probs even with my rear wheel drive auto with winter tyres.

Winter tyres are the key. You literally can't get on our drive with swmbo car running on 205 55 16 summer tyres due to the incline of the drive and the stupid bint who parks opposite so you have to use an awkward angle and have no run up.

That's a manual too whereas I can slowly creep up in mine with no loss of grip. I run winters on mine. I wouldn't even consider using a dsg with 18inch summer tyres! Needless to say mine gets tucked up in garage whilst the bora has to sit over the road until muggins here has cleared and gritted :-)

Our Sport had no problems last year, and on summer rubber.

As for the mk1 oct'y, nothing stopped it.

As long as you take your time and be gentile with your imputes.

What was fun, was trying to drive round in a fully loaded Artic

I had my DSG for the first time in the snow last year, and struggled, until I worked out how to drive it!!!!

trying to set off (non winter tyres) I just had tyre spin, and struggled gettting up hills.

I realised, all I needed to do was put it in D, and let the car do the rest. Once it got its own momentum it was fine.

Do not really want to put winter tyres on, would prefer to stay at home!!!!!!

I've got no option but to get in, don't get in, don't get paid.

I can't afford to lose >£100 per day.

I agree with wantaskoda. The caar will drive itself steadily. I got out OK last year, and only had one hesitation while driving on summer tyres. But I had to push and dig out several people who just tried to rev up their engine and span themselves into depressions from which they could not extract tehmselves. That included one taxi driver whose only digging implement was a window scraper!

We are all bound to have different experiences in snow due to different driving abilities, different tyres, different roads, different amounts of snow and ice and the actions of other drivers.

All things equal the very fact a manual provides more control on how the car is driven should mean it is more able.

Saying that a manual car being driven by someone with little ability on worn summer tyres on compact snow has no chance versus an experienced driver in an auto on winter tyres.