Tires OEM Toyota or Barum
Mine is so great in the city, can whip a U-turn anywhere and gets 30-35 MPG no matter how you drive it. I am kind of sad you can't get cars like this anymore, but it is kind of hard to justify when something that's an order of magnitude more refined is only like $1500 more. But there is something fun about ripping around in something 153" long that only weighs 2300 lbs. It never needs brakes and doesn't eat up tires no matter how "spiritedly" I drive.
I drive a Prius and it handles fine in winter. Although it burns more fuel during winter because of the heating. Only thing I would strongly suggest is getting a quality set of winter tires. Only time it struggled was getting up that steep incline on King Edward after Rideau on glare ice..during rush hour. I still made it just fine while other gas powered cars were spinning their wheels.
I just bought a used VW and i had to put new tires on it already, someone at a dealer told me to go with the BARIUM Bravuris 2 (All Season tire) on mine 215/40/17" and with 10k+miles so far so good, very quiet, they seem to work better then most brands i know.
We've just been through the worst winter in many years and our matrix has done very well with the factory tires. If you're not going off road fwd is fine. The deepest unplowed snow I drove through was about 8 inches and I felt like that was pushing it.
I got about 23,000 miles out of this set of Barums. They have been a great tire.
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