The atessa awd is an awesome system. No regrets here...

 

L-O-V-E

That's all I have for my X coupe! Saved me a couple of times in -20 Grand Forks.

 

Such as? I've not run into any trouble on mine, though my list of mods and potential mods is relatively short. The only thing I know of that isn't available for the X is the LSD (and I'm not convinced that couldn't be done). Beyond that, what am I missing?

Back to the OP's main question -- this car will give you scary confidence in inclement weather conditions. We've had a mild winter here in PA this past year but I did have mine out in the snow a few times with no problems to report. There was a fair amount of flooding around here last week from some heavy rains, the kind where half of your lane is submerged in ~2-4" of water, and again, no problems to report. I still get decent gas mileage from my car, averaging around 20mpg with a 60-40 mix of highway/city. As others have stated, about the only downside to the X is the automatic transmission, which does suffer from a bit of lag -- Nothing the paddle shifters & sport-mode can't cure though.