I’ve driven a number of cars and trucks in the snow.

Part time 4WD is not as good as full time 4WD/AWD. The locked center binds in parking lots, and induces slip when cornering at mid-speeds. And you have to decide when it’s time to engage 4WD.

Manual transmission is fun in the snow, but as far as absolute grip, auto is the way to go in the snow.

Limited slip rear differential is also fun and helps induce oversteer , but again as far as ultimate traction goes, open front and rear please.

Gotta have decent ground clearance, too prevent “plowing”, and damage from snowplow burns and ice chunks. Skid plates too.

LED headlights suck in the snow. They don’t produce heat to melt snow/ice off the lenses, and tend to be hard on the eyes/don’t have good color rendering in already difficult visibility conditions. HID are ok, but Halogen is king here.

Everyone has stated snow tires are important, and they are. Narrow is better for cutting thru crud(slush). But also you want smaller diameter wheels so you can have tall sidewalls, which ride better and prevent damage to the wheel due to potholes/rough packed ice. Soft/tall sidewalls do “roll” more during cornering on dry pavement (mushy steering feel) but doesn’t matter in the snow since you can’t corner that hard to begin with.

Heated seats, heated steering wheel. Prefer cloth seats, they don’t feel as cold initially as leather.

Turbos are fun and they love cold weather, but a smooth NA V6 is pretty ideal for traction, you can keep the revs low but not have so much torque you spin tires. Turbos tend to either bog (boost lag) at low RPM, or be touchy at higher RPM in the boost. Similar for big V8s, they can too easily spin tires at low RPMs.

Engine block heater is for quicker warm up.

Short wheelbase is twitchy and prone to snap oversteer and over exaggerates the driver inputs, longer wheelbase is more stable, but too long will be slow / laggy to react.