I will not suggest a good winter car except to tell you what I saw. Some years ago, in my first job out of university, a number of my equally-young (male) colleagues drove F-Body Camaros (but not the Firebird that I remember) in the summer, and then put them away and drove beaters (usually FWD GM compact cars) in the winter. I don't remember if their winter beaters had winter tires.
If you are really concerned about winter traction, the number one priority is to get a full set (4) of winter tires on steel rims, which you store in the summer and then just swap on in late-November or early-December (I don't know where you live and drive). With winter tires, you really do not need AWD or 4WD, even if you drive a RWD car.
What enthusiasts here (Southern Ontario, Canada) say is that AWD gets you nothing except deeper in the ditch. Yes, AWD may give you more traction to get going on snow and ice, but that is really a false sense of security. The extra traction that AWD gives you with your foot on the throttle makes you think that you are invincible, so you drive faster. But AWD does not help at all when you are braking, when all cars -- 2WD, FWD, RWD, AWD, 4WD -- are effectively and equally 0WD (zero- or no-wheel drive); when you are braking, you still want maximum traction and the only traction you will have are the 4 spots of rubber on the road.
If the 4 spots are hard, bald rubber (such as summer performance tires or worn tires), you have very little traction, but if the 4 spots are soft rubber with a lot of sipes to clear away water (winter tires), you have much better traction.
All rubber tires harden as the temperature drops. The magic temperature is said to be about 7deg Celsius (45deg F). That is the temperature that they tell us all-season tire rubber becomes too hard to provide optimum traction; but winter tires, with softer rubber, still provide good traction below that temperature (but are really too soft for good handling at higher temperatures).
All of that said, call me a hypocrite, for not using winter tires myself. I drive on Michelin all-season tires on my ESh all year-round. In the winter, I leave extra room and try not to rush through intersections, lest I spin the tires and go nowhere fast. I know how my car behaves in summer and winter, and have had no problems.
One final word... When I learned to drive, everybody drove big, RWD American iron (yes, many people had switched to smaller, FWD cars and all-season tires by the time I was out of university). Come the winter, we put snow tires (not the high-tech winter tires of today, but the chunky, clunky snow tires) on the rear axle only. We drove fine. If our car had a bit of a light rear end, we would put bags of sand or kitty litter in the trunk to weigh it down. The kitty litter helped also if we got stuck -- we just spread some underneath the rear tires.
