You are still making a good choice by removing the summer tires for winter use, even if not going to a full blown winter tire. If I was in Detroit or even the center of Michigan, the amount of snow would be much less and you could probably be ok with all seasons in the winter. I will stick with full snow tires since the lake effect snow we get here can get really bad. I have only been stuck once in the snow, and that was a few days before my snow tires arrived and I was on the OE Goodyears that came on my 2000 ZX3. After switching to snow tires, I have not had any issues. I took my 2011 Fiesta into some really deep snow on 2-tracks at the Sno*Drift rally and had no problems. My friend did the same with his Focus ST on snowies. Ground clearence was more of an issue than anything else.
Takuarc, most of the off road was on highly packed sand/dirt, so not bad in terms of rocks. If it was gravel, things would have been bad. We did some filming on a gravel road, but speeds were really slow for that part. I wanted to install my mud flaps to protect the car, but marketing says no modifications.
