I got snowed in at work one sunday evening. The car was on nearly dry pavement. Unfortunaley there was a 6 foot drift in front and a 3-4 foot one behind. What was my fault was that I tried to batter my way through the one in back. Might have worked with a front wheel drive, but I was driving a '62 Pontiac Tempest, with transaxel and drive wheels in the rear. Resulted, somehow, in a broken distributor cap. Dad came and rescused me, even though I was no longer living at home. He walked in from the arterial street, then took me to the parts store after we figured out the problem. The Tempest was really a pretty good snow car. It was about the size of a Corvair, and used it's transaxel, but had 15" fairly skinny tires, like a VW Bug. It could easily break out onto the arterial street after the snow plow had cleared it, but before they had come back and removed the blocking pile of packed snow from the side street. The Bug was good at that too, but could more easily get high centered.
Only been stuck once and that was in sand. I learned the trick later on how to never get stuck again. A lesson learned a tad too late.