The Defender drivetrain is excellent. No guff.
Its just that of the breed its one of the less capable ones in the snow. Theyre not unstable as you suggest I alluded (and actually did not) - far from it, theyre just not optimum for those conditions.
By unbalanced I mean symply mean different length driveshafts to every single wheel - in a powerful FWD car this starts to show up as torque steer. On a fourbie it means it is difficult to get an exactly balanced level of force to each corner of the car, so in conditions where finesse of balamce and grip is required you cant get optimum traction without resorting to electronics, something the defender lacks.
Of course, in mud, climbing, etc, where brute force traction is required thats not a consideration, but brute force and snow just have you digging yourself in.
Before I moved into SAR I was in our local 4x4 Response group, and on like for like tyres the two Foresters in the group ate everything in the snow. We did some digging, and the answer is the asymmetric drivetrain simply makes it particularly well suited to those sort of conditions, is all. Equal power to the wheels on each side, equal inetial forces through equal length driveshafts, none of this is really very surprising once one mulls the desiable characteristics for laying down power on a surface that alternates between unstable and low friction.
I'm sure youre Google works as well as mine if you wanted to read up on it.
In fact, if you want to hear guff then listen to people prattling on about how all conquering the series and defender are off road. They are very good, but theyre not peerless. The last pay and play I did at Whaddon before I sold my pickup one of the lads with a tricked out defender was giving it the large along these lines and making snidey comments about a standard land Cruiser that was present. Yet despite his best efforts to shake it off the Bruiser went everywhere the the expensively modded defender did, and made said defender driver look a bit silly.
Land Rover - great bits of kit, but they still put their trousers on one leg at a time. Sadly, Mrs D hates them, and ive been banned from owning any more of them, not even a Rangie CSK
Something to do with spending more time on the driveway than with her.