My IS350's VDIM saved my butt about a year ago when it snowed the one time in Feb 2007. I started slowly from a red light and began to slide diagonally to the left towards a curb. Right when I was about to steer into it to save my rims, the dash began beeping at me and the computer took control of the wheel, which was pretty weird. It righted my car back into a straight line. It was amazing. I noticed the the AWD includes the VDIM. I got mine used with only 7700 miles and saved $8k, making the same price as a new 250 that I almost bought. In this economy, you probably can get lucky like I did 21 months before Wall Street blew up! By the way, Car & Driver did a test of AWD vs just good snow tires and the tires did as well. Go to their site and search for "snow tires" and there are two articles about this comparison.
