Snowfall affects vehicle choices in Canada and Northern States. Four wheel drive helps with traction during snow storms, because it makes driving easier for people who never had a lesson on how to drive on icy roads.
If snowplows were slower at clearing roads, more people would buy AWD and snow tires.
It also depends on the type of snow that falls too and if the roads are salted (In order to clear the roads) and if the snowplows were slower at clearing the roads the people can still decide to buy a Front Wheel or Rear Wheel Drive vehicle anyway and people can be educated on how to drive on icy roads when they take Drivers Ed. All Wheel Drive can be useless in the snow if the tires are completely bald or they are not all season tires.
If the Trans Canada Highway and Interstate freeways were never built (post WW2) then rougher roads would require stronger chassis with greater ground clearance. The downside is that greater ground-clearance also means greater weight, greater wind-resistance and greater fuel consumption.
It would also just lead to quality durable suspension being developed and offered as well with fully independent suspension would become commonplace and eventually smoother roads will emerge as the public would demand them.
Cab-overs are most valuable in cities with tiny parking spaces. Already, many parking slots are labelled "small car only." A cab-over pickup-ute still provides a high sight-line with a short parking silhouette.
The most places where Cab over Pickups would be valuable would be in certain European cities and Japan.
Why so many commenters are so anti-FWD is a mystery to me????
Granted, some rednecks will "drive RWD forever," but I always found RWD more difficult to drive on icy roads. My rear-engine VW Westfalia Camper Van was especially bad on ice.
The Coupe utilities that were in production for several years were always Rear Wheel Drive especially in Australia which still continued to buy them despite Compact Pickups increasingly cutting into their sales (Until all automotive production in Australia had ceased). Rear Wheel Drive vehicles can be driven more easily in such conditions with a suitable amount of weight above the rear wheels and suitable Snow and Ice Tires. Rear Wheel Drive is more suitable for Coupe utilities for hauling and towing.
My experience driving small FWD cars (Plymouth, VW, Honda and Toyota) is that driver skill is more important that the number of driven wheels. They are also easier to push out of snow-filled ditches.
As for un-balanced FWD pickups spinning their wheels in mid-air … learn how to load.
Maybe folding side-walls (ala. rear-engine VW pick-up truck) would encourage people to load heavy items closer to the centre of the wheel base. Another advantage of FWD pick-ups is the shorter lifting distance from the road to the cargo bed. With a double-hinged tail-gate, you might even be able to use it as a loading ramp for snowmobiles, motorcycles, SeaDoos, etc. If we continue thinking along those lines, we could even invent a double-floor cargo bed with the centre aisle as deep as the wheel hubs for heavy narrow cargo like construction materials and motorcycles, but a second set of removeable or hinged floorboards would provide a full-width cargo bed for lighter loads like furniture. Double floor boards also allow you to install shallow, lockable compartments ahead of and behind the rear wheels.
Small Cars would be easier to push out of ditches as they are naturally lighter than Larger Cars.
Any balancing problems regarding a Front Wheel Drive Coupe utility can be addressed by extending the vehicles wheelbase to a certain length making sure that a real majority of the load ends up in front of the rear wheels.
The foreseeable problems I can see with folding side walls would be can the vehicle with such a feature pass any and all Side Impact crash tests since no automaker would want such sidewalls in any such vehicles to give way in such a accident that can result in any load it's carrying getting loose and striking the vehicle that hit it resulting in possible serious injury and/or death of the occupants (For liability reasons).