I was actually looking at one of those Diamond Star 4WD cars back then, just exactly for that purpose, Winter fun!
The socks worked great. It was just enough traction to be faster, yet easily driftable. They seem to have held up better than I would have expected, no noticable wear. Didn't try the denim.
I'm thinking it would be nice to find some kind of elastic tube that we could cut into 1.5 inch wide sections that would just tightly fit right over the tire and stay on without glue. Maybe just a smaller kids sock would work.