We’ve enjoyed many miles in the X-Bow this year – in the popular feature One Vision we explored five different ways of delivering driving thrills and of course our Silverstone Track Test where it set one of the quickest times of the year around the GP circuit. Its virtues are many, from its lightness of touch to the precision of its controls, but one thing we’ve never felt compelled to praise the X-Bow for is its comfort in cold weather.
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“Tell us about your favourite car for winter fun and perhaps share a few exploits that you’re not so proud of”
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When I was a lad I always used to pray for snow on a Sunday so I could ‘make use’ of a few deserted office car parks. One such foray resulted in a very near-miss with my Mini and a rubbish skip. I also managed to get a Nissan Terrano stuck in snow in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere, again due to some rather ambitious driving. I don’t go out in the snow now…
When I was a lad I always used to pray for snow on a Sunday so I could ‘make use’ of a few deserted office car parks. One such foray resulted in a very near-miss with my Mini and a rubbish skip. I also managed to get a Nissan Terrano stuck in snow in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere, again due to some rather ambitious driving. I don’t go out in the snow now…
I’ve had a few interesting experiences, the most recent of which was in my old Volvo V70 T5. Old-school laggy turbo’d power delivery matched with lethally slippy roads made for an absolutely petrifying drive home one snowy morning, and let to me christening the car the ‘DitchFinder General’. Driving it in anything vaguely approaching a straight line was extraordinarily difficult, but extremely entertaining in retrospect!
One other that springs to mind is a drive home across the backroads in my old E30 BMW. I was having great fun gently drifting around the corners of a road I knew very well when I rounded one corner and found a truck heading towards me on the wrong side (i.e. my side!) of the road. He’d had a large understeer moment at the previous corner, and I had a near follow-through moment as I fought to get my car out of his path. I ended up parking almost in the hedge in a handy gap in the verge to get out of his way, with my heart rate somewhere in the stratosphere. I had to sit there for 10 minutes to calm down before I felt fit to drive again!
I’ve had a few interesting experiences, the most recent of which was in my old Volvo V70 T5. Old-school laggy turbo’d power delivery matched with lethally slippy roads made for an absolutely petrifying drive home one snowy morning, and let to me christening the car the ‘DitchFinder General’. Driving it in anything vaguely approaching a straight line was extraordinarily difficult, but extremely entertaining in retrospect!
One other that springs to mind is a drive home across the backroads in my old E30 BMW. I was having great fun gently drifting around the corners of a road I knew very well when I rounded one corner and found a truck heading towards me on the wrong side (i.e. my side!) of the road. He’d had a large understeer moment at the previous corner, and I had a near follow-through moment as I fought to get my car out of his path. I ended up parking almost in the hedge in a handy gap in the verge to get out of his way, with my heart rate somewhere in the stratosphere. I had to sit there for 10 minutes to calm down before I felt fit to drive again!