Almost two years after buying my ratty Panda 4x4 (and spending more on it than I intended...), we've finally had some decent snow to test it.
Annoyingly, the cheap but effective winter tyres it came on are now about half-worn, so it wasn't quite as effective as I'd hoped, but it was still the fastest car in North Wales last Sunday....
Snow was only about 2" deep in the Midlands, so I ventured out to North Wales and one of my favourite spots - Lake Vyrnwy. When I got there, it was raining, but it was freezing rain, so it just made everything a bit more slippery. For those that know the area, the road from Vyrnwy to Bala is mostly single-track and gets quite high (over 500m at Cwm Hirnant). I was the first car over the pass and when I got down the other side, there were tell-tale tracks from someone else that had tried and failed to get up the hills. The silly little Fiat just shrugged it off and went (roughly) where I pointed it. There were a few sketchy sideways moments, not helped by big drops to the side of the road, but I'm here to tell the tale. Snow was deep enough in some places to be scraping the underside, so probably about 6"+
Doing doughnuts isn't easy though - as soon as the rear wheels get drive, it just catapults off in a straight line...
Annoyingly, the cheap but effective winter tyres it came on are now about half-worn, so it wasn't quite as effective as I'd hoped, but it was still the fastest car in North Wales last Sunday....
Snow was only about 2" deep in the Midlands, so I ventured out to North Wales and one of my favourite spots - Lake Vyrnwy. When I got there, it was raining, but it was freezing rain, so it just made everything a bit more slippery. For those that know the area, the road from Vyrnwy to Bala is mostly single-track and gets quite high (over 500m at Cwm Hirnant). I was the first car over the pass and when I got down the other side, there were tell-tale tracks from someone else that had tried and failed to get up the hills. The silly little Fiat just shrugged it off and went (roughly) where I pointed it. There were a few sketchy sideways moments, not helped by big drops to the side of the road, but I'm here to tell the tale. Snow was deep enough in some places to be scraping the underside, so probably about 6"+
Doing doughnuts isn't easy though - as soon as the rear wheels get drive, it just catapults off in a straight line...
