Bloody weather; I was planning to drive from the South West to the East of England tonight.

Am I a fool? All this talk of "extreme" weather, 18hr road blockages, and scoobies being especially c-rap in the snow is making me nervous.

Should I:
a) go anyway, and try and avoid trouble
b) go tomorrow morning
c) cancel all together

What are my chances, chaps?

 

I wouldn't believe all this this old fanny about scoobies being crap in the snow. Its rubbish, there no worse than any other car. I've never driven any other performance cars in snowy conditions but I can't imagine that any of them are any good especially with 200+++bhp lots of torque and big fat summer tyres that turn the car into a sledge.

The bottom line is - how you drive the car and respecting your car, your own abilities and the conditions, any car will end up in the bushes if you drive like a mad man regardless of conditions.

I work with a guy who has a BMW 530 diesal automatic, rear wheel drive. If its snowing, forget it, he can't even get it out of his drive without getting it sideways.

Another mate of mine has a Seat Leon Cupra S and he has to take it easy in the wet, never mind snow. i.e Snow + front wheel drive + lots of power = cronic understeer.

These examples are not even 4 wheel drive???

I've driven in horendous snowy conditions on motorways in Germany with my scoob to a point when there are ruts in the snow, no road markings and with no probs

I bet if you looked on other auto BBS sites today, regardless of Marque, there would be as many people complaining about there cars being crap in the snow than there is on this site.

If a scooby driver stuffed his car into a bush on a summers day in dry conditions on a nice twisty A road, good tyres etc etc, you would never here about it, becuase its not supposed to happen - but it does.

QED

IMHO take no notice - I don't.

 

Dan - C) you'll regret it if you bin it..

 

agree with Mr Askew, if we had known there was black ice, SJ SKyline would not have taken the car out. We now do not have the car. Regardless of make and model, nothing is partiularly good in icy weather

 

(Hi Rich - how's it going, guv? Are you back with a scooby again?)

Ooh Crumbs.

Good point about scoobies being not much worse than other cars.

Also good points about regretting any resulting badness, though.

Bloody weather, I tells ya! I dunno what to do. Might set off and turn back if it gets ****e. I hate decisions. Well, I used to, now I'm not so sure.

 

Dan - oh yes indeedy quicker than the last one and since yesterday on 18's

 

Quicker!? Oh dear! [grin]* Does it also have that jet engine exhaust on it, or did you get fed up writing to the government asking for a higher decibel limit around your car?

Glad to hear you're back in a scoob!

* Don't know how to do smilies!

 

IMHO - Scoobies *are* crap in the snow because the ABS is shockingly bad and perhaps even dangerous! A decent ABS system should stop pulsing as you get below a certain speed as the car is easy to control without it all going pear-shaped.
For example, my wife's 306 does this at around 10 mph.

But no, the Scooby system continues to pulse and therefore it is possible that you only stop when you hit something, unless you pump the pedal yourself.

Get some winter tyres or stay at home . . But then I would say that as I've got winter tyres on and snow chains in the boot just in case (3 ski trips this season).

 

Ah ballix, I'm staying at home. 500 miles through snow and sludge at 30 mph in one weekend just doesn't appeal.

Time to break open the hot cocoa and stoke up the open fire.

Here's hoping it snows a little bit near me so I can go for a little spin, though.

 

Well, this was North Essex at 11am this morning, the road out of our village (the main local route to Stansted airport/the M11).

The only thing getting through was a bloody great 4wd Case tractor........

STi7 was chugging along nicely, until 6" ground clearance met the 12" lump of snow all the way along between the wheel tracks.....





[Edited by Dave T-S - 1/31/2003 4:10:36 PM]

 

looks lovely, unless you actually want to go anywhere of course

 

Dammit!! why've I moved from there down to Surrey

Dan - I sold the old exhaust when I got the Lotus.. running full Haywards decat now. Have you seen or heard from Justin recently?

 

Ah Dave, the old Photoshop-snowed-in-can't-come-to-work ploy

 

Dodge

We are due more snow tonight and tomorrow, over here, so I think its a wise choice. Some people were stuck on the M11 all night

 

Pete

ROFL

Funnily enough, I emailed it to my boss this morning (but forgot to tell him it was taken in 1990)