As they say on this TV show I saw once, "Winter is Coming." And since it's getting colder and everyone who's anyone is switching over to winter tires and packing the scrapers, we should probably take a look at what not to do. Specifically, which cars have given you hell when all hath frozen over.
Growing up my dad had a Volvo 240DL just like the one above, except it was brown. And not one of those fancy browns that are more like copper that all the cool kids are sporting nowadays. No, this one was more of a poop brown. But because it was a Volvo from 1984, it was built like a tank and it lasted pretty much forever until the exhaust system just fell out the bottom one day.
Can't win 'em all, I suppose.
One of my overarching memories of that car, though, was just how terrifying it was in the winter. It's not that it oversteered when it got a bit slippy, but more like it just decided to start doing donuts randomly whenever it felt like it. That's fine for Sebastian Vettel, but not so much when you're in the middle of a New York winter trying to do the school run.
Many trees and many other cars were just barely avoided.
I'm not sure what factors combined to make it so terrible in the snow. It didn't really have much power, but it was rear-wheel-drive with the skinniest, baldest of tires. Coming from Sweden, I expected better.
So what do you think are the worst cars for winter? Show us below in the comments!
Photo credit Michael Gil