Here's What You Should Look For In A Winter Beater

I’m not saying our 2018 Buick Regal TourX is a beater, but without a good set of winter tires it certainly wouldn’t be good in the winter. If you can take one thing away from clicking on this blog, it’s that you desperately need good tires to make it through winter.

One suggestion I might make is to look for something that still fits a 15-inch wheel with a common bolt pattern. For one thing, you’ll find much cheaper winter tires available for 15s. For another, you can probably get a set of used steel wheels with winter tires fitted from your local Craigslist. 4x100 is a very common pattern for small, inexpensive, front-wheel drive economy cars, which tend to make great winter beaters.

The gold standard of winter tire is pretty much neck and neck between the Nokian Hakkapeliitta, and Bridgestone Blizzak. Depending on size and availability, either would be an excellent choice for your winter safety. If you’re looking to be safe on a budget, grab a set of Firestone Winterforce tires, as I’ve had very good luck with them as well.

You don’t have to worry about studded tires unless you frequently see ice. And some states, like Michigan, have outlawed studs. Consult your local laws before committing to studs.

If it’s cold out, the last place you want to spend your time is stuck on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck. The best winter beater is a car that will survive a nuclear apocalypse.

I tend to prefer full-size or mid-size American sedans from the 1990s, personally. Anything with GM’s venerable 3800 is going to run without maintenance longer than most cars run period. Get whatever Pontiac or Buick you can find that doesn’t have rotten floors, mileage be damned. It’ll make it through this winter and probably the next twenty.

A case could be made for a variety of Japanese reliability kings as well, but you’re likely to pay a premium for a still-good Civic, Accord, Camry, Yaris, Mazda3, etc. Keep them maintained and they’ll outlast your corporeal form. Unfortunately some of these used thinner metal and are extremely rust prone. Make sure the subframes and mounting points are still solid before plonking down real cash.

Winter means cold. You’re going to want a good heater, even in your beater. Make sure the coolant system isn’t compromised or leaking, and make sure the HVAC system is properly functional.

There’s nothing worse than driving a car in the winter without heat. One time I had to take my aircooled Porsche with headers (no heat exchangers means no heat) to work on a below-freezing day, and it was downright unsafe to drive. Without heat you don’t have a defroster, and you’ll be fighting visibility the whole way.

Your brain also reacts slower when your body temperature drops. Make sure you have a good heating system.

There’s not much worse than a cold leather seat to slide into on a cold winter morning. Leather will harden and contract in the cold, and it’s just plain uncomfortable. Even if your chosen winter beater has heated seats, it’s just going to be more comfortable to sit in something with cloth seats when it’s below zero.

As with the general reliability of the car, you’ll want a battery that you can rely on. Batteries these days, in my experience, don’t last very long. If it’s more than a few years old already, you probably won’t be able to trust it for the full length of the winter. Consider ponying up for a fresh battery in your winter beater.

It’s important that your winter shitbox be a bit rough around the edges. If you’re an enthusiast, you want it to be ‘too far gone to save’ so you don’t waste your time turning this winter transport into a project car. Door bottoms, wheel wells, and trunk lids should show signs of the tin worm. Someone else has already driven this car into a rusty position, so you don’t have to feel bad about making it worse.

Obviously you’ll still want to wash the car a few times in the winter to keep it from getting too rotten to be viable. It’s a delicate balance.

However, if things like the floors, seat mounts, shock towers, or subframes are already rotten through, just walk away. It already wasn’t worth saving, but it’s also not worth your safety to save a few bucks.

As already mentioned, tires are the most important part of winter driving. If you can’t get traction on snow, you aren’t going to be able to go anywhere, but even more importantly you won’t be able to stop anywhere.

If your winter conveyance happens to be a pickup truck or rear-wheel drive sedan, you definitely need winter tires, but you might also want to put some weight in the back to aid with rear wheel traction. Consider something big and soft, like bags of sand. If carrying around a bunch of sheet steel or whatever, it could break loose in a crash and end up hurting the driver even worse than whatever they hit.

Regardless of what car you end up with, you’ll want to pack a bag just in case you are stranded in the winter. There are so many remote parts of the United States without reliable cell signal, and if you get caught there in freezing weather with an immobile automobile, you’re up a shit creek, no paddle in sight.

Every winter beater should have a window scraper, a pair of jumper cables, a few road flares, a spare jacket and hat, a blanket, a battery pack to charge your phone, and a sack of cat litter to help get traction on ice or compacted snow. For good measure, also throw in some food and water, a shovel, a flashlight, a multitool, and a tow rope. You’re more likely to find someone with a truck willing to pull you out than you will someone with a tow rope. Likewise the jumper cables are good to have, because even if you don’t need them (because you have a good battery) you might be able to help someone else.