It’s Snowing – so everyone loves a 4×4

Snow leaves the M25 struggling

On treacherous UK roads the much maligned 4x4s and SUVs suddenly became the car to have as our roads struggled to cope with 6″ of overnight snow.

If you drive a 4×4 / SUV you get used to the negative comments. Some 4x4s engender more hate than others, but the real ire of the Eco-Mentalists is reserved for the products from Land Rover. Why? Probably because they are, on the whole, expensive, luxurious and you’ve probably had to work your socks off to afford one. That’s also a bad thing, apparently. Ambition. Wrecks the planet. But I bet the Greenies would be the first in the queue today to get their eco-boxes towed up their country lane to their mud hut by a passing 4×4. Funny how the hate turns to love when it suits.

You probably know I have a Cayenne as my daily drive. Yes, the ugly, thirsty V8 bastard SUV child from Porsche. And I love it. But I particularly love it when all around fall by the wayside and the Cayenne motors on. That can happen with the boy racers round the back roads on a summers eve who think a big 4×4 is easy meat. Wrong. The Cayenne will show a clean pair of heels to most things on the road. But on a day like today it is a great place to be with its 4WD and locking diffs. Go anywhere. And I did. Twice.

My daughter had chosen today to hop off to Rome for the weekend. And dad was voted taxi driver of the day. We had to be at Heathrow at 5.30am so it was up at 3.30 for a quick cuppa and off. But we’d had 6″ of snow. No worries. Out with the broom; start the car and drink the coffee.

The roads were carnage. Cars all over the place; not even main roads seemed to have had any treatment worth talking about. The M25 was down to one lane in places but we got to Heathrow by 5.15am. Dropped daughter off, hit the M25 only to get a call to say “Dad, our flight’s cancelled”. Off at the next junction and back to T5 to get another call “…but they’ll get us on a later flight”. Back on to the M25 and headed home. And the roads were still no better, but in the Cayenne I was safe, sure-footed and made good time.

Settled down to a days work. What’s going on in the car world today? A couple of new Aston Martins – nice. Ford are going to put a decent lump in the new 2011 Mustang GT. Good news. And that’s as far as I got. “Dad, can you come and get us. They can’t fly us out until tomorrow night so we’re giving up”. So that’s my day buggered then. Vince, get these stories written up. I’m off to Heathrow again!

So back in the Cayenne. The roads are still appalling. Lots of breakdowns; lots of ice; plenty of accidents. But the Cayenne handled everything a rotten winters day an ill-prepared UK road network can throw at it. In comfort. 300 miles on lousy roads with no melodrama at all. Oh, and we even got a little eco-box out of trouble en-route. And at least I got a day off from writing. Except for this.

Porsche Cayenne. It’ll get you there better than a British Airways Airbus. At least twice a year – we got another story out of the Porsche in snow in February.