Fun in the snow!! - 12/09/05 08:11 PM
Late last night after coming back from clubbing, we found that it had snowed at least a couple of inches and was still going. My roommate and I decided to take my car out into the nearly-empty campus parking lots and have some fun with it. The SVT performs a bit too well in the snow to have as much fun as we wanted (we were riding in his lighter Jetta for a while as well, though) but it was still great. I quickly found that hitting the brakes never failed to stop the car reasonably quickly (gotta love ABS), so the only way to make the car skid like we wanted was to turn the wheel hard to one side, and sometimes I would engage the e-brake to make the back wheels lock and slide through the snow. I have Blizzaks on the front wheels, which definitely seemed to make a difference. I did not know until now that I could get my car up to nearly 40 mph, turn the wheel all the way to one side, and the car would sustain the g-forces easily while skidding through the snow and kicking it up several feet in the air. There were very few other cars in the parking lot at 2 am - actually, 2 of the lots we were using were completely empty - and no people. One guy who came out to get his Grand Cherokee saw what we were doing and did a couple donuts of his own before leaving the parking lot. I don't think I've ever had so much fun with my car, or in the snow, until now.
Aside from having fun, now I'm much more confident in my ability - and my car's ability - to drive in the snow. Just doing what I did taught me a lot quickly about predicting what was happening next and how to drive to make the car go where you want it to, even if you've hardly any traction. After all, there were light posts and trees planted at intervals in the parking lot that had to be avoided. Getting back to my apartment was no trouble at all, even though I had to go through two rather steep hills on the way. Earlier in the night, we had watched an older, light RWD BMW get stuck spinning tires trying to go up a hill which we later drove up easily. Moral of the story? SVT + good snow tires = fairly good performance in bad weather.
Aside from having fun, now I'm much more confident in my ability - and my car's ability - to drive in the snow. Just doing what I did taught me a lot quickly about predicting what was happening next and how to drive to make the car go where you want it to, even if you've hardly any traction. After all, there were light posts and trees planted at intervals in the parking lot that had to be avoided. Getting back to my apartment was no trouble at all, even though I had to go through two rather steep hills on the way. Earlier in the night, we had watched an older, light RWD BMW get stuck spinning tires trying to go up a hill which we later drove up easily. Moral of the story? SVT + good snow tires = fairly good performance in bad weather.
