Sliding through winter

CHIPPING NORTON, U.K.–I can scarcely believe it but, as I write, it's snowing again. This is the third big dump in a week and means, of course, all those poor sods who work for the BBC's news programs will be putting on their horrible anoraks and making their way to various gritting depots to provide live coverage of how Britain is locked in what the newspaper calls "ice chaos."

When it snowed in the olden days, everyone had snowball fights and a sense of delicious anarchy descended on the land. Not any more. Now, someone is to blame.

In fact, the real reason the U.K. grinds to a halt whenever there's a nip in the air is that everyone has lost the ability to drive a motor vehicle. You must have noticed. In dodgy conditions you are the only person who drives at the correct speed. Everyone else goes either far too slow or far too fast.

Last week I was driving home from Oxford and I simply couldn't believe it. I realize that in these parts the council spreads grit on only the bus and cycle lanes but the road wasn't too bad. And yet everyone was doing 15 km/h. I'm not exaggerating for effect. They were doing 15. I could have gone faster on my hands and knees.

The fact is this: A car, left to its own devices, will travel in the direction you've pointed it. It will not suddenly veer into a ditch unless you do something sudden with the steering or the brakes.

If you are gentle; if you plan ahead – and this is possible because your car has windows and headlamps – you will see a corner coming and ease off the throttle to slow down a bit. All will be well.

Unless, of course, you are travelling on black ice, in which case you are at the mercy of gravity and witchcraft. But on the road that night there was no ice of any kind. I knew this because I have ears on the side of my head, through which I could hear water sploshing off the tires. I could hear it even above the sound of the traffic announcer on the radio telling me to stay at home unless my head had actually fallen off.

And then I was overtaken by a smug-looking businessman in a BMW X5. Because he had bought a large 4x4, he imagined that somehow he was immune to the laws of physics and that the tires fitted to his car were made from some kind of snow-resistant Velcro. Imagine, then, my sense of joy when I rounded a corner to find him in a hedge.

A similar misfortune befell a friend who had got it into his head that somehow a Volvo XC90 is not subject to vagaries in the road surface and drove down a road covered in sheet ice, into a tree. As I arrived on the scene, it was very hard to arrange my face into something that showed concern, not helpless mirth.

A four-wheel-drive car, provided it is fitted with off-road tires, will get you out of a snowy driveway and, slowly, up a snowy hill. But momentum is more than a match for a centre differential. So at all other times it is just as likely to crash as your grandad's Peugeot.

That said, because I live 280 metres above sea level in a county whose officials believe grit and pebbles are what poor people put on their houses, I have driven my Range Rover for the past two weeks. This is because it's the only car capable of getting out of my drive and into town.

Mind you, it's not capable of getting much farther because some numpty put the windshield-washer bottle right at the front of the car in the air flow. So, a couple of minutes after you set off, it becomes an ice cube and my windshield becomes as see-through as cardboard.

I have, though, enjoyed stopping and offering lifts to the sorts of local people who normally loathe 4x4s. And been very amused by one pinch-faced old rambler who declined. "No, thanks. I'm enjoying the exercise," she said, as she fell flat on her face.

The snow here is really deep. I've just measured it with a tape measure and outside my office door there's a drift that is 61 cm from crust to gravel. That's Canada deep. I'm thinking of phoning the news presenter to see if he wants to deliver his next breaking report while standing in it.

In places, there are little snowy hillocks that appear to be even deeper, but underneath each is a press demonstrator car that was delivered before Christmas and is still here, entombed in its own moulded igloo.

There's a Renault out there somewhere, and a Golf and a Mercedes E Class estate, and then there's the subject of today's missive – a Porsche 911 Turbo.

You need to be paying constant attention to stay abreast of the 911 range, which, in essence, is one car offered in countless subtly different ways. Do you know the difference between a 997 and a 996? Or a Carrera and a Carrera S? Or a GT2 and a GT3? I do but I can't be bothered to explain everything here.

And anyway there's no need because the Turbo buried in my drive is a convertible, and that, like all droptop Porsche 911s, is unwise.

I can explain this. Each 911 is slightly different. Each is tailored to suit a slightly different driving style and locale. But fundamentally each is designed to be better to drive than anything else for the money.

Now, if you take the roof off a car designed to be a coupé, some of the structural rigidity will be lost. To compensate, extra strengthening is required, which makes the whole car heavier. This affects how the car feels, and since the whole point of a 911 is the "feel," the point is lost. This is a fact.

A fact that isn't true any more. A Ferrari F430 Spider is just as fast and feelsome round a track as the Berlinetta. And so it goes with the 911. Supercar engineers can now make a heavier, less rigid convertible just as much fun to drive as its coupé sister.

But no one knows this. So if you drive a 911 Turbo convertible, everyone will laugh at you and say that you are a poseur and that you are having a mid-life crisis. The time will therefore come when you pray for snowfalls to bury the embarrassment that you have brought upon yourself.

Weeks ago, when the Turbo arrived, I began to enjoy it. I thought it might be the first rear-engined German car that I might consider buying. But then the snow came and, despite the four-wheel-drive system, that was that.

I suspect there's a very good car out there. But the reason it's a very good car is, I'm afraid, buried under a ton of prejudice and 61 cm of snow.