Hammer Time: The Cars Of The Cave Bears
I live in a small, genteel, Southern colonial home that comes with all the local goodies.
An over-sized ceiling fan in every room. A little front porch that offers a palatial view of the rolling prairies of Deliverance country.
Throw in a mint julep, homemade lemonade, and the belting baritone of Paul Robeson, and the world becomes my oyster.
Except not right now. It’s too damn cold outside. Which got me to thinking…
What would you say is the best car for cold weather?
Part of me would say that the Swedes would have this wrapped up. Volvos from the 850 on forward have offered heating systems that are warm enough to tend to the most delicate of Southern frailties after a few minutes of cold.
Whenever I used to take my family from their comfortable bucolic life of North Georgia, to my brutal native land of Northern New Jersey, I would take a Volvo along for the ride. Great heat. Wonderful leather seats. A nice balance of good outdoor visibility and a cocoon-like interior. A lot of folks don’t have a lot of love for the 850/S70 Volvos for their long-term cost and reliability issues, but I have always enjoyed their balance of safety, good heat, and solid fuel economy.
I like SAABs as well for many of the same reasons. Great seats, nice heat, livable fuel economy, and packaging that strikes the right balance of sight and safety when visiting the cold strange ancient lands that are no longer my home. The fact that older GM based sleds, like the more recent SAABs, tend to offer outstanding heat, also helps balance off some of the quirkiness of these vehicles.
Still, I wonder on a day like this whether there are other rides that are even better choices? Does a Jeep Grand Cherokee offer a better cold weather package than a Ford Explorer? Would a Lincoln Town Car be more safe and splendorous than a Cadillac Escalade if you had to do your daily commutes in the coldest of cold winters? Small heating area favors the smaller rides. But then you have to worry about everyone else on the road.
So my question for you is, if you had to survive with cold weather, snow and ice for twelve months of the year and had, say, a $30,000 budget for anything new or used, what would be your choice?
Oh, and a one way ticket to a country that plays limbo with the equator does not count. Please consider this a chance to spend $30k on something that would almost make that trade of temp worth it.
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I was just contemplating the same thing on my way to work on Monday when it was -18. Of our two cars, both 5 series BMWs (E39 and E60), I'd say the E39 is actually the better winter car. Both cars have the cold weather package with heated seats and steering wheel. The heated seats and steering wheel warm up faster and are hotter in the E60, but the E39 warms up much faster and it spits out much hotter air. I actually had to turn it down at one point. My previous A4 had heated seats that you could cook an egg on, but the heat sucked.
For 30 large? Give me a fatty bicycle for one thousand and four months in Florida with the other $29k.