Why everybody (still) loves a Land Rover

"OFF-ROADERS are stupid and pointless," a friend suggested as we shot along the M6 somewhere near Stafford a fortnight ago. "You just don't need them."

All you need in an everyday car, he reckoned, is something cheap, comfortable, easy to look after and equipped with a healthy bit of oomph. Something, he reckoned, that's a lot like his turbodiesel Citroen Xsara. Anything with four wheel drive or knobbly tyres is just unecessary and expensive.

Seeing said mate utilise this argument - and win - hurt because I've always had a soft spot for 4x4s, and I don't mean the blinged-up, over-imposing "lifestyle" efforts from BMW and Audi either. I mean the off-roaders of the old school, the Jeeps, Isuzus and Shoguns with their unpretentious styling and obligatory Ifor Williams trailers. I especially like Land Rovers, particularly the proper ones which look like they've been styled on an Etch-a-Sketch. But having a soft spot wasn't winning an argument in the mildest winter we've seen in years.

Lukily, I found the answer I was looking for last weekend, when I ventured beyond my usual stomping ground into a place best known as The Countryside. There, there are hills and rivers and windy little lanes made muddy by the near-constant flow of tractors among them. Out there almost every house has a proper off-roader parked outside it, and when it suddenly started snowing I realised why.

After just a few hours The Countryside was no longer green and pleasant; it was like being trapped inside a Christmas card, only with more BBC Look North crews telling you off over the airwaves because you forgot to pack Ray Mears and a shovel into the boot. Naturally, I'd forgotten to bother with either.


With seven inches of the slippery white stuff to tackle my trusty old Rover did alright but I still wished it'd had the word "Land" in front of its name. Certainly, any Land Rover would have been better than the 11-reg SEAT Leon half a dozen of us had to push out of trouble, or the MINI Cooper which struggled to get over a humpback bridge without spinning its wheels, or the BMW 1-Series at the side of the A591 next to a driver who'd just given up trying.

On this cold, slippery, unforgiving day in The Countryside, nobody wanted the Porsches or BMWs the tourists had brought into the village the night before. But absolutely everybody wanted the 25-year-old Range Rover which was darting around the village completely unaffected. Like the local council's rather scabbier Defenders it was untroubled by the conditions, but it also exuded class in a way a brand-new X5 doesn't.

So off-roaders - proper ones at least - aren't stupid and pointless. Just ask anyone who lives in The Countryside.

More true grit from the Germans

THE radio news bulletin in the car on the way into Solingen was entirely in German, but I knew it was about the snowy conditions. I understood just two words; “London Heathrow”.

What you see above is a residential street in downtown Solingen, a German city where I'm currently on holiday, in the middle of the same snowy winter we Brits are going through. Don't be fooled by the massive mounds of the white stuff surrounding the parked cars; both the roads and the pavements have not only been gritted, but cleared as well. Something we don't seem to be able to manage in Sefton or West Lancashire.


When it snows in Germany the roads are cleared, the pavements gritted and shoppers put their gloves on and carry on. In Britain the public transport system is paralysed, entire airports shut down, cars crash on icy roads and pensioners slip on the frozen pavements. It’s bizarre, but we Brits as a nation just can’t cope with snow!

Last year I saw first hand how the entire region was caught out by an unusually high amount of snow. Searching questions were asked of the Government and the local councils, who promised that the scenario where entire towns were left ungritted wouldn’t happen again. It just has!

In England I’ve seen buses and trains cancelled, roads which look more like ice rinks, and even milk deliveries being carried out by tractor. Here, the most dramatic things I've seen are a Smart buried nose-deep into the snow, and a very elderly Citroen 2CV going about its business on snow chains.

The way everyone in Germany gets the roads cleared and just carries on, completely unfazed, never ceases to amaze me.

Compared to the chaos we’ve got, the Germans don’t know how lucky they are.

It's snow joke when you're not actually a rally driver

MY apologies to the annoyed-looking man across the road.

Regular readers will be delighted to know that my battle to get my No Claims Bonus recognised by the Rover's insurers has finally been won, after they finally accepted the mountain of paperwork I'd sent through as proof of me being a careful driver.

A reputation hard earned and very nearly ruined by tonight's weather.

Regular readers will also know that the idea of driving on snow doesn't terrify me as much as it probably should; in fact, I actually relish the challenge of ploughing through it, because it's a great excuse to practise your car control skills. That and secretly pretend you're about to win the Rally Sweden.

The old Life On Cars Mini was, as you'd expect, utterly brilliant on the white stuff, being light and nimble and perfectly balanced, which in turn meant when you did lose grip at surprisingly slow speeds it was an easy slide to catch. This could, I wager, be part of the reason why the original Mini Cooper S was a three-times Monte Carlo rally winner.

You might have forgotten the Renault 5's got rally pedigree too; true, all the high-profile victories might have gone to the mid-engined 5 Turbo but the front-engined one, which is far more closely related to my old £100 banger, actually proved quite a capable hot hatch in the handling stakes. While it was never as nimble as the Mini, it was a lot more reassuring.

So it's a shame the Rover 214, a bigger, heavier car which focuses more on opulent trim than opposite lock, hasn't quite passed the snow test. It's comfy, don't get me wrong, but it's also not a six-year-old schoolchild of car that wants to come out and play whenever it snows.

Put simply, I spun it. Sorry...

Reminder :4x4 is useless on ice without studs or chains

Now that winter is here, can we drop a quick reminder to everyone driving around not to believe those "buy a 4x4 and cope with winter" adverts. Without studded tyres or chains, all four wheel drive will do is get you into trouble by hiding the problems on the uphill, only for them to surface on the descent. Here is some footage from Seattle last week:
Lots of these vehicles are 4WD, but once you've hit the brake pedal, that's useless. Winter tyres then studded tyres (legal in Washington State during winter) and chains are what you should be thinking of. Otherwise, stay at home. Don't walk down the sidewalks on roads like this either. If you have a 2WD car with traction control features, when that light starts flashing it means "chains on". No chains? Pull over, park on a road that isn't so steep, walk.