A motoring idea you'll warm to in this winter weather

HERE'S an idea you'll warm to. Why don't we fit cars with proper boilers and thermostats?

T'was a cold and frosty morning when the thought struck me. Faced with needing to take a car rather than the bus into work, I unlocked the garage and started up a stone cold Mazda MX-5 which immediately fogged up the moment I dared to exhale breath while sat inside. I was one of the lucky ones; elsewhere, the good people of Southport were scraping the ice of their windscreens.

Here's the rub. Almost every car I've driven on a cold morning, even shiny brand new ones, still require the efforts of some cheap de-icer before you can set off, and then a good few minutes before the icy chill of winter leaves the interior. Nor can you do the old trick of warming the car up while you sit indoors with a cuppa - not only is it illegal, but you might as well stick a sign on your pride ‘n' joy with “STEAL ME” writ large all over it.

With the exception of a wonderful January weekend in Wales, when I donned gloves and a woolly hat so I could enjoy the crisp mountain air in the MX-5 with the roof down, driving first thing in the morning at this time of year is no fun. Unless of course, you run a recently-made Range Rover. A car which comes with a little gas heater and a time-adjustable thermostat, just like your house does.

In the same way I've always wondered why houses aren't fitted with electric windows, it perplexes me why proper thermostats which you can preset to come on when you want - which have been around for ages - don't come as standard on more cars. If you know you're going to setting off at eight every morning, wouldn't it be great to preset a proper heating system to come on fifteen minutes earlier, so your pride and joy is all toasty once you step inside and the engine isn't having to cough into life at minus four?

Don't get me wrong - there's all sorts of aftermarket preheating systems you can fit to your motor - but I'm just amazed the car industry at large didn't cotton onto the whole winter-is-cold thing years ago.

It's one motoring gadget you wouldn't give a frosty reception.

Will the winter weather bring woe to classic car owners?

NOBODY else at The Champion has written it yet so I thought I'd get the ball rolling - it's only 11 weeks ‘til Christmas!

Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you whether you think the Christmas rush arrives too early these days but I've put to readers of tomorrow's Champion an entirely different problem, which hits lots of car nuts at roughly the same time every year. ‘Tis the season to be asking.

Where do you stash your pride and joy over the winter?

If you own, say, a Honda Jazz you're probably going to be completely unmoved by the question, in which case you're more than welcome to flick forward a few pages and check out this week's sports news. Modern cars are built to cope with frost and ice and grit and all those other unbearably cold and corrosive things commonly found during winter, in which case you're not going to worry about leaving one on your driveway for the duration. Classic cars, though, are an entirely different rusty kettle of fish.

Leave anything made, say, by British Leyland out in the open for more than six months and it'll start rotting in places you wouldn't have thought rot was possible (and I know this from the joys of Mini ownership). If you own a car made before, ooh, the Eighties and don't want it to dissolve into an iron oxide heap before next spring, you'll be wanting somewhere warm and dry to keep it.

Luckily, I have a garage for my MG but there's plenty of people I know who don't or simply have too many old cars for the one lock up they own, which is where the headache begins. There are garages you can rent but they're usually one-off lock-ups, meaning it's difficult to keep the old cars you've accumulated in one, cheap and affordable space.

Nor am I calling for the sort of specialist storage sites you find advertised in the back of Classic and Sports Car, which are used largely by supercar owners who keep them wrapped in cotton wool for eye-wateringly expensive months at a time. If you own an old Ferrari this is all fine and dandy, but most of the enthusiasts I know don't and can't afford it.

No, what we need is somewhere that's basic and cheap but dry and secure, where you can store your classic car and know that it isn't rotting away in all weathers.

Who's with me?

Do you agree? Share your thoughts by sending an email to david.simister@hotmail.co.uk or call 07581 343476.

Land Rover vs council gritting teams

DON'T worry about winter getting a bit nasty this year. Providing you've got at least £19,775 to spare you'll be absolutely fine.

That's what Land Rover, Britain's longest established maker of off-roaders, reckoned in its latest full page advert in the nationals, which instead of a car showed shots of snowy scenes from earlier this year. The cost of staying on top of the next Big Freeze, the company reckons, is the entry-level price for the Defender. Convenient or what?

As a longtime lover of all things Land Rover I'd like to say I couldn't agree more; but unfortunately the chaps at the Solihull factory, I reckon, have got it wrong this time. You shouldn't need to use a Land Rover Defender to drive to work because the roads should have been gritted by your friendly, cash-strapped local council. It's a crazy idea, but it might just work.

Even when the roads were at their snowiest, slippiest point during last year's particularly cold snap, there was nothing a bit of carefully-used throttle and a dab of opposite lock steering couldn't solve. I actually developed my snow driving to the point where I was actually enjoyed the daily skid into work, but in most cases all but the quietest roads had actually been gritted long before I'd woken up each morning.

What's more, Lancashire County Council in particular have said they've learned their lessons from last year and are already prepared with a third more grit this time, so I suspect the need to pop out to your friendly local Land Rover showroom won't be quite as pressing as last winter.

Anyone who's seen any of the Land Rovers or Range Rovers I used to get ferried to school in will know I've nothing against them; they are charismatic, capable and genuinely useful things to have around, but chances are you'll only genuinely need one if you're venturing off the beaten track.

If you're not, I'm actually going to suggest you spend a small fraction of what a Defender costs by showing true grit....and buying grit instead.