Terry's Winter Snow Adventure

[Sprintey]

Our petrol, ZF, AWD Territory has had plenty of snow adventures. It has battled bonnet high snow drifts in chains, navigated blind corners in blizzards, overcome slippery ice; and done all this with perfect reliability over 10 years from new.

The design is great really, while not a heavy duty 4x4 it has the handling nous to be safe and then enjoy all alpine corners, can take a full family and is flexible for their gear, has AWD grip constantly available in a 38/62 split, and has a strong simple torquey motor that makes highway travel to and fro effortless and easy.

The most recent trip was memorable for its extremes, and brought home the strengths of the car, and why it will be missed in the future.

The Great Alpine Road at Hotham had a record low over the weekend, News quoted a -10.4 on Sunday night, which is a 43 year record. The 4 day weekend we took began sunny and clear, with enjoyable riding on Friday arvo and Saturday. Terry was busy ferrying 9 people too and fro once on mountain after a comfortable highway drive.

Saturday at dusk, clouds began to roll in, temps dropped, and 5-7cm of snow fell overnight, covering the car. Wipers up, board racks unlocked and open, handbrake off. Sunday was a beautiful day of boarding. In ferry mode, Terry being full time AWD was not required to wear chains while I noticed almost all of the Haldex smaller FWD based AWDs fitting them. The sky cleared up, and then it got really cold, and the diesels started to fail.

Quite a few cars were immobile, and the number of bonnets up, immobile diesels increased. Megane, Mazda dual cab, 200 series TD, 100 Series TD, Captiva, Defender, VW large SUV, 4 Colorados, X3, RRS, Paj, Merv large SUV... that I saw. Mechanics seemed to be using a gas cannister of some kind to free the frozen fuel lines. Perhaps it was a lack of winter diesel? The cold snap certainly will be memorable, for I've never seen this before.

Every time, in contrast, the old Terry started first go. She was loaded up after a relaxed breakky on Monday, and then made her way back down and home at a good pace. The petrol and AWD really is a good combination in the 'Aussie X5' built for 'Falcon bucks' and for my 2c the SYII Petrol AWDs are the pinnacle of the build run.