What car would Father Christmas drive?

AN AD in last week’s Southport Champion apparently solved a motoring mystery. When the job gets too tough for reindeer, Santa uses an Isuzu D-MAX!

Plugs for Japanese pick-up trucks aside, the question of what the world’s best known delivery man would opt for as his choice of wheels is a surprisingly tricky one to call. In fact, the topic occupied a surprising amount of time with my colleagues at the Classic Car WeeklyChristmas dinner the other day. Yep, I know we should get out more.

Personally, I reckon it’s still open to debate. Largely because I doubt Father Christmas would use any form of motorised transport – not even something as surefooted and spacious as the aforementioned D-MAX – for the job of dispatching all the ponies and Sony Xbox Ones to all the boys and girls who’ve been nice and enough coal to heat Sheffield for a month to all the ones who’ve been naughty.

If Father Christmas actually issued Rudolph and his mates their P45s and did his rounds next Tuesday night with a car, said vehicle would have to have Antonov-rivalling levels of room inside for all the presents, and still somehow be light enough to park on a snowy roof without either crashing through the slate tiles onto the mince pies simmering below or sliding off altogether, falling into the street below and landing The Champion the festive scoop of the century. 

I reckon, boys and girls, that the prestigious job of delivering all the presents can only be done using a dozen reindeer and a sleigh endowed with a TARDIS-esque quality. Particularly because the only way I can think of him doing the job automotively depresses me. Father Christmas clattering up your driveway in a battered old Mercedes Sprinter would ruin the magic of Christmas!

If our bearded chum way up north does own a car, I reckon he’d use it for rather more mundane duties. Popping to the Lapland branch of ASDA, perhaps, or running the elves back from the pub on a Friday night.

I quite liked the idea of Father Christmas, if he’s anything like the grumpy Englishman portrayed in the 1991 cartoon, bobbing about in something like an old Triumph Herald, but it stands to reason that he both lives and works at either Lapland or the North Pole, both of which require the use of something a bit sturdier. Something which is comfy enough for a portly bloke who’s getting on a bit, but can still fight its way out of a snowdrift.

Therefore, after much deliberation, I’ve decided that Father Christmas is a Range Rover man. Merry Christmas!

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Is it worth fitting winter tyres to your car?

MY EXTENDED thanks goes to the likes of MailOnline, The Daily Express and ITV News for all the “SNOW CHAOS” stories and messages not to travel unless absolutely essential over the past week. It meant all the motorways - which were covered with a light dusting of snow - were marvellously empty last weekend. Cheers!

Unless a freakishly early spring arrives between me writing these words and The Champion going to print, chances are it'll be a bit snowy where you live. Thing is, if you watched that cracking documentary Chris Packham did the other night about the winter of ‘63 you'll know this is girls' stuff compared to a real white-out, and that - in this part of Britain at least - the world didn't exactly grind to a halt enough to stop us all driving.

All of which brings me to a question I've spent the past three years trying to avoid answering. Is it worth fitting your pride and joy with winter tyres?

This debate's dusted down every time a snowflake so much as thinks of landing on the British road network, and like all great questions my own answer's a bit of a cop-out.... erm, it depends. It almost goes without saying that in these conditions winter tyres ARE safer, as evidenced by a brilliant clip on YouTube which involves a snowy bit of Swedish wilderness, two SEAT Leons, and some gung-ho Auto Express roadtesters. You can see where this one's going. By the time the one with winter tyres had stopped safely from 30mph, the one on ordinary rubber was still skidding at 25mph!

I've also had lots of press releases pointing out how brilliant winter tyres are - albeit ones signed off by Monsieur Michelin, Signor Pirelli and Herr Continental - and reckon that, if you drive a brand new motor, it's probably worth the outlay.

But when you lose your automotive cherry to a 30-year-old Mini with drum brakes you get used to driving something with the stopping capabilities of an ocean liner anyway, and when secondhand hatchbacks are your car currency the price you pay for having winter tyres is.... the price. To kit out my Rover 200 with some winter footwear would cost £250, and that's before fitting and balancing. A pricey prospect when the car itself cost £300.

Are winter tyres better than summer tyres in sort of weather? Without a shadow of doubt, but that wasn't the question. Are they worth fitting to your pride and joy? Well, it depends on what your pride and joy is.

If in doubt, buy a secondhand Land Rover.

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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.

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