Cars in Winter

[Dee]

Never wanted a Volkswagen. But I never wanted a Corvette either.

[Bob Riebe]

Best car I ever had for snow and ice travel was the Volkswagen Beetle. And if you had snow tires on all 4 corners it was even better. Pretty good in mud season, too, because it stayed on top rather then sink down.
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LOL, IF, for awhile at least, you broke through ice on a lake with a VW bug, it would float, so you could get out and try to figure how to get it out before it sank.

[Lloyd Smale]

i forgot those old adds that used to claim that.

Best car I ever had for snow and ice travel was the Volkswagen Beetle. And if you had snow tires on all 4 corners it was even better. Pretty good in mud season, too, because it stayed on top rather then sink down.
.

LOL, IF, for awhile at least, you broke through ice on a lake with a VW bug, it would float, so you could get out and try to figure how to get it out before it sank.

[Bob Riebe]

A friend of mine had a Super Beetle and put a gas heater inside, kept it VERY warm in winter.

[Graybeard]

I bought a new '70 VW and it had not only a proper heater but also an AC in it. I assume from '70 forward they all had proper heaters in them and AC was an option.

[billy_56081]

The manifold heater if set right was providing heat in a minute or two.

[Lloyd Smale]

aunt ran a gas heater in hers too. Ac is easy just run a belt to power it. Heat on the other hand i guess is a matter of where you live. When it got around zero they were COLD. She used to carry an ice scraper just to scrap ice of the inside of the windows while driving.

A friend of mine had a Super Beetle and put a gas heater inside, kept it VERY warm in winter.

[phalanx]

I once had a new 1974 super beetle. It was a good car.

[darkgael]

Bob:

so, I backed down the hill, turned the car around and hit the hill with a heavy throttle in reverse.  I backed up three end blocks to the first flat intersection, stopped and drove down the street to a short block-dividing street, into the alley and home.

Now that made me smile.

Beetles: I had, at one point, a 1960 VW beetle. Fortunately my heater flaps never froze up….but it never got really warm either.
The model that I had did not have a gas gauge. Instead, it had a reserve tank lever on the firewall beneath the dash. You would be riding along (once in the middle of the Throgs Neck Bridge) and the engine would start to lose power. At that point, you reached down and turned the lever 180deg. The engine picked up and on you continued. In that car you could drive another 30 miles before you were really out of gas.
On that same bridge, coming home from college, I was driving across and through gale force winds. The wind at the center of the bridge blew that little car across two lanes before I could get the steering to compensate. Whoosh!

[phalanx]

Is it true that the concept of the Beetle dates back to WW2? It was called the Peoples car. There was also that Jeep looking thing used by the German military. I think its nickname was “Thing”. A few of them showed up here in the US, but it didn’t meet the safety standards.

[darkgael]

The VW model 181…..the Thing. Introduced 1973.
“ Full of interesting quirks (46-hp engine, separate heater, swappable doors, no glovebox lid, and a folding windshield among them), the Thing was especially popular among youth, despite its relatively high price tag ($20,000 in 2017 money, compared to Beetle at $14,500 in 2017 money). Its inability to meet safety standards led Ralph Nader, and auto-regulation activists, to lobby the federal government to ban the importation of the Thing.”

[Moleman]

Had a 1970vw beetle.  The heater flaps worked fine on it, but the tubes that carried the heated air had all broken.  Found replacements for them and it sorta had some heat.   To keep the inside windshield from frosting up we had a little defroster heater you plugged into your cigarette lighter. Sort of like a slower not as hot hair dryer.  Would keep the drivers side clear enough to drive.

[phalanx]

VW 181. I’ve never seen a real one. I wonder what its top speed was.

[oldandslow]

A friend of mine bought one of those when they became available. He didn't keep it very long. I had another friend that drove  a couple of Volkswagen bugs. They didn't do too well in our hot summers as the air cooling couldn't handle the heat and they tended to start burning oil rather quickly. They did OK for short runs but it isn't a short run to a town of any size around here.

[darkgael]

Top speed?
“1973 Volkswagen Type 181 Thing Specifications
PRICE   $3,150 (when new)
ENGINE   1.6L OHV 8-valve boxer-4/46 hp @ 4,000 rpm, 72 lb-ft @ 2,800 rpm
TRANSMISSION   4-speed manual
LAYOUT   4-door, 4-passenger, rear-engine, RWD convertible
L x W x H   148.8 x 64.6 x 63.8 in
WHEELBASE   94.5 in
WEIGHT   1,984 lb
0-60 MPH   23.8 sec
TOP SPEED   68 mph”

[Lloyd Smale]

Another thing it does is freezes up brakes. Just the other day i pulled into my garage with my wrangler and about drove through the wall. Had to heat up the garage and thaw the snow on the jeep and truck. New cars can be a pain too. In 2012 i bought probably the last car ill ever buy for a daily driver. It was a new buick verado. These new cars to be areodynamic and increase fuel economy tend to have very little room between the tires and fenders. Snow would pack up so bad in that car that the wheels had problems turning and the wheels themselves would get snow pack in them and shake like crazy. About once a week in the winter we had to drive though a car wash to get rid of it.

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Sorry, but I don't believe for a second that a 4x4 truck or a Jeep with maybe a foot of clearance is going to drive through 3 feet of snow.  Not more than a few feet anyway.

iAny vehicle that is plowing through deep snow, especially bumper height runs the risk of a problem that was common in the sixties when roads were not plowed as often , and cars often made the trail.
Snow packing under the hood to the point the engine over heated or stopped running.

[neckisred]

Years ago in a public hunting parking area, I saw a VW Bug body that had been cut down and made into a little sleeper cab and mounted on a flat bed pickup truck. It was pretty cool.

[VA Rifleman]

Bugs made great dune buggies.

Really appreciate today’s fuel injection and low viscosity oil when starting in cold weather. Heated seats ain’t bad either.

Block heaters were a big thing when I was growing up in SD. Don’t see em much today, at least down here. Has to be kinder to the motor.

[ironglow]

Best car I ever had for snow and ice travel was the Volkswagen Beetle. And if you had snow tires on all 4 corners it was even better. Pretty good in mud season, too, because it stayed on top rather then sink down.
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   A hearty DITTO to that!  Back when I was driving beetles as early as the 1961 beetle I started with.  most other cars were still struggling with front engine/rear wheel drive.  I can't recall how many big, heavy, high powered cars I drove around on highways..simply because they couldn't handle the snow and ice as well.

  It wasn't all peaches and cream..because I never enjoyed a warm beetle in the winter...but at least I usually arrived at my destination.

  Obviously, the bigger, more powerful the engine was in the conventional Detroit car of the day..the more it worked against good performance in the snow and ice.

  US manufacturers have evened the field now, with crosswise front engine and front wheel drive... an idea lifted from Alex Issigonis, original designer of the Mini-Cooper.  (originally called the Mini-Minor)

[ironglow]

VW 181. I’ve never seen a real one. I wonder what its top speed was.

   I had one...give it about 80..  I only drove it like that one time..due to a medical emergency, and I am sure I over revved it.

  It ran on a lower gear ratio than the Beetle.