<div class="headline">Best thing for sports car in winter? Drive it</div>
<div class="subheadline">Stability, grip make for safer all-season driving
Some preparation is needed for best results, however</div>
<div class="pubdate">Jan.7, 2006. 01:00AM</div>
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LAURANCE YAP
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<div class="articlebody">I must admit I have an ulterior motive for suggesting that you drive your sports car all year.
It's not to help sales of sports cars, which traditionally go flat when the snow starts.
It's not to boost sales of winter tires or -40C washer fluid.
It's simply to liven up the automotive landscape a bit.
For a couple of months now, all I seem to have been seeing out on the roads are dirty, grime-covered sedans and SUVs with dissatisfied drivers behind the wheels.
Time, I think, to liven things up a bit. To have some candy-coloured two-seaters out there dicing in the snow alongside all the winter beaters and snowplows.
To bring smiles to the faces of small children trapped in the back of minivans, staring at all the automotive averageness driving by.
I get a lot of email from readers asking about what they should do to store their sports cars in the winter.
Whether they should buy trickle-chargers for their batteries, fill the gas tanks (or not) and how best to preserve them for when the summer comes.
My answer is always the same: the best thing you can do for your sports car — and more important, for you — is drive it during the winter.
Why deprive yourself of the pleasures of driving a satisfyingly quick and responsive vehicle simply because the weather has turned ugly?
With a little bit of preparation (and a little bit more money), you can enjoy your car's treasured performance and handling all year round.
Thing is, all of the characteristics that make sports cars entertaining on dry pavement — their stability in corners, the sensitivity of their controls, the road feel that their suspensions provide, the grip generated by their low centre of gravity and big footprint — actually make them safer cars to drive in the winter than, say, a big SUV.
So long as you drive sensibly, powerful engines, rear-wheel drive, manual transmissions, sporty suspensions and lightning-quick reactions can all work to your advantage when driving in winter.
If your sports car has a mid- or rear-mounted engine — particularly when coupled with all-wheel drive — traction in the snow is also superior compared to other cars.
I drove a Porsche Cayman S (base price: $83,900; as tested: $95,935) to Montreal and back in a weekend during the holidays.
Even with a 295 hp, 3.4-litre flat-six and rear-wheel drive, it was unstoppable in the snow, accelerating up hills that thwarted some SUVs.
A sports car is definitely a busier drive than a regular car in the winter.
The steering wheel will writhe in your hands, your spine will be rattled by the constant movement of the suspension and there'll be a lot of road noise.
The upside of all this is that not only are you much more aware of what the car and its four contact patches are doing all of the time, but that you become aware of dangerous situations developing a lot earlier than you would in a softer, more insulated machine.
Listen to the messages coming up through the wheel, pedal and seats and a sports car is actually a safer drive, thanks to its ability to more quickly communicate changes on the road surface.
The second or two between when you feel ice on the road in a sports car compared to, say, a sedan, could literally mean the difference between having to make a small movement of steering, brakes, or throttle and having a full-on barrier-whacking spin.
And when you do feel something going wrong, a sports car's precise controls make dialling in corrections easier, quicker and safer.
Instead of having to haul the wheel this way and that until a regular car comes back under your control, you can escape a dangerous situation and swiftly restore stability.
One reason you can legitimately use a sports car all year now is the huge advance that tire technology has made over the last few years.
Unlike old-fashioned knobby snow tires, high-performance winter radials are now able to deliver decent grip on ice and snow while retaining the low profiles, stiff sidewalls and tread-block stability for when the roads are dry but cold.
Pirelli offers winter SnowSports that are rated to 240 km/h.
The Michelin Arctic Alpins fitted to my Cayman tester worked very well in conditions ranging from high-speed cruising along a dry 401 to 15 cm of snow on Montreal's poorly maintained streets.
A number of car makers — BMW and Porsche among them — now offer factory-approved winter tire packages for their vehicles with rubber that has been specced specifically for the vehicles they're fitted to.
Wheel and tire sizes match the car's summer set-up, meaning no speedometer error and proper function of the cars' ABS and stability-control systems.
Those systems, of course, are fitted to most modern sports cars and provide an extra level of safety and security beyond the winter tires' added traction.
Driving your sports car in the winter isn't always going to be a perfect experience, however.
The primary drawback seems to be visibility. The low-slung seating positions, small glass area and generally poorer visibility make them more difficult to thread through traffic, and you can't see as far ahead to anticipate road conditions.
Some vehicles' HVAC systems and windshield wipers aren't up to the task of dealing with winter muck.
Because they sit lower, sports cars are more easily drenched in slush from passing 18-wheelers.
A bit of preparation, though and you'll be just fine. To help lessen the damage from flying road salt, several companies now offer custom-fit clear plastic 'bras' that conform exactly to the contours of your car.
Your snow brush will handily double as a stick to poke at the chunks of ice that form on your alloy wheels when snow melts (thanks to the heat radiated off the brakes), then freezes again when temperatures drop.
A good set of chunky winter wiper blades will cost you less than $50 and a jug of winter washer fluid less than $5.
Don't forget to drain summer washer fluid, too, as it will freeze during long drives — especially if you have a car, like the Cayman, whose engine isn't up front and thus doesn't radiate any heat toward the washer-fluid tank.
I found myself stopping every half-hour to clean the windshield before I was able to park the Porsche indoors overnight and drain the tank.
There will be snowy days, of course, when your car's ground clearance will simply be too low for motoring.
Other than that, though, you'll be treated to the pleasure of driving a fast, responsive, entertaining car all year, rather than just part of it.
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