Winter Wednesdays

Last week the weather got fairly mild with a few double digit days and since this happened right at the end of winter (according to the calendar) people got excited. However this always happens late March and as soon as you have your car back to summer mode it snows the following week just as reminder that it's not over till it's over. So I did nothing, mid to late April for me, never before!

When I had my e30 I drove it all year round, like all of my cars, and I found that they are quite capable winter vehicles if your heat works well, you have winter tires, and a little weight in the boot. It also doesn't hurt if you can stand to watch them get covered in salt half of the year and not cringe. I suppose the same can be said for most any car I suppose but seeing an e30 covered in salt is quite tragic as they are God's Chariot after all. This e30 was posted in one of several 'Post your car in the winter' threads I follow and it's doing a pretty good job of blending in with its surroundings.

Some of the long time readers, or those of you who have looked through the Theme Tuesday archives, may have noticed I have a bit of an attraction to VW Harlequins. I like these cars because you don't see them often and when you do they can't be missed. Seeing one thats winter driven never crossed my mind until I saw rabriolet of vortex not given a damn and pushing his through significant accumulation.

Winter is starting to get a little tiresome. At the end of last week we were teased with fairly mild weather but at a cost because it was just incredibly windy for two days straight. Then just as a remind that spring doesn't start 'officially' until March 21st we got a decent amount of snow on Sunday night and the weather has turned back to double digits below zero. I guess looking on the bright side we all have at least 1 month left (unless you are in Performance World or sunnier climates) to get all of our ducks in a row for the 2011 season.

It feels a little weird posting a Winter Wednesday today as it's actually fairly mild here in the Toronto area (above zereo). I also can't remember if it snowed the last seven days but what the hell both of these IS300s are more than worth posting. I can't recall where the owner of the one on gumetal one lives but I'm told the owner of the white one lives in a part of Virginia that generally doesn't get lots of snow.

As I sit and type this (Tuesday night) I wait in anticipation for 30 predicted centimeters of snow to fall between now and the morning timed perfectly to make my morning commute hell. Times like these make me wish I had an awd car so I could be as low as I wanted and not really have to ever worry about getting stuck. Subaru owners like Jason don't have to worry about things like this because their cars were made to tackle dirt, mud, and snow fast and with no problems.

Today's Winter Wednesday is a bit different than all of the ones I have posted previous. It contains two cars and both get covered in snow and slush, but only one has it's tires set on the ground, the other is just along for the messy ride. The owner of these cars, Zakinen (from SubaruForester.org), is a pretty lucky guy he drives a dropped Subaru Forrester as a daily and on days he's not working he uses it as a tow rig for his ae86 track car.

I love hot rod guys, something about their mentality makes them different than the rest of us. It's this mentality that allows them to create the cars I like to drool over then take them out in the snow just to blow my mind. The first car I am posting today probably doesn't see much winter driving, the second looks like it was just parked for the winter and then snow fell on it, but the third is reported to be a daily driver.

Sigh, I don't know what it is about some drivers in this weather (snowed today) but I swear they forget which pedal makes the car go and ride the brake all the way to work. If you don't feel safe on all seasons when it snows get winter tires sheesh. Sorry had to vent a little there, spent some time this morning dodging vehicular pylons. The good news is the snow gives me a reason to post this awesome bagged 68(?) Caddy in the snow.

Snow wise this winter is still continuing to be fairly uneventful in the GTA. Usually it snows while I am at work, then by the time I get off work all of it's melted, so I don't really see any of it. Not that I am really complaining because commuting in even light snow seems to double the time it takes to go anywhere. Here are two Nissans in fairly light amounts of snow.

I met Patrick through Gillbert of the Scraped Crusaders. Pat is the type that does whatever he wants to his car regardless of whether or not other people are going to like it. If he likes it, it's done. I've seen this car a few times and the only constants are that it's always low and always has lots of stickers, other than that it's never the same twice.

This winter has been pretty wild so far: two hours away people have been getting snow almost non stop for a week and a half while even farther in away in Ontario people were stuck on the highway in their cars for a couple days. Here in GTA it's just been cold, so that I don't even want to bother setting up my new snowboard, the board which I am reminded of not because of the weather but because Eric has two strapped to the roof of his beater in this Mike Joe photo shoot.