woodcock

"It's not the snow that's damaging it's the gravel, sand and salt that's left on the highways. You will trash your car's paint and cause premature corrosion."

Well, it's a mixture of both. If you leave your car outside overnight, buried under a neat coating of ice and/or snow, that's definitely no good for any part of the car, fully agreed. Particularly not if it's a cab, which was originally referred to. Hence the need for a garage o'night.

But whilst salt mixed with dirt is aggressive, and should be washed off regularly, it's no more of a threat to the paint than the usual chips from high speed or from trackday use. And corrosion on the painted parts will require a daily driver in Alaska, IMHO.

Of course you can tuck your PS away in the winter, and of course damp conditions don't exactly prolong the life span of our cars. But you're not trashing your car by driving and treating it accordingly in the winter, not any more than by racing it from time to time.

That's what PS's are built for.

Witness the Camp 4 Driving School PS launched a few years ago.

Rgds

woodcock

TomF

I can attest to how dangerous a 993 can be on street tires in bad snow conditions. I got caught in a freak Thanksgiving blizzard in Eastern Washington a couple of years back in 80mph winds. The car litterally would blow across the lanes. We finally found a safe place to stop and hunker down, but I am telling you, it was the WORST experience I have ever had in the snow. With proper snow tires, I am sure it would have been much less hairy, but I would have preferred to be in a Range Rover, and even then, I bet it would have been a white-knuckle experience.

JasonAndreas

Preferably an unheated garage. If your garage is heated/insulated your almost better off parking the car outside for the winter (if you plan on driving it).

Feehliks

That´s the point. Cold air is much denser, what means extra hp due to the additional oxygen.

I had a wax coating applied at the "Werk" in Zuffenhausen. It is a brown mass covering bare aluminium parts underneath against salt. However, I do not depend on the Porsche on a daily basis and will stay with train and plane, if I think the weather is not suitable.

Best regards,

Felix

jbuchsba

Hi..

Maybe I am a wimp, but I plan to keep the 993 P-car for many, many years. As such, I really want to avoid bad (rust inducing) weather in it, like snow. .....so I got a used Audi. Great car. Not a p car, but what is?


The Q is a tank in snow...lived in Cleveland for a while and I would never take a p car out there....the thing would be trashed in a week from salt/rocks/debris/snow banks.

I suppose I just don't have the money to ruin the p car....to each his own.


JB

(My worry is what the other guy is going to do to my car as he/she is sliding around out of control in his/her SUV....)

Franklin229

woodcock
I appreciate your comments but I must say I do not know what the conditions are like where you live but where we are, they use a lot of coarse grade salt and sand on the roads. It took only two winters here to pepper the front of my newly aquired truck as well as my wife's car. Between the two cars we drive throughout the winter, we average about one replaced or repaired windshield every three years due to a stone kicked up by another vehicle/truck. My wifes car was probably ready for a front respray at 30K-Tracking the car is one thing-at least you can tape up the car and enjoy the ride.

woodcock

JB, Franklin

Maybe I made myself misunderstood - I was not trying to suggest a PS is a sensible daily driver in snow and ice conditions. Of course, a SUV or any 4x4 with higher clearance is built for that weather. And of course, regular driving in any kind of dampness, and in particular in ice and snow due to usage of gravel and aggressive salt is not good for the car.

I just wanted to make the point that PS's were built in Southern Germany, where you do indeed get alot of snow, with those conditions in mind. And particularly the later models with the galvanised bodies are far less prone to rapid corrosion that the 70's-80's cars.

I would still argue that if you compare trackday to 'winter' use, the winter driving is no more strain on the PS than the former. And just as we all prepare the car for track days (tyres, taping, LWF's etc.), we can do the same for winter time (tyres, regular washes, unheated! garage o'night etc.). I've certainly got more chips from track days than from winter road driving, despite taping (which I admittedly don't always do, not properly anyway).

I just don't agree that winter driving 'ruins' our car, as was suggested earlier, if done properly.

woodcock