The best car features to help you survive this winter

Given that we are soon facing up to a metre of snow courtesy of Storm Ciara from Canada (if we believe what we read in the press!), we thought it would be a good time to pull together another blog about the features that you need in cars to help you drive safely in the winter.

Back in January, we covered Fast Car Finance’s best and worst cars for winter so this month, we wanted to cover some of the key things you should consider when buying a car that’s going to survive tough conditions in the winter!

AWD or 4×4 Capabilities?

There’s no doubt, AWD capabilities are better for general winter driving because the technology behind it knows exactly when you need the extra wheels to improve your driving experience.  Whilst systems such as AWD and 4 WD can add weight to the vehicle, we believe that the world-class Quattro system with Audi is brilliant and tests have shown that there is no increase in fuel consumption (which is a common myth).

If you don’t want to compromise driving experience during the rest of the year when the weather is dry, then you might want to check out the Land Rover Sport, which is the car of choice for Fast Car Finance MD Andy Wise. The ‘terrain response system’ means you’ll manage on roads that many others can’t and the option to change the terrain specifically to mud or snow, means you’re guaranteed safety without compromising drive quality.

Keeping Warm!

Range Rover has a brilliant system to heat your car up via a remote control with a seven-day timer.  This is a great option if you know that the weather is going to be cold for a number of days – your car can be comfortable and ready to go at exactly the time you finish your morning coffee.  There’s a huge number of other benefits of the latest Range Rover – check them out here!

Automatic Engines?

If you’re not used to driving in the snow (and many in the UK aren’t) then an automatic gearbox can help to make sure you don’t over rev the car and spin the wheels.  The extra gears in an automatic gearbox generally mean that the revs are low almost all the time. A great example of this is the Porsche-Doppelkupplungsgetriebe – or the PDK for short! Put simply, it is two gearboxes combined in to one (a dual clutch transmission). There are seven speed transmissions available which are available in both manual and automatic modes.

This dual clutch transmission is also available for both Land Rover and Range Rover.

Which Cars Have a Pre-set Winter-mode?

Activating winter mode helps you to get the car started automatically in second or third gear, therefore stopping your wheels from spinning. Many cars have various options (night mode/ice and snow mode) so it’s worth making sure you switch into the right mode!

Safety Rating?

NCAP rates all of the cars in Europe for safety (in all areas not just in bad weather conditions). This is worth looking in to if you’re looking for a really safe car for winter driving.  They also rate the Adult Occupancy Score which tests the safety of adults in a vehicle if they had various types of crashes.

The Range Rover Discovery Sport was rated in 2014 and scored 5 stars. Check out the details of the rating here.  Other cars that performed well include the Audi Q7 and Q8, Porsche Taycan and Teslar Model X.

Sat Nav

Sometimes the roads look totally different in the snow, so having an in-built sat nav can be a brilliant way to make sure you get to your destination when you need to. Plus, the ability to have live traffic updates can let you know if there are any snow-related accidents so that you can find an alternative route.

One of our customers said the tech in his new Audi is brilliant – there is probably more tech on here than you can possibly ever wish to use – seriously who would want to use voice recognition to compose a tweet while driving? But if you do want to, Audi has made it possible so take a look at what Audi offer in terms of Infotainment.

We’d love to know what you think are the most important features in a car this Winter? Have you got any others you can recommend?

If you are interested in making an upgrade to your current car, we can get your finance sorted out incredibly quickly – that’s why we are Fast Car Finance! Get in touch with the team on or email info@fcfinance.co.uk.