There are still a few weeks left of winter to deal with. That means that even though I’m looking at beautiful temperatures and sunny skies for the next couple of days around BangShift Mid-West, that at any point in time the sun can and will go away, the rains could come back with a vengeance, snow could fall, or the weather could otherwise get stupid. (Trust me…I just looked at the weather reports and I’m dead-on about “stupid”.) But at least for the next week or so, snow won’t be in the picture. I might bitch a bit about snow falling, but that’s because we live where no plow bothers to go and we have exactly zero vehicles that are optimal for snowy conditions. What’s a better choice: a truck on summer tires, a hot-rodded rear-drive sedan, a Fox Mustang with near-no power on old-ass tires, or the mother of all bad decisions, a twenty-two foot long limousine on tires that are beyond shot?

If I’m going to play in the snow properly, I want four wheels spinning, I want enough power to keep them spinning, and I want control. A rally rocket could do nicely…on studded tires that are skinny enough to cut through snow instead of floating on top but offer enough bite to keep things in check. Yes, I’m daydreaming again, but this footage of some older rally cars blasting around a course at Livigno in Italy, courtesy of 19Bozzy92, is dream material right here. A Ford Focus RS WRC, the one we never got…a Ford Fiesta WRC like what you would see Ken Block tossing around…and a Peugeot 206 WRC, Peugeot’s best foot forward in rally racing since the Group B era, all skating around in the snow beautifully. Nothing says happiness quite like a long drift with a roostertail of freshly churned snow flying off all four tires, does it?