Hils Everitt – Editor at Large
It was great fun playing about in the snow on my local country roads in Kent – well… when access to them wasn’t blocked by people who got themselves stuck in their unsuitable 2WD vehicles. Come on people, listen to the TV warnings and don’t venture out if your vehicle can’t hack it!
Anyway, I felt it was high time to take the Tiguan Escape on a long journey to somewhere picturesque where we could play together off the beaten track, but not in the snow.
Louise Limb
Keep your voices low but while the Automobile Association may have been frantically busy with plenty of other stranded drivers this last month, the elderly blue Freelander has had absolutely no need of their services, stoically ploughing up and down the roads of the north of England with little more than an odd and so far, annoyingly elusive, clanking noise over the offside wheel arch for accompaniment.
Deciding he needed a second-hand 4×4, or rather, he needed a cheap second-hand 4×4, Paul Guinness went searching for a bargain buy. He ended up with a Lada Niva Hussar – here he explains the reasons why
Photography: Paul Guinness
On paper at least, I had a simple requirement: a 4×4 workhorse. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive and certainly nothing complicated. It had to be a good old-fashioned 4×4, of the type that proved popular back in the days when only farmers and country folk bought all-wheel drive vehicles. Most certainly not the kind of 4×4 that would appeal to the school run brigade.
So why this sudden urge for a real four-wheel drive machine? In truth, a number of factors were coming into play, not least the fact that a cheap but capable 4×4 is a hugely entertaining thing to own. More seriously though, I needed a vehicle that could double-up as a van when the need arises (which it does regularly during the on-going redesign and revamp of my garden). And, with a farm in the family, it also had to be a genuinely capable off-roader that wouldn’t be embarrassed by any visiting Defenders.
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