Should i get a winter beater

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Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Follow us on Twitter: globedrive Opens in a new window. Report an error. Editorial code of conduct. Skip to main content. Special to The Globe and Mail. Follow us on Twitter: globedrive Opens in a new window Report an error Editorial code of conduct. I came home from the Detroit Auto Show to find the snow well and truly on the ground.

There was ice an inch thick covering the cars I'd left outside and miniature icebergs floating in the bottle of Speed Shine I'd left in my garage.

What I didn't have was an ice scraper. After an hour's worth of searching in the basement, I came up with a folded-over piece of plastic that was probably included for free with a Happy Meal during the Reagan Administration. And it was thus that I eventually arrived at work. A few hours later I got a call from a friend of mine who was wondering if I could pick him up at the end of the day.

His winter beater, an old Wgeneration Mercedes-Benz, had developed some sort of malady that prevented it from running properly for more than a few minutes at a time. I wasn't surprised that he'd made the call, and he wasn't surprised that I answered the call, and neither one of us was surprised when he inquired about the possibility of catching a ride to work the next morning.

My friend, whom I have known since the 80s, has long been a proponent of the so-called winter beater. He's spent years of his life painstakingly building or restoring everything from trophy-winning mini-trucks to tri-five Chevys. The moment the temperature drops below 50 degrees, as it does from December to mid-April every year in Ohio, he locks those cars in the garage.

But before he does any of that, he starts searching Craigslist for the perfect winter beater. He doesn't buy anything with four-wheel-drive, because that would cost too much and it would also make too much sense. He doesn't put any money into it, because that would defeat the purpose of a winter beater. Half of the time, he buys something with frameless door glass, because nothing makes a degree Ohio winter morning enjoyable like painstakingly freeing the frozen window of a Subaru or something like that from a year-old set of crumbling rubber seals, one inch at a time.

The next four months my friend spends in barely concealed terror. Will his car start in the morning? If it does, will the heater work? The next four months he spends in barely concealed terror. Find one with some maintenance records and go wild. This conversation was always going to trod a path leading to an LS-based engine. The 5. Pick up a slightly crusty pickup and shamelessly drive it into the ground, keeping the guts for your next project. Bonus points if you can score yourself a WT-trim with the V-8, so you get the rubber floors rather than carpet.

Now you know. The combination of a legendary 4. The Quadra-Trac system utilizes a viscous coupling to determine driveline power balance. Normal output is 60 percent rear, and the system transfers to an even if the rear loses traction, all without driver input. That system was updated over the production run of the ZJ-generation Grand Cherokee, but all model years were optioned with some form of all-wheel drive.

Buyers wanting more grunt should search out a model year model, as this was the only year the optional horsepower 5.