I know I’m dating myself to say this, but I was the first person in Halton Region to complete Graduated Licensing. Zooming around Milton, Ontario, in my Nana’s old grey Mercury Topaz, I was queen of the road.
Yet now, after living in Toronto for the past 15 years, my behind-the-wheel experience has become rather limited. I drive at most once every other month (thanks, ZipCar!) and every time I do take to the streets, I miss it.
I love driving. It’s convenient, it’s liberating, it’s practical. And it’s fun.
But it can also be somewhat scary.
Cars move pretty fast these days (my Topaz began to violently shake when I approached 100km/hr). Everyone seems to be in an angry rush, especially in Toronto. And, to top it all off, there’s Old Man Winter making things even more treacherous.
So, what’s a girl to do?
Get ye to a MINI-ry, apparently.
That’s the MINI Winter Driver Training to be exact.
Held at the iCar race track in Mirabel, Quebec, this daylong program offers both in-class and on-course training on how to handle yourself on the road in winter driving conditions. Oh, and it takes place in MINI Coopers. Which just makes the whole experience incredibly fun.
MINI Coopers drive like go-karts. We had the privilege of driving both the MINI Cooper Countryman and the MINI Hatch. (I should mention at this point that the ‘we’ being referred to here consist of around 15 male professional, experienced automotive journalists… and me.) I’m not even going to try to tell you about the Hatch’s bore and stroke (77.0 x 85.8), nor its rack and pinion steering type. And there’d be no point in my going into detail about the Countryman’s compression ratio (11.0), nor its McPherson strut type front suspension. Because, to be honest, I have no idea what I just said.
What I can tell you is the interior cab is bigger than you’d expect, the dashboard with its cockpit-style makes all other dashboards boring in comparison, and the power window button is near the gear shift – not on the door. You might have to put the backseats down to fit a full family load of groceries in the boot, but the thrill of driving that MINI Coopers provide makes it all worthwhile.
NAVIGATING THE COURSE
Before climbing into our assigned MINIs, we were given a tutorial on technique and safety by The Rally Professor himself, Rauno Aaltonen, World Rally Champion and expert MINI Cooper driver, and Philippe Letourneau, BMW Group Canada Chief Driving Instructor.
The top 5 tips I learnt include:
- You control the car; it does not know what you want it to do until you tell it.
- The car speaks back to you through the steering wheel and the seat.
- Keep your hands at 9:00 and 3:00, not 10-and-2 as we were taught years ago in driver’s ed. This allows for better handling and control of today’s cars.
- Always keep your head up; don’t stare at the road in front of you. Look at the road ahead of you, where you want the car to go.
- Don’t focus on the problem; focus on the solution.
Number five was especially relevant when we had to navigate an “avoid the moose” exercise. In this instance, the “moose” was a man with a flag, but the adrenaline rush was definitely still there. Accelerating up to 50km/hr along a snowy road towards an entry gate, where at the last minute before we would drive head-on into a row of pylons, the “moose” would appear without warning from one side or the other, and we had to swerve to avoid it. Plus, just to make it interesting, if we swerved left, we also had to avoid a “school bus.” Needless to say, as the first driver of the first car of the whole day (leader of the pack, vroom), neither moose nor school bus survived.
“Focus on the gap, not the moose,” said Philippe. Good advice but hard to take when, as humans, our natural instinct is to go towards the thing that attracts our attention. (And anyone who has ever seen a moose on the side of the road knows it is incredibly attractive.)
Another technique we were trained on involved accelerating backwards to 60km/hr (which may not seem that fast, but try doing it backwards, and in the snow), and then releasing the gas, giving the wheel a slight jar to the right, followed by an immediate full turn to the left… to spin the MINI in a reverse 180, then seamlessly switch it to drive, straight towards that entry gate. We in the biz call this a Rockford.
But before I start sounding all pro, I must admit to chickening out on one exercise. Over- and under-steering at full speed in figure-8’s on ice proved too much for this part-time driver.
Along with steering technique and vehicle dynamics, we also learned about car control with and without the help of Dynamic Stability Control (DSC). I was honestly taken aback with MINI’s performance in these winter conditions. I never would have expected MINI to handle itself so smoothly over ice and snow.
I was also impressed with how much I learnt about successful driving in winter, and better driving year-round, from just one day of MINI Winter Driver Training in Quebec.
And at the end of the program, the whole group raced an ultimate autocross, where I am proud to say, I completed the whole course, including the icing steering element that I had avoided earlier! Oh, and not a single pylon life was lost.
Yeah, I totally want a MINI now. You would too.
Vroom, vroom!
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For more information on the MINI Winter Driver Training program, or on MINI Coopers in general, please visit www.mini.ca, email [email protected] directly, or view photos from the program on MINI’s Facebook page.
This article was originally posted on Womenofinfluence.ca. To read it there, or learn more about the advancement of professional women, click here.