A recent Monday saw significant snowfall where I live in Northern England, giving me the frst chance of finding out how it performs in bad weather.
Now at this point I’d already unconverted, thanks to driving on compacted snow from previous snowfall, that the Anti-lock brakes can be rather unpredictable. Even with very gentle braking, the wheels have a tendency to lock straight up. That had knocked my confidence in the car in bad weather.
Moving forward again to the most recent snowfall, I can only say the car performed brilliantly. Up a very steep hill, the plucky Kia kept moving. Not one, but two Nissan Qashqai’s in front of me stopped on the hill, and the Kia succeeded where the heavy, high riding hatchbacks on stilts failed.
Whilst waiting for a gap to move around the second Nissan, the snow jammed my wheels up. Rocking back and forth freed the wheels, leading to the next challenge, a hill start in heavy snow.
With very, very gentle driving, the Kia moved forward. Inch, by inch, the world’s slowest overtake ensued. The traction control light was flashing, I could feel the wheels slipping, yet the Cee’d kept moving. It pulled up the hill, and spotting more stuck traffic ahead, I turned off and took my chances on a back road.
Sure I arrived at my destination later than expected, but the Kia kept going, and got me there in one piece. At every stage, I knew what the car was doing, and the feedback through the steering and pedals was sublime. Even the Anti-lock brakes played ball. Quite clearly, the Kia Cee’d is a brilliantly engineered car, and my confidence in its abilities was massively improved.
I never really cared for crossovers in the first place, especially as most are only two wheel drive, but my experience has provided some anecdotal evidence that they are far worse in snowy conditions than normal cars. Keep your Jukes, Sportages etc., my Cee’d outperforms them all. Fact (well sort off)!