Quattro I delivers!

[Robert Mangas]

   Sunday night I’m driving to East Lansing via the interstate when the 
weather goes totally crap.  Heavy heavy freezing rain, but it’s hard to 
judge the effect on the actual driving conditions, so everyone is still 
doing 70+.  Both my locking diffs are locked, and I have new-this-season 
Finnish snow tires.  Suddenly about 3 cars ahead a Neon is slewing badly, 
looked like lift-throttle oversteer mebbe with some panic braking thrown in 
for fun.  To miss him by 6” and not get creamed from the rear my own self I 
dove for the ditch.  Off the side of the road, down a steep 12’ high 
embankment, and into the narrow flat grassy spot that sits between the 
embankment and the trees.  No traction problems once off road (no snow) so I 
just slowed to about 40, shifted to third, and drove back up the embankment 
and onto the shoulder where I accelerated up to traffic speed and pulled 
back in.  Happened so fast, I didn’t get freaked until later.


   Quattro:  Damn straight!