Welcome to our new motoring column by photojournalist, Brian McDaid.
Brian was one of the first to write about motoring and motorsport for local newspapers starting in the 1980s with his own column “On the Road”.
Starting this week the motoring column is back now in the Donegal Daily with “On The Road, Again”
We will bring you a mix of motoring, reports on something old , something new and something else entirely!
So buckle up and keep inside the speed limit…….!
The Snow Show
As we go to print with our new motoring column the snow has not arrived in Donegal yet (or has it?) but the temperature is dropping fast and we have even seen the odd four wheel drive Subaru back on the road for the that short spell of dangerous weather that we get, mostly in January.
If you look closely at the tyres on your local taxi you will notice that a rougher pattern of tyres are fitted as they prepare for our January snow.
We got talking to one of the local tyre suppliers in Letterkenny this weekend and he was saying that they are ready for the bad weather.
Most of their customers that prepare for the winter driving have already fitted their tyres at the start of December and will take them off again at the end of February.
People like hospice and community nurses that travel to patients through out the county can’t afford to be caught up in the bad weather, so they have to be prepared.
Prices for two snow tyres fitted on the driving wheels of a family car start at 55 euros each including fitting.
Beamers are useless!
Now is the time to say it, and get away with it. Possibly the best road holding car in the world losses grip with the slightest sight of snow, and its owners will agree with your comment.
The famous Bavarian back wheel drive car just melts at the sight of snow, in Donegal anyway, all the onboard computers freeze with panic when the realise the snow is near.
A bit of banter I know but here’s the point. In Germany where the car is made and granted they have more snow than us, BMW owners survive the winter, most of them fit a full set of four snow tyres, which makes getting around a lot better.
If a brand like this has bother in the snow, no mater who is driving it, we in Donegal need to respect the short spell of winter weather that we get.
Most slip about the county for the couple of days that the snow is here, others will not be as lucky, causing expensive damage or even injury as we loss the grip on the road.
No pressure, Councillor Ian
One of the biggest problems in winter for drivers is “standing water”.
After heavy rain fall water lies in pools along the road side. A good set of tyres might make the difference in dealing with this emergency or having an accident.
Councillor Ian McGarvey, who loves his cars and is a big Citroen fan for years says. Citroen have some great safety equipment fitted to their cars, one of these is a monitor to detect a drop in tyre pressure in any of the four tyres,
Councillor Ian is very particular about the condition of his tyres as they are the only contact a car has with the road , good tyres that move the water away gives your car a grip on the roads of Donegal in the winter months, he said.
Pump Patrol
Every week we will be keeping an eye for the good deals in petrol and diesel prices in Donegal. This week It was Apple Green in Letterkenny. As you can see from our picture, prices are coming down. But they still have a bit to come down yet to compete with the Gala Filling station in Ballina, Co Mayo where diesel was 99.9c a litre. Now we’re sucking diesel!
And finally ……. Collectors will look for VW’s with the Double D’s
Years from now vintage car collectors will be looking for the VW’s with the “Double D’s”, of 2015 and before. The models in demand that had the software that fooled the emission test.
The “Defeat Device” as it was called was discovered in America and it has set back Europe’ biggest car manufacture, Volkswagen.
We may think that its bad for them but we do the same thing every day ourselves on the road and think nothing of it.
Hands up how many of us think it’s ok to flash our head lights to an approaching speeding car to let them know that we have just passed a speed camera van sitting back the road, and how many have got our cars chipped to get more power to the wheels.
A couple of years ago I seen where the brand VW was the highest trusted brand here, Ireland was one location for the first production line set up outside Germany to make VW. Here’s hoping that this set-back will pass and the market will start to believe in it again.
Safe driving and see you all behind the wheel next week.
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