In the current edition of The Field (not online), motoring correspondent (and occasional BH commenter) Charlie Flindt is reviewing the latest Chelsea tractor from Mazda:
It’s funny how the world goes round. Not many years ago, four-wheel-drives were the most evil machines on the road, the spawn of the devil. The once-powerful Global Warming fraternity made it clear that such machines were redundant. Snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”, Dr David Viner, of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, told the Independent. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” So to own a four-wheel-drive was to invite scorn, ridicule or worse from Prius-owning, yoghurt-wearing, muesli-knitters. How things have changed. Snow is regular, as well as crisp and even. The supplements bulge with adverts for fourwheel-drive cars – a well-known German car maker, famous for its obsession with rear-wheeldrive, ran a series of ads over the winter pointing out that many of its models had four-wheel-drive. Small comfort for those who may have spent 60 grand on a machine that spins impotently at the bottom of a snowy slope – a sign of the meteorological times.