Inside the Mercedes-Benz AMG snow event
You’re doing high speeds on heavy snow in a powerful Mercedes, and there’s a whiteout … What could possibly go wrong?
Forget everything you know about driving. They’re the first words our instructor, the Australian motorsport champion Peter Hackett, says before he unleashes us on a fleet of Mercedes-Benz AMG cars we will drive in some of the most challenging conditions possible.
Hackett, chief driving instructor at the AMG Driving Academy, is briefing a gathering of AMG customers and a handful of media who are about to learn how to drive on snow. That’s right, snow.
I was already concerned about what might be in the offing after I told one of WISH magazine’s regular motoring writers, Stephen Corby, that I was going to New Zealand to drive a fleet of expensive high-powered cars in the snow. Corby, a far more experienced driver than me, assured me I would have a ball. “It’s so much fun at the Snow Farm, and you just steer by looking out the driver’s window and doing everything sideways. You will love it.”
In the weeks leading up to the event, the word sideways kept playing in my head. How do you drive a car sideways, I wondered? When I learned to drive — more than 30 years ago — I distinctly remember the instructor, who also happened to be my father, telling me that the first rule of driving was to always have your eyes facing in the same direction the car is travelling. And my concern transformed into barely contained panic when Hackett told us that the snow was particularly heavy today, which was going to make the task that much harder.
The AMG Winter Sporting Performance-Training experience is open to any Mercedes-Benz customers who have purchased an AMG vehicle (the performance car division of Mercedes-Benz) in the past three years. The event, which takes place near Queenstown on New Zealand’s South Island, is held every two years (weather permitting). Not including flights to New Zealand, the Driving Academy experience costs $4600 per person and there’s no shortage of drivers willing to spend the money — places are limited and sell out almost the moment tickets go on sale. Which means this is a group of drivers who are itching to get out of the warm briefing room and behind the wheel of the AMGs lined up outside.
The Winter Sporting experience occurs at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Ground, affectionately known as the Snow Farm. The 490ha property is 55km northeast of Queenstown in the Pisa mountain range, not far from the ski fields of Cardrona. The Proving Grounds are where car manufacturers from around the world test their new cars in snow and icy conditions; along with a similar facility in Lapland, it helps provide a year-round capability for winter testing on new vehicles.
The point of the briefing session is to go over the day’s events, safety instructions, and explain what to do should you get yourself into trouble — such as ending up in a snow bank and unable to move the car. The only modification to the cars we’ll be driving is that they have been fitted with winter tyres. These are made from a different rubber compound from regular tyres and are designed not to freeze — regular tyres will start to freeze about three degrees, meaning when they’re driven on snow and ice they deliver no grip. It’s -10 outside today and the wind is expected to pick up. “If we get a whiteout, stop driving and wait until it clears,” says Hackett. “Have fun and try not to get frustrated because no one nails this on the first go.”
There’s a series of exercises and driving experiences, designed by professional race drivers from all over Australia, to be completed before lunch — and more challenging ones after lunch — and we’re going to be doing them in a range of AMG cars including the V8 four-litre twin-turbo AMC C63S, the GT C Roadster, the two litre GLA 45, the E 63S and the monster G63 4WD wagon. There are accelerating and braking tests, slaloms, a “Scandinavian flick” to be learned, donuts to be performed, as well as a timed motorkhana and a safari in the mammoth G63 wagon. The various tests have been designed specifically for each model and first up is a simple-sounding acceleration and break test.
Each car comes with its very own professional driver in the passenger seat to guide you through the experience and bark orders at you — at speed. “Have you driven on snow before,” the driver assisting me with the first exercise asks as I buckle up. “Driven on it? I’ve never even walked on it before,” I tell him. Given the temperature outside he’s wearing a balaclava, but I’m sure the look underneath it was one of deep trepidation. “OK then, all I want you to do with this is get the car going, drive it in a straight line and stop it where those orange traffic cones are up ahead.” And I thought this was going to be a challenge.
Did I mention that the stability controls have been turned off for these exercises? AMG cars are designed to go from zero to 100km/h in just a few seconds and when you press on the accelerator, that’s exactly what they try to do. Before you know it the orange cones are approaching, you hit the brakes and then the cones pass by the driver’s window. Despite the winter tyres, stopping a car on snow isn’t as simple as it initially sounded.
It doesn’t take long into the snow driving experience to understand the truth behind Hackett’s advice to forget everything you know about driving — so much of what we’re told to do by our instructors is counterintuitive. You’d think knowing how to stop and turn a car was pretty basic, but when you combine it with a cold and slippery road surface, it starts to become a much more complicated manoeuvre. It takes a couple of hours to get the hang of it and, for this driver at least, it was during the slalom and Scandinavian flick exercises that it all started to gel.
To get the car to perform the flick — basically a long drift — the driver approaches the inside of an upcoming turn, steers sharply towards the outside of the turn, then lifts off the throttle and lightly applies the brakes. This causes a pendulum effect that rotates the car toward the outside of the turn. Then you steer into the turn by releasing the brake pedal while applying the throttle which (should) cause the car to rotate into the corner. You’re basically accelerating when you feel like braking and effectively using the accelerator to steer the car — and doing it all in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. But once you get the hang of it you feel you could do it all day. It’s great fun, and with nothing around you but soft snow it feels perfectly safe in this controlled environment.
Ironically, the easiest — and most serene — exercise of the day was driving the massive G63 SUV in a short “safari” through the snow. Instead of having a driving instructor shout “more power” or “don’t brake” at you, this is a calm, off-road drive up and down some rolling, snow-covered hills. Until it isn’t. First, getting a car that weighs a whopping 3200kg to ascend a hill in the snow is one thing; getting it down again requires a lot more caution to stop it getting away from under you. And then there’s a whiteout. The instructor in the lead car tells us over the radio to stay put while we wait it out.
Few owners of AMG cars ever get the opportunity to test the limits of what their vehicle can do. The consensus among the owners at dinner that night was that it was money well spent. And while they may never drive on the snow like this again, they leave with a great appreciation of what their car is capable of in such extreme conditions.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout