Robert Nicholson was having his morning tea and toast, listening to the news, when his doorbell rang. Heavy snow was causing travel chaos in his area of Bolton, and when he opened the door he found his flustered local doctor holding a spade.
“He said, ‘Sorry to trouble you, but could you help me pull my car out?’,” Nicholson recalls. “He’d tried digging his way out but was well and truly stuck. I said of course I’d help, got in my Range Rover TDV8 and towed him to the nearest bit of gritted road.”
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It was a scene that has been played out numerous times across the country over the past fortnight: neighbours with 4x4s doing their bit to help out stranded friends and relatives, using their vehicles’ superior traction and torque to cope with the treacherous roads, which have left many stuck at home or sunk in ditches.
For Nicholson, it was not just doing a good turn that gave him a warm glow inside: “The thing is, this neighbour has let it be known that he doesn’t see the point of off-roaders. Doesn’t like them one bit. Ever since I bought it last year he has been telling neighbours that it is irresponsible to drive such a big car. It rips up the road, he says, and causes pollution; he thinks they are bad for the planet and pointless. No wonder he looked so sheepish when he came asking for my help. I’m not too proud to say that I am still gloating about it.”
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The big freeze has seen an unprecedented thawing of relations between owners of large off-roaders and those who previously branded them “planet killers”. Once the pariahs of the highway, 4x4s and their drivers have become the unexpected knights of the road; from satan to samaritan with one heavy snowfall.
Web forums are brimming with posts reliving Damascene moments on icy roads. “I have been one of the worst critics of 4x4 drivers — well, the townie ones anyway. But yesterday one came to my rescue. I am therefore going to say a huge apology and well done to all of you with 4x4s who acted as heroes and heroines in this weather,” posted someone calling herself Demoness Hades last Sunday.
“I hope the eco-greenies who say they dislike 4x4s are taking note,” replied Slimster.
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Suddenly, owning an off-roader doesn’t look so silly. A survey last week suggested that after months of declining sales, off-roaders were regaining popularity. The website Contract Hire and Leasing.com, which tracks searches made by people thinking of buying new cars, found that in the past seven days, nine out of the top 15 model searches had been for 4x4s, top of which was the Volvo XC90, followed by the Range Rover Sport and the Land Rover Discovery. “Weeks of travel disruptions have made motorists despair and rethink their vehicle choice,” explains Richard Lawton, the company’s marketing manager. “They suddenly have mass appeal to disheartened commuters.”
Six months ago the popularity of 4x4s was at rock bottom. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, 4x4 sales, which peaked in 2005 at 187,000, dropped last year to 136,500. The loss of popularity was hardly surprising. A concerted effort by green lobby groups and government policy makers had made owning a 4x4 the equivalent of committing social suicide and having to pay for the clean-up bill afterwards.
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I’ve lost count of the number of times I have taken someone through the snow and they have said they could never see the point of these before David MuddellIn 2007 Gordon Brown, then still the chancellor, unveiled a tax on gas guzzlers that hit owners of most 4x4s with a higher rate of road tax totalling £400. It was supposed to encourage motorists to opt for less polluting vehicles but was seen as a thinly veiled attack on the hated off-roader driver: “The chancellor is using road tax as a weapon against motorists, and it will be those who really need 4x4s for their daily lives that suffer most,” said Sue Robinson of the Retail Motor Industry Federation at the time.
Ken Livingstone, then mayor of London, branded 4x4 owners “idiotic” and announced a plan to charge them £25 to enter the capital’s congestion charge zone, although it was later scrapped. The persecution reached such a pitch that a group calling itself the Alliance against Urban 4x4s took to demonstrating outside schools, giving false parking tickets to yummy mummies in their Chelsea tractors.
None of this has quite been forgotten by 4x4 owners today. David Muddell is a member of the southeast branch of the 4x4 Response team, a national organisation of private 4x4 owners that volunteers to ferry essential supplies and staff to hospitals, schools and care homes made inaccessible by the snow. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I have taken someone through the snow and they have said, ‘I could never see the point of these before’,” he says.
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Muddell, known as Dave Mud, says his team of 56 drivers have never been so busy, covering more than 1,000 miles over the past five days. “About 60% of the volunteers are committed off-roaders — they spend their spare time taking their vehicle off road — but 40% are IT workers or recruitment consultants who just have a 4x4 at home and want to help the community.”
Others 4x4 owners are less forgiving. “How are we supposed to react to local councils requesting help from four-wheel-drivers in the bad weather after the systematic victimisation and vilification we have suffered for years at the hands of these public servants, not to mention the road fund daylight robbery?” asks one from the Midlands.
There was one irony not wasted on 4x4 drivers as they forced their way through snow drifts to rush a pregnant mother to hospital or rescue a stranded hiker. The reason they were made outcasts was for causing global warming.