The Winter Beaters of Canada

I've been in Canada this past holiday season, and it's refreshing to see another country's car culture. For a place which is fairly similar to Australia in most ways, the difference in car culture, and especially during the winter, is a stark contrast. The winter here is very different to Adelaide. The days get shorter, the trees go brown, the mild summer weather turns into a harsh, unrelenting, cold. And perhaps the biggest difference, snow, ice, slush, everywhere. This calls for salt on the roads, something we thankfully never really deal with back in Australia. And this salt has some pretty dire consequences on cars. This combined with much laxer roadworthiness laws leads to some pretty crazy winter beaters getting around.

A common sight.

Anyway, here's a couple spots.

 

A cybertruck, I've seen about a half dozen of these things getting around. Despite the poor build quality which has been documented a lot, I don't hate this thing. It's ugly and stupid, but at least it looks different. The most shocking thing is the size though, they are absolutely massive. Also note the gasoline prices which are in fact higher than Australian prices after exchange rates and taxes. So, despite being a country with one of the largest oil industries in the world, maybe buying a 3 tonne electric pickup truck is the right move.

On trucks this is another culture shock. It's one thing to have the occasional yank tank creeping over two parking spaces in Adelaide, but over here, probably half the cars on the road are these massive trucks. The next level is the dualie.

 

 

This is the best example I've seen, in California last year. Note the bad to the bone spikes coming out of the front wheel hub.

Having seen how hard it gets for my gf to park her family's (still huge) F-150, I have no idea how people are able to wrangle these things around suburban neighbourhoods and supermarket carparks. Because despite the number of large cars on the road, the parking and road infrastructure seems comparable in size to Australia's, if anything a lot of streets are narrower. 

 

A more traditionally sized ... truck? The Subaru Baja is something we never saw in Australia. Strange looking cars and I can see why they never took off, but a fun spot nonetheless. This one also sported a manual transmission and 7-spoke alloys. I'd totally cop one.

 

Saw this one up at a ski resort, a 90's G320 G-Klasse Mercedes. Going off the spare tire cover, this car is used to doordash cannabis to drunk skiers. Nice, robust looking cars, kitting one out as a 4WD-camper would be refreshing in a scene dominated by Toyotas.

 

This... thing. Spotted at the end of a Cul-de-Sac whilst walking the dog, it leaves a lot of questions. It looks to be the cab of an old Unimog, attached to a very expensive looking, brand new, custom chassis and tray. I shudder to think how much the owner has spent on this build, and for what exactly I'm not sure. It wasn't registered (no plates), and I'm not familiar enough with the laws here to know if it could ever be road worthy but I really doubt it. The trailer and towing vehicle which would be required for this leviathan weren't in the owners yard so I have no idea how they're even getting it around. Where it's being taken and driven is also a mystery. I would have thought a commercial monster truck would be plastered with sponsors but this machine remains clean. Unfortunately it won't be me getting the answers to all these questions, the private property signs, traffic cones, skull bumper stickers, and general disarray of the yard were enough for me to quickly move on after snapping these pictures. 

Nissan R33 Skyline GTR Chevrolet Impala Edition.

Not much to say about this except when I looked it up the first suggestion was an 'Official car of' reddit thread which stated that "the 2005 Chevrolet Impala is the official car of a Walmart in a poverty stricken area". This image was taken in a Walmart parking lot, in a seedy area, so I couldn't sum it up any better.

This 850 T-5 was a little hit of nostalgia for my black sedan waiting back home. A little polish and this red example would probably look pretty good. I wanted to know what else the guy had under his tarps...

Unfortunately that's all I got in pictures. This post was meant to be titled The Winter Beaters and Ricers of Canada, but this year I didn't see many ricers, a highlight was an older generation Civic with the exhaust sticking through the bonnet, but I failed to capture it on camera. Does that make it the Bigfoot of cars? At some point I'm sure I'll end up back over there in summer, which is when the cool stuff really comes out of the woodwork. Until then, take a minute to appreciate how good we have it in Australia that our cars don't disintegrate if you drive them for 8 months of the year, and lament the existence of yellow stickers...