NOBODY KNOWS WINTER DRIVING LIKE NEW ENGLAND JOURNALISTS

When you’re about to load your Trager smoker with a rack of ribs, you don’t consult a recipe from Connecticut. So when you’re about to buy a vehicle and want to learn about what it’s like to drive it through a New England winter, why read about what somebody in Phoenix thinks?

For over 30 years, winter performance has been the New England Motor Press Association’s calling card. The sun shines here occasionally, too, and the organization runs a summer event for convertibles called the Ragtop Ramble and Crustacean Crawl. But it is the brutal winters and half-maintained roads where writers, video personalities, and radio hosts truly have an advantage.

“I think the Official Winter Vehicle of New England competition is unique because we’re the only press association that actually works in the winter and really knows how these vehicles perform,” says Cliff Atiyeh, the New England Motor Press Association’s new President. Atiyeh has been a part of the organization for more than 20 years, since his time at the Boston Globe and Boston.com, and through his work as a contributor to Car and Driver and CarGurus. “Whether it’s EVs, or SUVs and cars, we actually have to deal with this for four months out of the year.”

It’s the difference between being flown to a location where there might be some snow on the ground, to managing to survive a winter, day in, day out, sometimes from late October into April. “Other journalists from other parts of the country might visit it for a little while,” says Atiyeh. “We’re living with this stuff, we see what works, and nobody else in the country really looks at winter the way that we do.”

Another advantage of the New England Motor Press Association is how closely its members share notes. The judging for the Official Winter Vehicle of New England lasts all winter long, giving members the opportunity to get in as many vehicles as possible to evaluate their merits. About midway through the judging process in February, the members convene and get a chance to sample vehicles that they didn’t evaluate during the rest of the winter.

What makes New England roads and weather so unique is their variability. Over two weeks in February of 2023 – in what had been up to that point a fairly mild winter – temperatures went from the 30s, plunging down to -17 degrees Fahrenheit in the Portland, Maine, region, before snapping back into the 50s two days later, all before dumping multiple doses of six to eight-inch snowfall, sheet ice, and rain on the region a week later.

It not only makes for slick driving conditions, but when temperatures rise and fall and mix with water, holes open in the roadway wreaking havoc on vehicles designed for more temperate climates. An SUV with 22-inch wheels and summer-rated performance tires becomes rapidly undrivable in these conditions, regardless of whether it has all-wheel drive.

“You can see awards competitions all over the place,” says Atiyeh, “but for cold-weather testing, who else is really doing it?”

Over the last 30 years, manufacturers have seen the potential and the power of the Official Winter Vehicle laurels awarded to a vehicle. “It is always a great honor to be recognized by the New England Motor Press Association because New England is so important to our brand,” says Thomas J. Doll, President, and CEO of Subaru of America, Inc. “Much of the early growth for Subaru started in New England precisely because of the excellent performance of our vehicles under harsh winter conditions. This reaffirms the capability that allwheel drive Subaru’s are known for. Whether you’re just driving to work or maybe heading to your next adventure, Subaru vehicles are built to get you there safely during the winter months. This recognition is a testament to our commitment to setting the highest safety standards for any weather – rain, shine, snow, or sleet.”

Jeep is another brand that has wagered heavily on winter performance. It has managed to score an Official Winter Vehicle award four times. “The Jeep team knows that New Englanders face most of the harshest winter weather in the country, and they depend on their Jeep SUVs to get them through the winter stressfree,” said Jim Morrison, Senior Vice President and Head of Jeep Brand North America. “The journalists in the New England Motor Press Association know the elements their readers need to conquer each winter, so when they determine that a Jeep 4x4 is the most capable at tackling harsh conditions, it’s validation that the entire Jeep team that designs, engineers, builds and sells these capable Jeep 4x4s is serving our customers where they live with a Jeep vehicle they can count on.”

Evaluations in these harsh conditions are especially essential as the vehicle landscape changes. Within the last 12 years, the marketplace has gone from exactly one major manufacturer with an EV – Nissan, with the original Leaf – to nearly every major manufacturer with an EV in the product mix.

Nearly all of those vehicles boarded transporters to New England to be a part of the winter-long competition. “It’s more important than ever to have an authority on winter testing, especially with EVs,” Atiyeh says.

That original Leaf from 2012 provided a maximum of 100 miles of range and turning the heat on easily dropped the range by 25 percent. Today, a vehicle like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 has a maximum range of over 250 miles, and testing in extreme cold temperatures reveals a relatively negligible drop in range, thanks to innovations in heat pumps and battery pre-heaters.

“But some we’ve found are a lot better than others, and some are truly winter-equipped. We see in other EVs that the range depletes extremely quickly. “Through our testing we can see the companies that are really committed to putting EVs out for everyone, not just consumers in warm weather states,” says Atiyeh.

The New England Motor Press Association announces its Official Winter Vehicle of New England award winners after the close of judging in March.