L.a. Auto Show 2016

[Coss]

Can't be worse than a Beetle, with all the weight in the back, it's like throwing a dart backwards. Those high turnpike bridges can get a bit dicey (unscheduled lane changes are fun).

Try an empty VW Van going across the Columbia River Gorge with 50mph cross wind gusts; do you know what it's like to drive a van on 2 wheels?

 

[W. WIllie]

A lot of drivers have problems with cross winds because they "OVERCORRECT" the steering.
(My Opinion from observations)

 

[Ty]

A lot of drivers have problems with cross winds because they "OVERCORRECT" the steering.
(My Opinion from observations)

Overcorrect? No way... In almost every movie ever made, if there is a sudden loss of forward vision (a comical bucket of mud, dusty road, steam, mist, whatever), the FIRST thing the driver MUST do is crank the steering wheel hard. It's almost as if the driver is thinking "That straight road I'm on must have suddenly gained a 90 degree turn to the left!"

 

[bowers baldwin]

Try an empty VW Van going across the Columbia River Gorge with 50mph cross wind gusts; do you know what it's like to drive a van on 2 wheels?

Never got the bug on 2 wheels, but I did float it once on a flooded out road, passed a guy stalled out in a Caddy. Does that count as no wheels?

 

[2barrel]

Never got the bug on 2 wheels, but I did float it once on a flooded out road, passed a guy stalled out in a Caddy. Does that count as no wheels?

It appears that a lot of us older (seasoned) Elioers did some crazy things in our VWs in our younger years! Are we trying to relive our youth in our Elio's?

 

[Coss]

It appears that a lot of us older (seasoned) Elioers did some crazy things in our VWs in our younger years! Are we trying to relive our youth in our Elio's?

I wasn't trying to do it, the wind was trying to knock it on it's side.
The Columbia River crossing on I-90 is about a mile to a mile and a half wide, and it's 600' above the water about 1/2 way up a canyon.
I was driving East to West, but the wind was out of the north. Scared the chit out of me.

 

[booboo]

I hear you, pulled an empty 53' trailer across I80 WY during wind warning. Scariest thing I ever did behind a wheel.
http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.town...bf1-bbc5-e2f2bb8e82db/52df389d3dc8e.image.jpg

 

[outsydthebox]

It appears that a lot of us older (seasoned) Elioers did some crazy things in our VWs in our younger years! Are we trying to relive our youth in our Elio's?

Well, Yeah!

 

[TheAsterisk!]

Meh. A breezy day here is maybe 30, 35mpg sustained. Sustained winds of 45mph in otherwise calm conditions a few times each winter are unremarkable. I've never seen a snowfall of less than an inch drift across a highway anywhere else, but I've seen it several times out on US 136 between Heyworth and Champaign. In other compacts and sub-compacts, the tractor-trailers passing me in calmer weather at about 80mph to my 55 actually pushed my cars around far more than the winds did. In any case, provided it doesn't come out of nowhere, and you're attentive, it's no big deal, though it can get a little tiresome if varying winds push you around for the whole of a three or four hour drive, admittedly. I just usually stop for a few minutes every hour or so, in those cases. Stretch my legs, get a snack, try to figure out the reason for the F-84 parked next to the Super 8- you know, that sort of thing.

Weight notwithstanding, the car I had to learn to drive in was a terror in wind. My mother had a massive late-nineties Dodge Ram conversion van, and she insisted I would learn in that and then be given a smaller car. Felt like it was going to fall over in normal, even sedate turns, and wind made it feel like you were on a carnival ride.

 

[Elio Amazed]

Try an empty VW Van going across the Columbia River Gorge with 50mph cross wind gusts; do you know what it's like to drive a van on 2 wheels?

Yep. Not because of wind though.
My mom and I were in my Ford extended van on the twisties in the hills around Camp David and was I in hurry.
I also know what it's like to drive an unladen eighteen wheeler on nine wheels because of the winds in those Western passes and canyons.

There were a lot of days where Wyoming was tons of fun too.