Ideas to the floor please.

Subaru Justy for the 4WD and better mpg, otherwise any N/A Subaru should do the job.

Or get a cheap diesel Disco and hope it'll last the winter.

Lexus IS200.

Little Suzuki, a la Steve Firth? Not much fun most of the time, but fine for a snowmobile.

Daihatsu Terios. It's not an off-roader but you don't need that. It has reasonable ground clearance and if you get a 2001 model and choose carefully, you'll get low VED and reasonably low mileage.

It has higher ground clearance than normal cars, certainly enough to clear roads with snow cover.

How very post modern.

Mate of mine had a Vitara once - 1.6 petrol, it was, and it was s**te on fuel - 25mpg at best, and performance not to match.

Plus, it'll match his other camp wheels....

My choice would be a non-turbo Impreza Sport.

Mitsubishi Delica All terrain 2.8 TDi

Now you weren't expecting me to say that.

Landrover Defender, easy to work on, cheap parts, cheap to insure as a second car.

Defender 90?

I like Defenders (and Discos and classic rangies). They're pretty much unstoppable off road and in the snow, especially with a good set of tyres on.

I have a little bit of experience with driving them and using them every day however, and my wallet, knuckles and supply of patience tell me to avoid. Especially at this price level.

If you can find one for 2k if will be a heap of s**te.

Classic Range Rover with LPF,Disco TDI or Suzuki Jimney, even the N/A Superglues won't do 30mpg.

Well it has to be one of the various amusing looking Suzuki small 4x4 things. There's not really any point in getting a car that has 4wd IMHO, it needs to be an actual 4x4 vehicle cos otherwise IME you have a car that instead of just spinning the rear wheels will be spinning all 4 wheels, and still won't stop any quicker when you're sliding towards that wall....

One of my friends used to have, well had for a winter, some SOAudi that was a few hundred quid and had 4wd, and it wasn't really any good whatsoever in the snow, except it was worth nothing and he hated it, so driving it like a rally car on a special stage was completely acceptable. Including an amusing incident that saw us go through one hedge, over some, erm, snow covered stuff that made a lot of load banging noises and threw us around a bit, then through another hedge and onto the road, facing the right way and still going.

Hehe, I'd forgotton about that till now, I'm so texting him with some laughter right now. He's got a tweaked old shape Audi S3 now, and that's pretty crap in the snow as well heh, although it's got around 300bhp and that just makes it harder to drive in the snow apparently as if you accidently let it get a bit much boost all manor of hell breaks loose :-)

Forrester - it's not an Impreza, which is good. Volvo V70 Estate AWD

You can then use them as a tow car for when you borrow the Sylva to do Golspie and Fintray. And there are loads within your budget.

"DanB" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

The number of driven wheels makes no difference whatsoever to how well something will brake on a low-friction surface - or whether it'll go round a corner or not.

Tyres are the _really_ big secret to driving on snow or ice. Proper winter tyres - with the help of "clue", of course... Every granny in Scandinavia can opposite lock and power-flick a barge of a RWD Volvo 240 around on sheet ice with millimetre precision. Because they've got proper winter tyres on, and if they didn't have a clue they wouldn't be able to get to the Post Office for their pension then pop into the shop for Tibbles' catfood.

This one looks fine for the price

Older Pajero Diesel Old Sangyong/Daewoo Musso Old Frontera Diesel, and a couple of these.

Pete will come along and say how crap they are, but they do keep going and have moderate clearance.

N/a Impreza - they even have low range, although that's probably not particularly useful for snow.

XR4x4 - mine was used to follow the WRC in Sweden before I got it and apparently did an excellent job. I've even got a sump guard I could give you to keep the white stuff out of the engine bay :)

Frontera 4x4 - I heard on the grapevine that these aren't as bad as they could be, and can be had pretty cheap. Could be a lie though.

Personally though I'd either find a decent-ish Rangie / Disco TDi or save a wad of cash and buy a

I quite fancy a Forrester in a perverse sort of way, they seem to be available for £cheap too.

Do AWD V70s have a reputation for lunching transfer boxes? Is it a Haldex system they use?

There were loads of £800 Audi Quattros on Autotrader before christmas, and several at the end of driveways on my way to work with for sale signs in the windows but not any more. )c:

Heheh, Golspie and Fintray. Boyndie's within striking distance too.