SNOW PATROL

Granted, it sounds a simple assignment. Chuck your ski gear in a car, drive to Alps, ski, drive back. But, as with any apparently straightforward task, there are ways and ways of doing it. I've been wearing a groove between Calais and the French Alps for over twenty years now and in that time, I've managed to progressively develop the requirements for what makes the perfect car for the job. What's more, if it can work well as a ski car, it also works extremely well as an all-round family hack.

Prior to this year, if pressed for the best car I'd used, it would have been the Toyota Land Cruiser. What's more, it was tough to see how the big Toyota could be beaten. Thing is, we start running into a question of value for money. At over £35,000 for a four-wheel drive, five-door Land Cruiser with an auto box, it starts becoming a rather valuable trinket to be flogging over a snowy pass. In the search for a more affordable alternative, one name stood out. You might remember SsangYong for a series of slightly odd looking 4x4s in the Nineties. They weren't the sort of thing I'd have given much time to, but like every other South Korean manufacturer, SsangYong has come charging into contention with a more contemporary range of products. I chose the big Rexton 4x4 because it seemed to satisfy ten fundamental requirements.

To satisfy these criteria, the car in question must offer a proper four wheel drive system, a torquey and economical diesel engine, it must be big enough to get skis in the back with at least three people and luggage on board, must feature ESP stability control, needs seat heaters, industrial-strength air conditioning, cruise control and a decent USB-in stereo, offer adequate ground clearance and can't be fitted with impractical low-profile tyres. Checking off all of these requirements soon whittles down the list of available contenders, but the Rexton 270 EX did all of this and did it for under £24,000. This is less than the very cheapest (and far smaller) diesel Honda CRV or Toyota RAV4. A proper beefy SUV for less than the price of a Barbie truck? Sounds too good to be true.



First signs were promising. The Rexton's styling was neat, the seven seat interior was decently appointed with leather and sat nav but there were a couple of caveats. One was that the car wasn't riding on winter tyres, instead sporting a set of Hankook K406 rubber. The second was that engine refinement from cold wasn't the Rexton's strong suit. Once it got warmed up, noise levels w...