what’s more fun than a beach holiday? A winter drive with Porsche in Finland

I'M NOT going very fast, but I am going sideways. Even a minor flex of my right ankle causes all four wheels of the Porsche Macan Turbo to spin up and, with some lock on the steering wheel, the rear-end immediately steps out. It’s progressive and controllable, however, and as I lift off the throttle, the tyres regain grip and the car swings in my desired direction.

I do this a few times until the slalom run ends and, while it is easy to control the car at these slow speeds, it is also enormous fun; I drive the route through the forest, stop at the beginning and do it all again. There’s a naughty side present in all of us that wants to spin a performance car’s tyres at least once. It never grows boring and remains an intensely satisfying, if slightly guilty, pleasure.

Unlike drifting a rearwheel-road car on tar, where you can achieve only certain angles before the nose and tail swap direction, it is a different scenario with cars like the Cayenne and Macan. With their permanent all-wheel-drive layout (although the amount of torque can continuously be switched between each respective axle), even if you get it horribly wrong with the steering on full lock, you can still save the slide.

To experience this, one of the Porsche instructors encourages me to try the run with all the traction and stability-control systems switched off. There is no need to ask twice. I’m purposefully eager on the throttle and the Cayenne’s nose quickly passes 90 degrees and is beginning to point closer to the direction I came from than the one we were initially aiming at. However, as per the advice I was given, progressively feeding in more power and aided by the front wheels, the car begins to correct itself and move in the intended trajectory.

At pull-off, it is best to move the gearlever over to the left and use the paddles to select second gear straight away. There’s no need to swap cogs again and you can merely use the throttle and steering wheel to direct the car ... in fact, there’s even enough torque in third gear for the same exercise. With more practise and building familiarity of the Cayenne’s handling characteristics on snow, I start to have some real sideways fun through the slalom.

Now, more than ever, I understand why so many professional rally drivers are Finnish. Not only is there kilometre after kilometre of forests (forestry and its subsidiary industries make up one of Finland largest domestic exports) and lanes that twist through them, but you need to be pretty committed to your sport to go out in these freezing conditions. When we arrived in the town of Kemi, it was a rather chilly -7 degrees Celsius and, leaving the hotel the next morning at 08h00 for the slalom drive, it was still dark. For two days, we didn’t see the sun at all; thankfully, it did at least become light from around 10h30. And stayed that way until 15h00, when darkness fell again…

Still, given the weather, the conditions are perfect, offering a smooth and comfortable ride in our Porsche Cayenne Turbo S and later in the Macan Turbo with Performance Package (see page 96). These roads are given the salt treatment in winter to stop them icing over and, fitted with winter tyres – Dunlop SP Winter Sports on the Cayenne and Pirelli Scorpions on the Macan – that have more cuts and grooves on the tread, grip levels are surprisingly high. It also helps that the snow hasn’t melted and is strangely dry both on- and offroad. Even the carbon-ceramic brakes fitted to these cars allow efficient stopping power on snow.

In Finland, Porsche AG uses a number of venues for coldweather and tyre testing. The place outside Rovaniemi where we did our slalom runs was but a taster of what the full Porsche customer experience offers outside Levi, a further 170 km drive north inside the Arctic Circle.

Jukka Honkavuori, another of Porsche’s instructors, explains what these client programmes entail: “Every year, the cars on offer are different; it depends on what models have been launched and what is available. However, we offer drives in the SUVS, as well as the 911s and Panameras. In the 911 range, it includes Carreras, the 911 Turbo and the GT3 RS. We even have a GT3 Cup car that customers can drive, fitted with the studded tyres.”

I wonder if they have ever cancelled an event, or put it on ice – excuse the pun – if the temperature dipped too far below zero. His answer surprised me: “We’ve never had to cancel an event. The lowest temperature we’ve recorded was -41 degrees Celsius. Nothing was changed or modified on the cars, and we didn’t experience any problems. At these temperatures, or actually any temperature below -10, we never switch the cars off between runs. It helps that we store them indoors during the night where the cars are not exposed to the severe cold. In the end, we drive the cars for around six hours every day.”

It’s a marker of how far modern cars have come that they can operate in temperatures ranging from -40 to 40 degrees Celsius. The snowy climes of Finland were a lot of fun, but I’m a son of Africa and I know which one of those 40s I prefer…

 Building familiarity with the Cayenne’s handling on snow, i start to have some real sideways fun through the slalom 