Friday, March 12, 2010

You can drive to the YUKON in a Smart car


THANKS to a combination of passion, planning and patience, man has not only proven that he can walk on fire, but that he can also walk on the surface of the moon.

With that spirit in mind, I like to think that my gas tank is always half full rather than half empty. Anything's possible. What's the worse thing that can happen? I've got life insurance. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

That said, even a perennial optimist like me was filled with doubt when Mercedes-Benz Canada sent me an invitation to partake in a winter driving expedition from Kelowna, B.C., to Whitehorse, Yukon. The itinerary outlined a four-day, 2,500-kilometre road trip to the Arctic that promised to be the adventure of a lifetime.
The only catch was we had to take this expedition in a Smart car.
My initial thought was that maybe the Smart marketing team wasn't as smart as those cute little cars they sell.

A division of Mercedes-Benz, the Smart is the smallest road-legal car sold in Canada. Although I'd driven one in the past and thoroughly enjoyed it, I have to admit that the mere prospect of driving a Smart car through some of the harshest and most severe weather conditions on the planet had me thinking that this was a very tall order for a very small car.

Dubbed the Smart Winter Expedition, the checklist did little to ease my doubts. Seven Smart cars, three Mercedes-Benz support vehicles and a flock of automobile journalists from across the country. The fact that a support team made up of professional drivers and technical specialists had been assembled to hold our hands throughout the journey helped to somewhat ease my worried mind, but as I boarded the plane I still couldn't help but wonder what I was getting myself into.
Read the rest of this great article here.

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