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Serious cars and serious weather don't mix, right? Wrong. Here's TopGear's guide to having fun when the going gets tough...
Words: Tom Ford
Photos: Justin Leighton
Shopping. It's as non-linear a pastime as anything I can think of. You start off wanting a new book and sign off Amazon an hour later the owner of a new stylophone, a body-pump DVD and a slanket, feeling like you might have just been the victim of some sort of digital date-rape. Still, take heart, because it's the same with cars.
Despite what car mags would have you believe, few of us look at a car and compare it directly to similar kit. Nope, we go out with half-formed notions of what we want, armed with only a slightly more rigorous notion of what we can afford, ignore both and buy a Reliant Scimitar because it ‘looks nice in red'. So here's a test made up of cars that are similar, but in no way the same. The brief is simple, a set of purchasing parameters: carry four people, have 4WD to cope with heavy weather, be fun and have a measure of drive-by kudos when you're poncing around pretending to be rich. Sounds simple. Probably isn't. Which brings us this lot.
The first is a no-brainer. The £77k Audi RS6 Avant has always been the supercar owner's winter weapon, because it's a supercar with proper storage. If you really hate your Labradoodle, then this is the estate to murder it with: a bi-turbo 5.0-litre V10 that delivers 0-62mph in 4.5 seconds. That's 580bhp, 479lb ft and four-wheel drive only slightly blunted by a 2,025kg kerbweight. The Avantiness means there's vast bootspace and nobody will argue with the square-flared arches and air of subtle quick. We've got it here in a potent £82k spec; 19-inch wheels shod with winter tyres, a 175mph limiter and black paint, including black exhausts. It's basically the Devil's own skiing car.
The Porsche Panamera 4S similarly meets the brief of being four-by and four-up, with a useful hatchback and the driving credentials necessary to crack grins on a mountain pass. Again in black and on winter tyres, the 4S should be able to munch through icy crud to deposit 400bhp and 369lb ft from its 4.8-litre V8 and produce 0-62mph in five seconds dead. It's massive, but only weighs in at 1,800kg - a chunk less than fatty RS6. It starts at £75k, but options lift this car to over £100k. Ouch.
Quite a bit more than the new £62k Range Rover Sport Supercharged. Packing a 503bhp, 461lb ft 'charged V8, the RRS has a new dynamic mode for the suspension, a new interior and the air of comfort and prestige only a modern Land Rover can provide. It's also indecently quick for a car weighing a gargantuan 2,590kg: 0-62mph in 5.9seconds and 140mph. It also comes in themic black, though whether through cockiness or oversight remains on summer tyres.
Which leaves us with the Fiat Panda Cross, all £12k, 69bhp and 1.3-turbodiesel litres of it. No joke, even with a glacial 18-second 0-62mph. It might not be mega plush, but this is to the mountains what the Fiat 500 is to the city. Indeed, with 4x4, a 1,165kg kerbweight, snow tyres and a chunky bodykit, you've got a car that fulfils our eclectic brief for little cash. If women think you're compensating for something with the other three, then driving this thing will explain why you walk with a limp.
So, where to go? Well, with the need to press frozen flesh somewhere flash, we'll head for the Three Valleys area of the French Alps. Home to snowy mountain passes and the winter haunt of the horribly wealthy. Handily, it's also the other end of a 650-mile motorway drive, so the long-distance cruising abilities of all four will come under serious scrutiny. Happy, slippy, dangerous days.
It soon becomes clear that all three of the black cars can dispatch motorways with disdain. All three require you to use cruise control, or find yourself trotting at 100mph-plus - fun, until it brings the mpg down to the mid-teens for both the Rangie and the RS6. The Porsche fares better (mid-20s) and has a far bigger 100-litre fuel tank - so goes much further per stop.
The Panda, unfortunately, is rubbish. It rides well enough, but this is the point at which the test criteria feel stretched thin. It will do 85mph, but unhappily, making a noise like a small diesel engine being whipped to death. Which is exactly what it is. For a while, I'm wondering why the hell we brought it. Right up until the weather turns suddenly and viciously into a pretty-but-deadly snowstorm in which the Panda blatantly excels. While the Range Rover slushplanes all over the place and the RS6 and Panamera are being all expensively cautious, the little Fiat, with a relatively lowly purchase price, front-wheel-drive bias and skinny tyres gambols about like Larry-the-amphetamine-bastard-lamb.
Eight hours later and we're in the gusset of the Three Valleys, feeling personally underfunded but with an embarrassment of driving riches. These mountain roads have scary fall-away edges, with fast sweepers clipped together with proper 180-degree hairpins where the grip switches instantly between dry tarmac and sheet ice - often with both on the same corner. The kind of terrain that'll show up a laggy 4x4 system or dodgy drivetrain.
The Panamera 4S suffers neither, nailing every apex so neatly that it makes you want to have the big Porsche's tiny, ugly cyborg babies. It certainly gets you wondering how something this lardy-looking can be so convincingly twinkle-toed. There's light oversteer on offer - just enough to get you in the mood - followed by a grunting surge of grip if you keep the power flowing. The DSG is a bit confused by the sudden on/off/on throttle openings of the average hairpin and the lack of a traditional (read rational) paddleshift means you never seem to find the right gear when you're trying to override it, but even with the traction control switched off there's nothing that can fluster the big Porsche. It's also too hard with all the damping controls wound all the way down, but find the right combination of buttons and you'll fall in love.
The RS6 has similar amounts of confidence-inspiring goodness, wrapped up in a disturbingly quick package. Blithe squirts past slow traffic lead inexorably into corner entry speeds only tidied up by the implausible levels of grip on offer. The gearbox is way more intuitive - though the wheel-mounted paddles are ridiculously small plastic tiddlywinks - and even though the Audi is a traditional torque-converted auto, it's very nearly as quick as the Porsche's DSG. And the Porsche, goodas it is, starts to fall behind the Audi on these slimy, slippery, uncompromising roads. And that's saying a very Big Something. I thought the RS6 was boring. But here, on roads where sheet-ice slicks under nearside wheels, where slush drags the nose, where it's properly, desperately shitty, the RS6 is the absolute law. I get out of it more than once and puff out my cheeks. This is a serious bit of kit.
The Panda, on the other hand, is objectively crap and subjectively brilliant. You need to be absurdly proactive with the five-speed manual, and there's enough lean to make you wonder whether you could flip it on the downhill hairpins, but after a bit you end up squealing around like a demented dinky Dakar. The dimensions help - and where the Panamera and RRS feel too fat to fit, the Panda just scuttles. There's not much 4x4-ness to the way it handles, and it gets painful on uphill drags, but it's fun, if mildly looking-death-in-the-socket scary when you misjudge a downhill switchback and have to use the handbrake to get around the corner. Which I didn't.
At the other end of the scale, the Range Rover is better than it has any right to be, thumping indelicately out of the hairpins thanks to V8 torque and new ‘Command Shift' paddles. It doesn't accrue speed as easily as the other fast cars here, but that's not to say it's slow. It just feels every single kilogram of its weight under braking on downhill sections, and starts to squeal and run wide when you push too hard. It's a triumph of technology over physics, but you get the feeling that it isn't actively enjoying the rumpus. And be aware there's a mighty lurch should you lose grip and then reclaim it. Better to squish back into those seats, relax a little and thunder up the hill at 20% less.
But 80% is for the cautious, and we're only cautious in front of our insurance executives. So, upon entering Val Thorens and seeing Alain Prost's ice-racing school, it's time to see who really can handle the slippery stuff by cracking out a few laps of an ice track. As you do.
The RR Sport understeers itself directly into last place thanks to inappropriate rubber. It never gets stuck, but there's a distinct lack of braking performance from the front that makes the Rangie feel like a seal sliding along the pack ice. You can use the brilliant Terrain Response system to extricate yourself from pretty much any situation (just twiddle to sand/gravel/snow), but it's about getting there rather than doing so with any panache.
Which both the RS6 and Panamera have in abundance. Both revert to a rear-wheel-drive bias, throwing sideways slo-mo shapes that tidy up in an instant as long as you just keep your foot on the throttle and trust in the electro-gods. This is where their nature really shows itself, not least in the fact that they shunt enough torque to the front wheels to allow turn-in, then lean off the effort to allow a generous pendulum. I could stay here all day doing the world's slowest powerslides and not get bored.
The Panda is a joy, but not quite in the same way. In fact, on a seriously low-mu surface, the Panda's light weight, electronic locking diff (ELD) and general air of unpretentiousness mean that it hacks about getting places the others can't. It's a proper little goat - not the same kind of fun, more practical, but no less impressive.
All well and good, but we still need to see which cars cut it on the high-street catwalk, and for that we need some rich people. Seriously rich people. Which is why we end up in Blackpool-on-the-Hill, better known as Courcheval 1850; all twinkly Christmas lights, £145 steak and chips and too-taut facelifts. There's enough rare fur on display to stock a small specialist zoo, and that's nearly as nauseating as the constant parade of full-spec Cayennes and Range Rovers. The TopGear team, by comparison, look like tramps. And it's here, among all the dodgy diamante fashion that the Panamera suddenly scores a big hit - it's the one every gaudy, over-accessorised wannabe oligarch is inexorably drawn to. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions from that.
To sum up then. The RRS Supercharged is hugely better than it was, but still not the car to have if you've got any class. Save up for a Range Rover and drive slower, or buy a sports car - don't try to do both. The Porsche is brilliant, but unloveable. You flick-flack between respect and repulsion, but the thought never leaves you: what will people think of me if I drive one? The answer is they'll probably think you are a twat.
The Panda gets a moral victory, for being cool, anti-fashion, fun, easy, capable and cheap. It really is a mountain 500, and we love it.
When it comes down to it though, the car that makes winter look like an opportunity rather than a chore is the RS6. It might be far too straight-laced on a summer road, but given the opportunity to show its mettle in rubbish conditions there is no other car with this particular blend of abilities anywhere on the planet. A winter weapon of choice? There is no choice: Audi RS6.
Every. Single. Time.
Top Gear's winter weapons - BBC Top Gear
I've always liked the design, maybe not so reliable et.c. but it sure would be quite fun. Second would be the Panamera, third RR and fourth RS6, never really liked the design but otherwise 
