I know winter is properly here because this morning I had to scrape the ice from the inside of the Scimitar’s windscreen as well as the outside.
Easier said than done and the result is a dashtop that looks like it has a very bad case of dandruff until the ice flakes then melt and disappear through the heater vents and into the dash wiring.
Fortunately the GTE has a decent heater. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a decent blower, so unless you are moving fast enough to utilise the macho-named RAM AIR function, you are faced with an impossible task: trying to defrost/demist the windscreen with a quantity of air-flow that could easily be outdone by trying to exhale through your ears.
I’ve never tried that and it’s probably impossible, but I have a feeling that it would generate more huff than the Scimitar blower does.
Then there’s the rear 'screen that, fortunately, has an electric demister. Unfortunately it doesn’t work, but that’s okay – if I open one of the side windows then the resultant air flow will clear the rear ‘screen… in about 35 minutes.
Of course, being minus five degrees though, I couldn’t get the electric windows to operate, so that theory was useless. All this of course only occurred once I’d spent several minutes crouched down by the side of the car, ‘huffing’ on the door lock and trying to de-ice it through the power of breath.
Of course then I had to try and actually start the car. I should probably go and buy another battery – one with better cold cranking power, or replace/add even more earth leads to give it a fighting chance, but the GTE is always rubbish at spinning over unless it’s shorts and flip-flops weather.