Hello,
Recently relocated to our retirement home on a heavily wooded ridge top with a narrow, paved county road. The neighbors all seem to have SUV's or 4x4. With winter coming, I wonder that my S Type R, Lotus or Mazada Speed Miata may not be a useful when it gets icy.
Would appreciate any experience with the SportWagon. I suspect the 3.0 is a bit under powered and have real reservations about reliability... after all I am a serial old english car owner.
What could I expect to pay for a sound example?
Issues to avoid? This will probably replace the 358 I wanted but there is only so much room in the garage.

Merry Christmas to all the forum
Phil In Nashville, Tn
03 STR
73 Lotus Elan +2
Mazdaspeed Miata
other drivers

 

I may not be the best to answer this question. But as a former brit car owner, one time Leyland mechanic and now proud owner of an X-Type Sport Wagon I would say go for it. I have not had this car for very long but I bought it with 75k miles on it and now have 88k miles with no issues. My only worry is the gearbox I would have liked a manual but I'm not sure that there were many if any over here the wagon is rare enough. thanks to an early Oct snow storm I did get the chance to run it in the snow and it seems to work well no bad habits. but with all things in the snow the tires are the key. Of course I did drive my Miata for years in the snow and only had issues when the depth of snow exceeded the ground clearance (still have the Miata and always will). I have been all over this fourm before I made the purchase of this car and found that there were far less problems than I had with the Audi and the information to fix it was available. Good luck

 

My 2005 Sportwagon 3.0 handles better in our Puget Sound winters than the Subaru wagon it replaced. My only issue is that the lower portion of the tailgate is a bit too narrow for getting full use out of the large cargo area.