Sometimes the best car in the world is just the one that takes you home.

Swedish winter at its worst

Last night I experienced one of the most unlikely forms of driving pleasure I can remember. Or maybe it wasn't even driving pleasure, really. Maybe it was something even stronger: gratitude. The gratitude of knowing that the car in front of you will do its job, even when Sweden decides to show its worst side. We left Åre with the Range Rover packed full of skis, bags, children, everything. And Sweden offered the kind of weather that even makes the weather apps write in capital letters. Red warnings, "don't go out", and in Gävleborg it was pure domino effect: E4 closed, accidents, traffic jams, serial collision in Bollnäs. You know the feeling when the map stops being a map and becomes a game: "Choose your own disaster."

Extra job as a plow truck on the back roads of Hälsingland

So we did the only reasonable thing when the unreasonable was already underway: we started trawling the map apps for thin, gray lines that looked like they led straight into a horror movie. Back roads through western Hälsingland. Los. Voxna. Places that sound like banjo music and the “last journey” – and which last night delivered exactly that atmosphere: pitch black, 15 meter visibility, 35–40 cm of unplowed fresh snow and a feeling that we were the first in a world that hadn’t quite woken up yet.

Mile after mile after mile we laid tracks. Not “driving in the snow”, but plowing our way forward. Met maybe two cars in 300 miles. No cell phone coverage where there usually is. iPads that gave up and children who suddenly… looked out the window? As if it were 1996 again. My wife sat in front chasing the GPS signal as if she was playing Pokémon, just so she could say: “Take the next corner, otherwise we’ll hit a road barrier.” And me, with both hands on the wheel and a focus that I think I’ve only had when an old trackday car starts talking to me the “wrong” way. Because yes – we’ve had our moments with this “old loaf”. It’s had its mood swings and little “limp-fashion numbers” before. That’s why there was a little voice in the back of my head that wasn’t entirely happy that we were in the middle of the forest, in the middle of the snowstorm, with the family on board.

Back to civilization

But the volume of that voice dropped with every mile. Because there's something about a big, heavy, luxurious Range Rover when the world outside is pure white aggression. It just... hunkers down, works on, stays the course. The studded tires did their job, absolutely. But it was the whole thing that did it: the weight, the four-wheel drive, the calmness of the chassis, the warmth, the light, and that feeling that the car doesn't get stressed just because you do. We didn't get stuck anywhere. We avoided the queues. We didn't have to stand still. But we paid with time: 10 hours without a single stop due to the road conditions. A journey that normally takes around 6:30 including stops. When we finally passed Sandviken and could roll onto the E4 again, it was almost like coming back to civilization after an expedition.

I looked at the instruments, at the family, at the snow still whipping in the light beam – and felt something I don’t always feel in sports cars: gratitude. As an employee at Bidders Highway, I live in a world where we talk about value, experience, passion. And last night, my least “enthusiastic” car was perhaps the one that gave me the strongest car feeling in a long time.

Because sometimes the best car in the world isn't the one that makes you smile on the right road. Sometimes the best car in the world is just the one that gets you all the way home.

By the pen and the mallet

Jacob Odqvist, CEO Bidders Highway