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Old 01-12-2015, 08:34 AM   #2 (permalink)
elhigh
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: SE USA - East Tennessee
Posts: 2,314

Josie - '87 Toyota Pickup
90 day: 40.02 mpg (US)

Felicia - '09 Toyota Prius Base
90 day: 49.01 mpg (US)
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Welcome! One of the mods will be along to make it more official.

My Dad is from a tiny town in Minnesota, about 60m ESE of Fargo - extreme eastern North Dakota, you could say. Certainly Fargo was about the nearest city of any note within an hour's drive.

120+ miles per day will certainly rack them up, but flat prairie means the loading isn't ever that bad. The bigger killer to your car will be wintertime, which in ND is nothing to sneeze at.

Block heaters, grille blocks, warm air intakes I think will be some of the best places to start. Aero is certainly important, especially if you're spending so much time at cruising velocity, but in your case it may be more important to first mitigate some of the extremes the engine experiences, and when doing aero to do them with snow resistance in mind. You may have to dial back some of the bigger measures like airdams, considering that they will be spending at least part of their time as ersatz snow plows.

A microscopic cruiser like a Metro would be a good choice regardless, but I think we can all agree that when the snow flies, you're going to want something with a bit more beef. I could be wrong however, and we have an awful lot of Canadians on this forum; they can almost certainly speak with more authority to that than I can.
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