Body Politic

Drive the Legend! Crash in Reality!

by Larry Beinhart and photographs by Dion Ogust, July 28, 2008

The Nissan Xterra is sold as a high adventure SUV. Take it off road! Into the outback! The mountains! The desert! A blizzard!

I happened to buy one, used. About a month later I was on Route 28, just east of Belleayre Mountain. There was a few inches of snow on the ground.

I was going up hill. The road in that spot is three lanes wide and absolutely dead straight, probably the straightest section of road in the entire Catskills. There couldn’t possibly be a problem.
Then the rear end broke loose.

The Xterra went into a sideways slide. There was oncoming traffic and cars coming up from behind me. I tried to correct. The skid reversed, but too far. I found myself going up hill, barely losing any speed, like a maddened pendulum, back and forth across all three lanes.

Finally, I managed to work the skid toward a driveway off to the right, clipped the guardrail on my way into it, and slowed to a stop.

Now anybody, with any sense whatsoever would look at what they were doing when that happened, and never, ever, do it again.

Buying a new car was not an option. Neither was staying home when it snows.

The Xterra had been in two-wheel drive and had regular tires. With careful testing, I confirmed that balance was such that the tail would regularly break loose in snow, on gravel, and even in heavy rain. But in four-wheel drive and with real snow tires, it was safe enough to drive in any condition. I made the adjustments, and I’m alive to write this.

When George Bush came into office, he sold America tax cuts. They would cause the economy to boom! Create jobs! So much, and so many, that tax revenues would actually increase!

We would have a great adventure! Like when you take an Xterra on an off-road race! Tearing up the landscape, and arriving in first place!

That didn’t happen. There was an instant recession. So he sold America more tax cuts and said, “Get out there and drive this economy!”