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Its a tradition for my wife and I to drive up and spend a week and celebrate Christmas at Mammoth Mountain, California. We are both avid snow bunnies - she skies while I am the evil, evil, Dark Side snowboarder. Mammoth is our mountain, its huge, get tons and tons of snow, awesome runs with lots of trees and powder and its an easy drive to get there. Typically, we would always drive to Mammoth in my 06 Jaguar Vanden Plas with a Jaguar box on the top. Its a super comfy ride, tons of power with the V8 engine and these cats climb mountains like they were flat. This cat usually average around 28MPG round trip with a box on the top. The tall gearing helps and the fact that this car lowers itself at speed helps make this car an ultimate highway cruiser - hey, the built this car for the Queen of England. "Oh posh!". Since we are staying a week, we also bring up a lot of food, water and alcoho...and add in clothes, 2 pairs skis and 2 snowboard...it adds up. We fill the rear passenger compartment, boot and then the box on the top. Also, this cat handles great in the snow, no slippage, heated seats and steering wheels sure makes this a very comfortable drive in the cold. Jaguar & Box vs CMax space This year, we left the Jag at home (which is now her Jag, long story but if you find my post trails, you'll know why), and we took up the new Ford CMax. The CMax seats folded down nice and flat. The rear head rest came off so we could slot in the water and other short, tall stuff between the seat spacing. To our surprise, everything that once went into the Jaguar interior and the box - COMPLETELY fit inside of the CMax. Holy crap...SPACE winner! Check out the load... I was thinking that we might have to add some rails to the roof to take the box but man, this lil car is a BIG car inside! Driving to Mammoth For those who are not familiar with this drive, it's a pretty easy 290 mile drive from the San Fernando valley to Mammoth Lakes. Its mostly staight and only big mountains to climb in the stretch of road before Palmdale on the 118 and then another stretch after Bishop to Tom's Place. Elevation runs from 600ft to 7900 ft. My CMax only has about 1600 miles on the odo so its not completely broken in. We started from San Fernando in the peak hour evening traffic but traffic was flowing. I do not expect much from the MPGs getting to Mammoth - everything worked against hybrids: cold temps, uphill, car fully loaded with gas and equipment and as I recall, some windy sections thru Mojave (typical). The "getting there" stats: 286 miles (69.7EV) that used 8.66 gallons with 33.5MPG. Temps ranged from 50F to typically 20-27F from Mojave to Mammoth Lakes. The big, big hill climb just outside of Bishop to Tom's Place that chewed up 0.8 gallons over 18 mile stretch with eco-cruise on 65mph (21.51MPGs just this 18 mile climb segment). It was cold, around mid 20s just driving up this section. Gas used was the 87 Octane, typical of CA winter blend. Average speed was around 60-65mph since I was trying to utilize the EV cut off as much as possible. Typically I would drive around 68-70mph - not going any more since theres always TONS of CHP along this road and they will ding u for doing 70+. SCC Cable chains As a long time snow bunny, and one who drives alot to the mountains, I have to say - it's a FOOL who drives to the snow and not have any chains. The weather can change in a heartbeat and if you get caught in a sudden blizzard that dumps powder, you're toast and you know there's a special bend in the road with your name on it, waiting for your brand new spanking car to run and roll into it. I've seen a ton of accidents include some nice 4x4s and even a Bus eat it in a ditch when the snow dumps. Do yourself a favour and keep a set of chains in the car when you're in snow territory...that $75 can save your $30,000 brand spanking new car. So this year at Mammoth, it dumped and dumped and dumped. My wife and I truly had a white Christmas there. We had 2 major storms that dumps more than 3 feet of snow - I know I had to dig out the car 3 times for the time I was there. It was so much fun, I had to buy a snow shovel and use it 3 times. Great workout after a hard day in the powder! I did bring an old garden shovel got too heavy and cumbersome. My Christmas present from the wife. Joke. Let is snow...let is snow...let is snow.... Time to dig out the Max....3 days in a row! We did have to put the SCC cable chains on. We got the Z6 which is a low profile cable chains and I've used this plenty of times with my Jaguar on the big 19" low profile wheels, very easy on and it plain works in all sorts of snow conditions. No breakage whatsoever and not damage to tires or wheels in all the years I have used them - I know 'em pretty well. Surprisingly, theres not much room in the wheel wells of the CMax. However, I did not have much problem putting them on and I consider myself having mid size hands. The Z6 fit really well and the chains worked well when I drove Max around the town in the 1-2" powder and crud around town. TIP: If you are contemplating getting these chains for your CMax, make sure you TEST put them on in your garage with leather gloves on so you are familiar with the hook up. Its not fun standing out there with the blizzard winds and chill factor of below zero figuring it all out. Also, do the test with the car loaded - the heavy weight does effect how much room you have in the wheel well. There is a picture of a Dominos Pizza card which shows you how little room there is and even less when the car is loaded with passengers & gear. Also, you can see how the chains fit, nothing metal on the cable chain is touching the alloy of the wheel Driving with the SCC Cable Chains Max handled great in the snow with the chains, no slipping and I liked the grade assist - sure beats tapping the brakes on the downhills. I did not have this feature in the Jag so thats a nice little find. I always hate touching the brakes in snow as you never want to lock the wheels and start the car spinning on the ice. Theres been some reports that the traction control is no good in the ice and snow but personally, I had no problem with the traction control at all - I just left it alone but I typically drive very, very conservative in the snow conditions. I've seen too many speedy knuckle heads in their 4x4 go over the side of the roads when the snow is dumping. Steering was precise and Max was responsive to the turn. No banging of the chains against the wheel wells was noticed but I always drive under 30mph with the chains on. Don't want to wreck them. Taking the SCC cable chains off Now, taking the cable chains off was a different story. Leaving town, the car was fully loaded up, I lost about 3/4 to 1/2 inch spacing in the wheel well. Where once I was able to slip in my hand completely, I could not even get my hands to the back of the wheel. To take off the cable chains, I now had to drive the wheel so that the back connection points was just under the skirt of the car so I could get my hand around the back and unhook the cable connectors. Once the back connection was off, I had to slowly back off the car and allow the cables to fall off the wheel. It took longer than I expected but this is the first time I had worked with these chains with this size wheel. I had no such issues with the Jags but I needed my wife's help there as she has smaller hands that could slip to the back of the wheel and grab the connectors. Driving back home Getting home had much better stats. Essentially, we're now coming down from 7800ft back to the SF valley. I had a mix of back wind and cross wind but it was much more windier than driving to Mammoth. So the distance back was 287.1 miles, 7.02 gallons used with 80.6EV miles with 40.8MPG. Overall MPG for the whole trip was 36.85MPGs, with 573.8 miles (150.3EV) and 15.57 gallons of gas. I estimate the average speed for the trip was around 65mph. Final Thoughts on the CMax from this trip One word: AWESOME This car drives really, really well on the highway and also in the snow. I did not get any slippage and negotiating around the town with the snow covered roads, especially around the idjiot drivers who can't park their car properly before they shoo off to the Boxing Day sales. It steers well between the idjiot mobiles, even with the cable chains. Driving the highway it does get a little buffeting from the cross winds but thats with any car but it's far less than the Jaguar with a box on top. Aerodynamically, its more efficient than the Jag with box but take the box off, the Jag wins since its sleek and low profile. However, we needed the box to get all our gear & food for the trip so it's a win-win for CMax here. I totally love the MyTouch Sync system with the Sony speakers. It sounds so good even my older 128bit MP3s. As my wife said, she has electronic envy, especially with the back up camera. Also, I love the deep door pockets. I can shove in a flashlight, my wallet, cell and even a drink bottle! All within easy access of the driver. Very thoughtful of Ford. Speaking of doors, I really appreciate the design of the door frame. Not sure what the technical term is, but when you open any door, the top of the door is "under" the roof top. What this means is that when there was a ton of snow on the roof, I could still open the door without having any snow fall back into the car or disturbing the snow when the door opened. I don't have time to clean the roof just to open the door and this worked great! Like I said, I don't know what you call this but practically, I was able to access the car without having to remove snow from the roof. Super. The leather seats were very comfy and heated seats work great! The negatives: 1. CMax lacks a seat memory. When my wife drives and I have to reset the seat afterward, pain in the a$$ but even with my SEL model, you would think this would be standard...but oh no! PS if you guys know where this magic button is....feel free to let me know. 2. I wish the wind screen wipers could have been manually raised up and away from the accumulating snow and the ice underneath. I had this problem with the Jags. That too had the wipers tucked underneath the hood. So this means, I have to be extra cautious to clean the wind screen before driving and not use the wipers just incase they are stuck. If anyone has better ideas here, let me know. 3. The back of the Max always has a ton of crud and crap accumulated, its as if the whole back just sucks all the dirt and keeps it there as the car drives. Nothing I can do here. 4. No heated steering wheel but oh well. I'll be going back up again in a couple of weeks so it gives me time to think of how to save burning so much fuel going up from Bishop to Tom's Place. Hope you enjoyed the post as much as I enjoyed driving up the new CMax this Christmas. Top car indeed. PS If you're up at Mammoth and see a white CMax, that would be me...cheers!