It’s me, Mark Stone, and in this episode of the Backseat Driver Podcast, I’m joined by Dr Steve Holden, whose love of cars led him on an extraordinary journey of more than 5,000 kilometres to the Arctic Circle and back in a humble Fiat Panda.

Steve talks me through the motivations behind this ambitious adventure, including his decision to buy a far-from-perfect Panda and trust it to cope with some of the harshest driving conditions imaginable. We explore the modifications and careful preparation required to survive extreme cold, from mechanical reliability to planning every detail of the route.

I dig into Steve’s experiences of driving in sub-zero temperatures, the techniques needed to stay safe on ice and snow, and the contrasts he observed in driving cultures along the way. Beyond the challenge itself, Steve also reflects on the trip's deeper purpose: to raise awareness and funds for Myeloma UK.

This episode is a story of endurance, preparation, and determination, proving that big adventures do not always require big cars.

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I'd like to introduce the backseat driver, a man who has a day job that's sensible, he does normal things, he's of great benefit to mankind, but when he isn't doing what he does, he's seriously into cars to a degree.

He's just driven over 5,000 kilometres through six countries to the Arctic Circle and back in minus 30 degree temperatures to raise money for Mile Over UK charity, of which we'll find out what that is.

More interestingly, he decided to buy a less than fully fit Fiat Panda, four wheel drive and off he went.

So, without further ado, I'd like to welcome Dr. Steve Holden to the backseat driver.

Steve, welcome.

Thank you very much for that introduction and also I have to apologise for having a stinking cold.

What is it, Doctor Heal thyself physician.

I that heal thyself indeed.

What brought this on?

What suddenly gave you the idea of let's buy a Fiat Panda?

And listeners know I am a great advocate of the Fiat Panda.

I have a panda cross sat outside my house.

They are phenomenal cars, but they were a car I don't think you'd ever been associated with.

And why a panda?

Why one that wasn't in the first flush of youth?

Yes, quite a few of my motoring peers, if you like, asked me the same question.

So the last couple of years in the winter I've been out to Colorado to Bridgestone's center for Driving Skills, where they have a really quite impressive terrain based course there for training in the ice and snow.

High performance driving.

And I've always enjoyed driving in the ice and snow.

It's just been a thing of mine amongst some of my other motoring exploits, shall we say.

But this year I thought maybe I'll do something different.

And I guess I was partly inspired by Harry Metcalfe's trip to the Arctic Circle, which he did in old Rolls Royce, which some of your listeners may have.

May have watched.

Yeah, even more unlikely choice of vehicle to drive to the Arctic Circle and bike Rolls Royce.

A Series one Shadow, if memory serves.

Yes, I've set about thinking I'd like to do that, but what car would I like to do with it?

And people would say they should take a Suzuki Jimny or you should use an SUV of some description.

But I thought what would be a more sort of unassuming vehicle to take?

And the FIA Panda just appealed to me.

I would have liked to have taken one of the original fear Pandas.

Now Worth a lot of money, your original Panda four wheel drive.

Serious amounts of money.

That was the, that was the issue.

Issue with those because I looked into them and they were just very expensive and perhaps 20 years ago or so we could have picked one up for a few hundred pounds.

Now there's maybe £10,000 or something.

It was just not.

It wasn't a viable option.

Yes.

So I thought, yeah, people joke about fits.

Fix it again tomorrow.

Fix it again, Tommy.

Yeah.

And that's what I'm looking for is something that's lightweight.

It's.

It's not.

It's like a complicated car.

Although as I've discovered it, perhaps it's more complicated than you think, but it's not a difficult car to deal with and I thought, yeah, let's buy one of those.

But when you acquired it, you paid the princely sum of.

Was it £2,000 for it, you discovered that its previous owner had decided to modify it a little bit.

Whether they did or didn't, but certainly their garage had decided to modify it.

Bought it from an ebay trader and yeah, when I looked into it further that they had done a variety of things to it.

Plus also it wasn't running.

It was delivered on the back of a truck.

It was described as running well, so.

It had been running well, but not when it arrived with you.

What year is it and how many miles has it done?

Which isn't bad going.

You've got to keep on top of them and keep everything tightened up and fully lubricated.

That is one of the mainstays of owning a Panda four wheel drive.

But they never give up.

I could just about drive it down the road, but that was about.

It had a variety of issues, sensor faults and all the rest of it.

And unfortunately I have.

I happen to have a good friend who is also.

He's a proper old school motor mechanic.

He spends his life working on not just cars and motorbikes, but also boats and all sorts of things.

And he knows what he's doing and a Fiat specialist.

But anyway, I took the car to him and we started going through it and previous mechanics had investigated it and probably messed it up.

Yeah.

In the course of doing so, whether the knock sensor issue was really the thing in the first place, we don't really know.

But certainly there were a lot of problems to do with wiring between the knock sensor and the ecu.

And having used the wrong oil, which I think in those, which you'll probably know is critical with those cars, it.

Has to be 0 30s, otherwise it's a bit too thick for the little, poor little darlings to cope with.

Yeah.

So I think like flushing it out and putting the proper oil in it, plus rewiring it and doing a variety of other things.

Obviously exhaust issues and CV joints and a whole load of things that needed sorting out on it.

Yeah.

So the prep was important, I think.

And given to where you were taking it.

What else did you do to it to get it ready to run in serious sub zero temperatures in relatively hostile conditions?

One thing I was concerned about was the coolant and would it actually take those kind of temperatures, especially going potentially below minus 40?

Yeah.

So used Preston coolant, but at a ratio of 70, 30.

Yeah.

And then use the refractometers to check that it would deal with those temperatures.

Yeah, that was probably the biggest thing that was did to prepare it specifically for the temperatures that I was going to encounter.

Other thing, the auxiliary belts that was clearly quite frayed and degraded.

So replace the auxiliary belts, but otherwise just general maintenance issues like say changing the oil and with the correct oil and dealing with those kind of matters.

The tires, I suppose.

Actually I didn't mention.

I was thinking what tyres do I need in those kind of pretty problematic conditions and should I use just winter tires that you'd get in the UK or do I need something more serious and out there?

As I noted when I was there, most people use studded tires, but as you probably know, you can't drive studded tires in the uk, it's illegal.

And also across in the Netherlands and Germany you can't use studded size.

So it was finding a tire that was going to be acceptable but not a studded tyre.

And I'd ordered these skin tires, Nokian Hackipilita R5s, which are a studless tire reckoned to be ice rated.

It took about two months and then I got an email saying if they're not available or something.

There's a bit of a backstory to this.

Driving out to the Nurburgring, not in the Fiat Pandas but in another car of mine and buying these Nokian tires from Germany, it's just where to get them from.

A bit of a bonkers side story, but that sort of deal and those tyres proved to be absolutely essence.

I Had no problem with them at all.

And even though some local says you really need to be using studded tyres up here, they were absolutely fine.

Because one thing we failed to mention, you also decided to do this end of December, early January.

You couldn't have picked a colder time of the year, could you?

And also not only the colors, the light as well.

So there's very little light, particularly as you got further north, perhaps a couple of hours of flight per day and especially up in the Arctic Circle.

So a place called Jocmoch, which is where reached the Arctic Circle, had essentially no light at all.

So what route did you take from England?

So got the ferry from Hull, so Rotterdam, then into Germany from the Netherlands and I took the boat from Copenhagen to Oslo, so then through into Norway, across into the north of Sweden essentially.

Was it Sweden where you were joined by your co driver and fellow passenger?

That's correct, yes.

So he flew out and met me in a place called Ostersund in Sweden.

So from there what route do you take to get to the Arctic Circle?

It's not somewhere I've ever been, it's not somewhere I've ever considered going to.

Yeah.

So from there I was already quite, quite a way into the trip at that point when I picked him up and the conditions that it was snowing, I was wondering whether his flight was going to make it.

But we'll see at Panda will make it, but the modern aircraft might not.

From Ostersund up to a place for harvestjaw actually, which I may not be pronouncing it correctly, but Lass is a center for manufacturers to test vehicles in the extreme cold.

Yeah.

So I think BMW, Audi, Porsche, they all test the vehicles of facility and Arvisjoff and yeah, so stayed there and then to get to the artist, that's about, I think it's about 50 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

And then to get from there to the Arctic Circle, drove up to a place called Johbo and yeah, it was pretty much dark the inside.

So yeah, so I mean not me, but when you get there, is there something that says you've arrived at it or how do you know you've got there?

Yes.

So there's a physicist center there.

And so I arrived on New Year's Day.

Yeah.

And so the visitor center was technically closed, but there was some locals that were just doing some work to the.

The exterior office.

Yeah, they had let us in so I could buy a stick of the cow.

And they also took a video of us driving over a.

They'd Laid some kind of rope down on the, on the snow.

It's the official line.

So.

Yes.

What temperatures were you at then?

So it got down to, I think it was minus 39.

And England comes to a standstill at minus 2.

That was, I mean one of the things that both myself and my co driver found amusing because we were looking at these news stories in the UK where it was saying danger to life and all these issues, you can't eat snow and ice.

And we were just driving along at minus 20 odd and no real issue.

It sounds ludicrous but driving on compacted snow and ice at 60 odd mile an hour and that sounds reckless but everyone's doing this and with the right tires and driving appropriately.

Yeah.

What was like the locals reaction, were they keen or did they look at you and think, who's this pair of nutties?

Better still, why be in a Fiat Panda?

Yeah, we did have a few, we did have a few looks.

I think mainly that we were driving a Fiat Panda which just don't see those up there.

It's the revolvers everywhere.

Yeah.

And also some American cars as well.

Yeah.

For I see like Dodge Rams and Silverados and things like that.

But mostly Volvo.

Volvos.

And the other thing I noticed on the motoring theme that the SUV is not something that's really caught on up there.

The estates.

Yeah.

And the tense driver states, which I quite like that.

Contrary to popular belief, they're all driving around in two wheel drive, rear wheel drive cars.

This is it.

There were quite a lot of old 940s, 740s, they were still smoking around in those kind of conditions.

Yeah.

I think I've got a video actually where we were following what was I think a 740 estate or 940 anyway.

And we're doing 50, 60 miles an hour on compacted ice.

It's a rear wheel drive car and you know it's being driven perfectly well.

Yeah.

That's one of the one things.

We have a bit of ice and snow and it's a danger to life.

They do it all the time on conditions we cannot conceive of.

Which is probably one reason why the scandal.

Scandinavian rally drivers is so good because to them it's everyday conditions.

Yeah.

I think we did reflect on that like.

Well, there's a reason why a lot of world class rally drivers have come from this part of the world and they've grown up driving on these in this type of, in this type of weather.

While we all think we're doing well on A bit of snow.

I mean your average Scandinavian granny in a rear wheel drive Volvo will think what they make an old this fuss about exactly what is the driving technique.

Because the one thing about a Fiat Panda four wheel drive is, and I've always found it when I've driven them in snow and ice.

You may drive slightly slower in England to combat everybody else, but you don't really change your driving style, you just drive them as normal.

Because these little cars are so capable, you cannot conceive of how good they are.

I think that's it.

I think with the right tyres on, even in those conditions, then they can be driven almost as if you're driving on a sort of dry tarmac road.

I think with that being said, that's perhaps a little bit silly because I think issues like these are things that will appeal to those that are into driving.

But the slip angles and just general smoothness, those things, yes, they are important because, yeah, you can't just aggressively adjust your steering angle and pressing on the brakes too hard, using the brakes when you don't need to.

And even in a Fiat Panda using the accelerators inappropriately, all those things are going to upset the car.

Yeah, you've got to be sensible and yeah, I've spent quite a bit of time training in those kind of conditions and yeah, I think you could easily get yourself in a mess.

Yeah.

I said to my co driver because he was like, speed, you're doing here, I don't know you thinking of.

We're only like one inappropriate input away from ending up in the ditch.

Yeah.

So you gotta be careful with the tagline.

Don't worry, I'm a doctor.

Did the car require any maintenance during the journey?

So I think it had been reasonably well prepared beforehand.

But what I did find is fairly early on into the trip I was getting this smell of coolant coming through into the car.

Yeah.

And it was a bit hard to figure out what, you know, what the reason for that.

Was it the heater cars failed or whatever and I was messaging my friend Clinic back at home to try and understand what could be done.

And then when my co driver flew out to meet me, I'd asked him to get a new cap for the.

The expansion.

Yeah, the expansion tank.

Yeah.

And so he did.

And after putting that on, placing that issue went away.

Yeah.

There was first only other things that really locks froze up a bit.

Despite putting like silicon lubricants and things like that to try and sort out.

Yeah.

And what I was finding below about 25 -25.

Once it got below about that, clutch got quite heavy initially, but again, I think that's just too fluid thickening.

And there was also quite a significant noise and I don't know what it was, but I think it was like a wheel bearing.

Yeah.

Again, as it warmed up, it was fine.

Yeah.

The thing is, cars are manufactured to cope with what you would call ordinary conditions.

A lot of the lubricants and the oils and the fluids, though, they can cope with these temperatures.

It's like you said, they thicken up, which means you have to wait for the warmth that the car generates to thin them out to the, shall we say, the viscosity that they're used to working at.

Yeah.

And I think that's what was going on there.

And the fact that once it warmed up, they were fined.

And so in reality, I suppose the summation of it is that a cheap fear Panda actually coped really well in those conditions.

The one thing I've always found with the ones that I've owned is when you're in them, they're a warm, cozy little car to be in winter and they are very comfortable.

There's more space in them than people will give them credit for.

Definitely.

I mean, I took out the rear seats in, in mine just to enable us to put more survival gear and equipment and that sort of thing in the back of it.

Fairness.

I was preparing for conditions where there wasn't really the infrastructure to help out if something went wrong.

But in reality there was the infrastructure up there.

Even in the far north.

Yes.

You probably could go for maybe 150km or so without seeing anything of any note.

You had to be reasonably well prepared.

But it wasn't a complete, complete desolate wilderness.

Yeah.

So anyway, I'd removed the rear seats.

Yeah.

The cars, the car is, as you say, it's, it's reasonably big inside it from what you might expect looking at the sort of exterior size.

My, my co driver, he's, he's six foot three, I'm six foot and we both sat in front of bike, no problem and felt quite comfortable.

Yeah.

What you took with you, what did you take with you?

So I took enough sort of survival gear that hopefully you'd at least make it through the night.

Yeah.

Because I can't clean.

Clothing wise, is it, Was it ski gear you took with you?

I mean, I, I, I've done a lot of winter hiking in the past, even in Scotland and things like that in the middle of winter and camping in extreme temperatures, although maybe not down to minus 30.

I must confess, I've never experienced minus 30.

Yeah, that's temperature.

You take off your gloves to do something and within, I don't know, about 30 seconds or so, your hands are absolutely killing you.

And then if you left it much longer, then they'd probably go numb and.

And frostbites, bits of drop off.

Gotta be a bit careful.

Merino base layers, mid layers, then down on jackets.

Yeah.

Snow boots.

Then I also took a variety of different items.

Survival gear.

Yeah.

For lighting fires, winter gas stove, kindling things, all that sort of stuff that if the worst comes, the worst regime, it never dipped.

And it seemed a bit ridiculous that I took all of that stuff.

But then if the car broke down whilst we were out in kind of the middle of nowhere, then you needed to be prepared to survive.

How do you go on getting fuel in these remote places?

Or is fuel relatively easy to come by?

Did you have to carry a couple of cans per chance?

So I anticipated that it wouldn't be very easy, but actually, see, it wasn't that bad.

I just made sure that wherever we were, we just filled it up.

As you, you probably know, the Panda doesn't have very big fuel type, does it?

No.

Yeah.

You don't go a tremendous distance before you're looking to put some more into it.

No.

So I did fill it up at the earliest possible opportunity.

I did take a couple of jerrycons with me.

Yeah.

Because I thought, yeah, as you say, it could be a problem, but it actually wasn't.

The other thing I thought was if crew's stuck in the snow and I needed to run the engine, then that would be another reason to have some extra fuel.

Yes.

So in total you say it's 5,000 kilometres you covered, isn't it?

Yeah, it was pretty much 5,000 kilometres.

Exactly.

Round trip.

Yeah.

And that doesn't include the ferries, so that was 5,000 kilometers driven.

Yeah.

And when you got to the Arctic Circle, did you stay there at all for any period of time or did you say, we've done it, head south?

Actually stayed in Arva's job, which was just south of the Arctic circle.

Not about 50 miles or something like that.

Yeah, we stayed there for two nights.

Yeah.

I have to say that, you know, that was a fantastic hotel.

It's office shock.

I stayed in some reasonably rough, cheap places along the way.

Yeah.

But when we say it's an Arvist shore, which is where the manufacturers do their winter testing, all of that stayed in.

I suppose you could describe it as kind of like a lodge Was a house.

It was a nice place.

Yeah.

And now you're back.

Was it your intentions to keep the Panda or have you become a devil?

Two of the fine little coys.

That's a good question because.

Yeah, when I originally bought it for the trip I thought once it's done I'll just set it on.

However, after all the work that's been done on it and then, you know, sitting in it and driving it for I think it was about 16, 17 days then I've grown so really lice.

You be you become attached to it.

Yeah, it's a great little things I did for my co driver and he, he thought it was a bit of a mad purchase in the first place.

But he wants to drive.

He's got a 911T and the range Rover Sports and the end of the trip he was like, you can't get rid of this.

It's a great car.

Is it a car that you will continue to use?

I suppose the problem is when you, if you do use it in the uk, it will all seem a bit tame compared to what you and the car have done.

And I had thought about that because a. I could use it as a winter vehicle and just a general utility car for going to the tip or anything.

But it's smaller than that though.

It drives, it's.

It's a great little car.

And the other thing I thought about, which I've not really but I did wonder about doing some green lane in.

They are popular.

One thing people tend to do if they green lane them is raise the suspension, fit larger wheels to them, which means they can fit more aggressive off road tyres.

Because my Panda is standard which means I have a selection of about two different types of tire which are all the same size.

It's just two different manufacturers.

But you can't play about with with tyres on the standard rims because the other thing is the tires on the pandas 4x4s form part of the suspension which is why they tend to be a bit bouncy at times.

Yes, I think I'd have to look into all of that and.

But green laning is something I've never really.

I've not really entertained but it does seem that with some modifications like you, you allude to then it could be quite an effective vehicle for that.

Yeah, most people think of off roaders as having large engines with diesels.

Yeah, they used to do a Panda diesel.

But your pandas like mine, 898cc two cylinder, twin air.

It's this tiny little revy two cylinder but when you're driving them you don't really sense that you've got such a tiny engine under the bobbit.

They do normal speeds, they are very rapid round country lanes.

That little engine, that little twin air engine is an absolute triumph of engineering in my opinion.

It's interesting you say that because my friend who's a really experienced motor engineer but doesn't specialize in fins so he didn't know a lot about that engine until I took it to.

And he said like you say, triumph for engineering but this is a really, it's a really cool design.

The engines and particularly the twin air, the actuator, the way that it deals with the valve timing and all of that.

And he was kind of like well yeah, I like this.

And he was like the problem with it is that it requires decent masons.

Yeah.

And he was like, but otherwise it's a great design.

And that was one of the things we found with the one that I've got is that yes, probably had the wrong oil in it and all of this stuff.

And once we were through those things it went from driving like, let's be honest, a bag of spanners to it's really driving very well.

And yeah, I wasn't sure how it's going to be cope with all the conditions we were going to throw at it in going out into the.

Into the architect, but it did.

The other interesting thing is the four wheel drive systems.

On them, the very, very early Panda four wheel drives that had a Steyr pulk system, you pulled a handle up to lock it into four before but on the modern ones like mine it's all electronically done and you've got, you run, you run all the time in automatic 4 before which means for the bulk of the time it's a front wheel drive car with a little bit of drive to the rear or you can flick a switch or in probably our case you turn a little knob just behind the gear lever and you can lock it in four before but you can't do over 25 miles an hour in it.

But apart from that you've no real control over its all wheel drive system.

The car does it itself but it does it incredibly well.

So that's an interesting point that you mentioned because I was fascinated to understand how is this car going to work when I take it out onto low grip surfaces, snow and ice, all the rest of it.

Because I've driven all sorts of cars including Haldex vehicles or proper four wheel drive cars, front wheel, rear wheel Drive as you probably have.

And I thought how is this panda going to behave?

And I was really quite surprised by it because I didn't like the fact that you couldn't.

You can't really do that much with it other than like you say that electronic locking differential below whatever it is, 30 miles an hour or something.

Yes, you can activate that but there's no.

You can't disable the traction control, stability control or anything.

And I thought, well, that's going to impede my ability to drive it properly.

But.

But I have to say I found the opposite.

It was great.

And even comparing it to say like a, I don't know, like a Golf R, like a Haldex car or Dallas, you could manipulate it in quite a sort of acute way because I know.

One thing you commented as a keen driver, you said you thought you might find it entertaining to get it a little bit of the old opposite locking on the corners and the pandas are somewhat against you doing that, but they just drive round Coreys.

I know you said it takes an enormous amount to upset them.

Absolutely.

I did find that you could have drifted to an extent, but there was.

There was a roundabout actually.

It was quite funny I think opposite at the sass.

A couple of cars ahead of me on a roundabout in over blur in Sweden.

The weather was obviously cold, snowy and this sat was doing a drift and I think he's induced the drift by knocking it forward a bit then on the brakes and then.

Yeah, so I looked at that and I thought that was quite funny.

And anyhow I managed to.

To drift the panda around the same roundabout.

Yeah.

I would like to say that I understood exactly how the car want me to do that, but still not sure that I do.

But I think it was just going in on the brakes a little bit, getting a bit of grip over the front end and then enabling the back to step out.

But that's stupidity aside, it was just a surprisingly capable car.

It was very difficult to unstick it.

Over the years I created a tagline for all of my.

The tagline is the mighty throbbing powerhouse that is the Panda 4x4.

I think after Run to the Arctic Circle you might actually agree with that.

I do.

And in fact my co driver kept referring to us as the Misey Pandas.

We overtook quite a number of vehicles whilst we were out there not doing anything crazy, but the vehicles driving a bit slower than I wanted.

So we overtook them and it had no problem at all.

You tend to find if you do that with them, you get a look of horror and disdain off the driver of the more potent vehicle and his tiny little panda comes rocketing past them.

Maybe.

Although I have to say, in those parts of the.

In those parts where we were, the driving standards, I think were fantastic.

And people didn't seem to object to that kind of thing.

They just thought, this is speed I'm doing.

If he wants to go faster than, no problem, just not an issue.

Whereas I think if he did that, I think if he overtook somebody in the UK on a snow snowy road, they think you were, you know, a lunatic.

And yeah, the driving stances generally, I found, were very good.

That people would be very rarely using the brakes.

You'd follow somebody and into bends.

So they're using engine braking, acceleration sense.

They're not on and off the brakes if they were going to make a turn or that they.

They would be rolling back to speed very early.

Yeah.

And these are all driving styles that you wouldn't really see in the UK very much.

I'm of a great opinion that the standards of driving in the UK have dropped off the bottom of the chart.

Yes, I think I agree with you.

Now, before we go, you did this for Myeloma uk, the charity.

Don't mind me asking, what is myeloma?

It's a type of blood cancer.

Yeah.

And, yeah, it's not leukemia, but it's not dissimilar disease.

Without going into the whole medical technicalities of it, but I think blood cancer is probably the easiest way to describe.

And he'd been to the archdeacon himself?

Not in a tradition, but yeah, no, he went out there on a sort of work, team building, exercise, set up his phone out there and he went to this, like, freezing water and they suspended the greatest amount of time in it compared to any of his peers and won some kind of Nordic knife as a result of this.

Anyway, he would have thought, like, what I was doing was ridiculous, but I think he would have also appreciated it in the same way.

So I figured, I'm doing this trip for me, it's fun, but I thought, why not do it for a cause that is relevant to me?

And if you don't mind me asking, how much did you raise so far?

I've got.

I think.

I think somebody else donated today, so I've got to about 800 odd pounds.

But I'm hoping to raise some off.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I'm looking to maybe promote it a bit more than I have done.

But yeah, so I think it's 800 and 800 pounds.

So I conclude, given you this could become a regular thing.

Next time we see a satellite shot of the North Pole, we haven't to be surprised if we see a Fiat Panda parked up.

I do want to keep that fear.

So what I must do with it now that the cold weather here is dissipated a bit, I must clean it up and get rid of all that salt and nonsense from it because.

Yeah, but we don't want it to.

To meet its match with rust.

But now it will have pride of place in the garage compared to your other vehicles, I think.

So it's on the drive at the moment.

But I really love the thing now and it's got me through quite an interesting adventure.

I can't really foresee the modern EV being able to tolerate these temperatures up there.

Really?

No.

That's three days charging time.

It's interesting you say that because I think Norway, there are 90% of new car sales at Norway are EVs.

So I got the boat from Copenhagen to Oslo, arrived in Norway and there's a lot of EVs in Oslo and that reasonably cold there.

But as soon as you get further north, hardly any EVs at all.

Lots of old Volvos, all these things.

But the EV's no.

Dr. Steve Holden, it's been a pleasure chatting to you.

Do keep me updated.

If you're doing anything else else with the Panda, it would be nice to follow the story.

But once again, Steve Holden, thanks very much for joining me on the backseat driver.

Hello.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me and it's been a pleasure and apologies.

Bit under the weather, but yes.

And to welcome a new founded Panda 4 Wheel Drive Enthusiast.

But once again, Steve Alden, thanks very much indeed.