Colleagues are utterly sick of hearing this, but now that I’m writing this story I have a whole new audience: I was at the very first Audi New Zealand Ice Experience at Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds (SHPG), back in 2009.
SHPG is probably a known quantity if you’re reading DRIVEN Car Guide, but just to recap: sitting atop the Pisa Range in Cardrona, near Wanaka, it’s an automotive winter testing facility comprising 16 different areas, each one private. It’s the go-to place for global carmakers and tyre companies to undertake winter testing in June-September - especially the ones based in the Northern Hemisphere, given it’s their summer.
Audi NZ was first up here with a customer event 15 years ago, replicating what the brand had been doing for some time in other parts of the world.
Attendees pay their money and the company hosts them on a day up the mountain, with expert tuition in snow and ice driving, some learning and some fun (the two are often the same anyway), and some high-quality catering thrown in. It’s a luxury experience with skids.
Everybody’s doing it now (Aston Martin, BMW, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Mercedes-AMG are but a few of the brands who have been bringing customers since 2009), but kudos to Audi for taking a big risk at the time and being the first.
It’s the Ice Experience’s 15th anniversary this year, although sadly Covid-19 means it doesn’t have a perfect attendance record at SHPG.
We joined in again for 2024, getting an authentic customer experience. A $4550 single ticket gets you two nights at The Rees Hotel in Queenstown (also launched in 2009, funnily enough), welcome drinks, coach transfers to and from the event and wrap-up drinks at Ayrburn, near Arrowtown.
There’s a Pro package for $7300 that adds double the driving time in individually allocated vehicles, a helicopter down off the mountain and the full dining experience at Ayrburn; while wearing your new Huffer jacket.
The concept and essential experience haven’t changed a whole lot over the years, but the cars certainly have. In 2009, the Experience fleet comprised A4 sedans (some were even diesel! As was the fashion), A5 coupes and a smattering of higher-performance S4 models.
The big new thing for the brand back then was the R8 mid-engined sports car, which was wheeled out for some demonstration slides; but we didn’t get to drive it.
Fast forward to 2024 and things are just… faster. There’s more of an emphasis on all things S, with RS 4 Avant and RS 3 Sportbacks serving as the hero cars, and support from S4 and S3; all on studded winter tyres, of course. You swap between them all day.
In previous years there’s also been varying degrees of emphasis on electric vehicles (EVs), but the new-car market is not favouring plug-ins right now; bearing in mind these events are for customers who buy expensive Audis, the electric stuff was not exactly front and centre.
That said, the RS e-tron GT EV was very much in attendance. Call it the modern equivalent of the R8 if you like, and the big difference is that we got to go wild in this one. It was part of the full programme.
In fact, in lieu of being any good at this kind of thing, the highlight of the Ice Experience for me was comparing pure-electric RS cars with iconic internal combustion engined (ICE, ha ha) models in these conditions.
I’d argue all day long that the RS e-tron GT and its sister Porsche Taycan model are two of the best-to-drive performance EVs around.
The instant torque and exceptionally fast response of the quattro AWD system on the RS e-tron GT also make it an incredibly accomplished car on snow and ice. As long as you’re quick enough with the inputs, it simply does your bidding; and even when your bidding is a bit ham-fisted, the car seems to be able to work it out anyway a lot of the time.
For all that, I enjoyed the RS 4 more. More importantly, I got to grips with the driving exercises more quickly in the RS 4 and (I think) performed them a bit more elegantly.
Might have been a car connection from a week just spent in the RS 4 Competition Plus in Auckland, but I think the more linear (or less immediate if you want to put a negative spin on it) powertrain and chassis responses made the RS 4 a better snowmate for me.
I’m not somebody who bangs on about the importance of powertrain noise in a car (in fact I much prefer the silence of an EV), but in icy extremis the contribution of the engine note and gearchanges really do help you calibrate your steering and throttle inputs.
On a side note, I did struggle a bit with the lower-powered S4 and S4 models, which required more aggression with the throttle to get out of shape and thus quicker reactions. Showing my age. Was here 15 years ago, you know.
But what a cool opportunity to even find these things out, driving different cars back-to-back in low-traction conditions (not to mention the spectacular view).
Audi and the Downforce driver-training team have these days down-pat by now. You’re on the mountain at dawn, straight into the Event Centre for a welcome and briefing. From there it’s a series of training exercises designed to build a skill set that you can put together for more comprehensive driving exercises later in the day.
Much of our day was focused around the Event Centre and a large area called Snow Flat 15, but we also ventured further up the facility to other areas including Little Finland, a highly technical ice track that some may have spun on three times or more. No more details available, sorry.
But there were also opportunities for stuff like the I-can’t-believe-I-did-that drift circle and passenger hot laps with a Downforce driver around a high-speed (and very narrow) handling circuit, in the RS 6 Performance.
For these little snow-sorties it was mobile phones in a bag for the duration; it’s an area where you can see lots of manufacturer test prototypes and some really interesting stuff (and yes, we did).
All Ice Experience cars are fitted with trackers to ensure they don’t go anywhere beyond those transit roads around authorised locations.
So for the car-aware it’s a multi-layered experience, even if you can’t put it all on the socials. Audi Ice Experience is a proven programme by now and there’s a good reason people keep coming back for more: even after multiple years of the same basic stuff, doing skids on the snow never gets old.
I know; I was there for the first one.
