---
title: "Engines and Snow Are Made for Each Other"
description: "The oddball contraptions that make winter worth it."
date: "2016-01-22"
modified: "2016-01-22"
authors:
  - name: "The Drive Staff"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/the-drive-staff"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/1782/engines-and-snow-are-made-for-each-other"
categories:
  - "News"
tags:
  - "winter"
---

# Engines and Snow Are Made for Each Other

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_hero.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

Winter appeals to our better instincts. Our tinkerers, our thinkers, our idiots. Winter makes them all crack their knuckles, pull on some goggles and set forth loudly into blizzards of invention. And those inventions? They’re glorious. Tank-treaded propeller-driven suicide sleds lubricated by sweat and blood and skittering across the icy world on runners of made of pure frozen gall.

It’s a glorious thing, the snow machine. Today, made efficient and practical, they’re very real transportation. Fantasies made real. And the failures that preceded them? We’re all made a little better for their invention, and a little safer by their failures.

![snowandmachines\_art\_1.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_1.jpg>)
**Berliner Illustrations Gesellschaft/ullstein bild via Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_2.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_2.jpg>)
**Alfred Gross/ullstein bild via Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_3.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_3.jpg>)
**Berliner Illustrations Gesellschaft/ullstein bild via Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_4.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_4.jpg>)
**Topical Press Agency/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_5.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_5.jpg>)
**M. Rol/ullstein bild via Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_6.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_6.jpg>)
**M. Rol/ullstein bild via Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_7.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_7.jpg>)
**ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_8.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_8.jpg>)
**Ludwig Boedecker/ullstein bild via Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_9.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_9.jpg>)
**Underwood Archives/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_10.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_10.jpg>)
**Frank Lennon/Toronto Star via Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_11.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_11.jpg>)
**Underwood Archives/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_12.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_12.jpg>)
**National Motor Museum/Heritage Images/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_13.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_13.jpg>)
**Imagno/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_14.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_14.jpg>)
**Underwood Archives/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_15.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_15.jpg>)
**Underwood Archives/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_16.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_16.jpg>)
**Planet News Archive/SSPL/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_17.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_17.jpg>)
**Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_18.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_18.jpg>)
**Imagno/Getty Images**

![snowandmachines\_art\_19.jpg](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/content/archive-images/snowandmachines_art_19.jpg>)
**Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images**

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