Fire and ice…

The sun is cresting the majestic Crown Ranges, it's four degrees below zero and I'm half asleep, as our bus jostles its way toward a snow-covered mountain peak not far from New Zealand's adrenaline sports capital, Queenstown.

But something's not right. Deep, bassy rumbles waft their way towards the slow moving bus, juxtaposed with the odd crackle. Am I dreaming?

Gazing at the wispy cirrus clouds above, I then remember what I'm doing – the AMG Snow Experience.

It might as well be a dream, because this is one of the maddest and potentially most entertaining things I’ve ever done at the snow. Most people are here to ski, but we're set to cut loose in some of Stuttgart's finest performance cars.

As the bus rolls up to almost $3 million worth of AMG machinery, there's 20 rear-wheel drive V8-powered Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG vehicles to be precise - parked at the snow farm in the Cardona Valley. I feel like a kid in a candy store. The only dilemma: do I take the coupe, the sedan or the estate?

The cost includes flights, luxury accommodation, meals, and of course the opportunity to thrash a 6.2-litre V8 sports car on ice and snow. You do have be an AMG owner to get an invite though!

The chief instructor at the AMG Snow Challenge in NZ, Peter Hackett, provides a brief overview of what to expect while driving on snow. "You will be incredibly frustrated," he grins. "And you will get your car bogged on a snow drift." Great, should be a hoot.

Specifically designed to improve racetrack skills, he explains that snow driving is a great way to learn car control, particularly at the limit, and how to deal with and correct a loss of traction.

See the full photo gallery at motoring.com.au

SNOW WAY
After the briefing I don gloves and jacket and choose my C63 'sled'. The event covers six exercises, all of which I discover involve lurid powerslides that propel giant plumes of snow for metres.

Before even attempting the slalom, my instructor requests I drive in a straight line as fast as I can then come to a complete stop. Easy. Well, not quite when all the traction and stability controls that make these cars so effortless to drive are turned off…

Feathering the throttle, the engine roars loudly, the wheels begin to spin, and the rear end starts to slip sideways. Before I attempt to correct the lateral movement the car spins around and is covered in a shower of snow, creating the briefest of rainbows in the process.

Driving on snow is like driving a car with bald tyres… in the wet. The rear-wheel drive C63 is powered by a ferocious 6.2-litre V8 engine, and as my instructor mentions, only the bravest venture onto the snow without an all-wheel drive vehicle.

But I get the hang of finessing the throttle after a few runs and the slalom gets easier. I have to counter-steer a lot, but it's more about steering with the throttle than the wheel. I can also say that completing the perfect slalom on snow is an eminently satisfying experience.

Normally, the 6.2-litre V8 pumps out 336kW/600Nm, but that figure rises to 358kW/600Nm with the Performance Pack.

Instead of spiked or studded tyres, the cars were fitted with special
snow tyres – which are a softer compound than street rubber and feature
lots of 'sipes' or tiny grooves designed to dig into the snow.
Otherwise, the cars were completely standard.

SPIN CYCLE
By now I’m confident I can make Ken Block look like a dozy infant, having performed a few nice drift transitions. The first part of the next course is also a slalom. But at the end of it is a large roundabout carved out of snow, around which I have to perform a 270 degree drift.

"It's an exercise in control," explains my instructor. "Try to drive ahead of the car, pre-empt its movement."

Suffice to say I manage to spin the car with such frequency he stops talking to me. Though in my defence, there are several patches of ice which have as much traction as a giant slip 'n' slide.

Next up is the figure eight exercise, designed to teach the driver to transition from a left-hand drift into a right-hander. By now I can 'feel' my way around the snow and am getting a hang of steering with the throttle. But with the sun rising in the sky, the snow is softening and making things a little trickier.

By now my instructor and I are back on speaking terms and he throws a few encouraging "Good effort" comments my way.

As I buckle in to a jet-black C63 AMG Coupe, I notice the witches hats in this slalom course have been moved farther apart. The instructor says, "Let's see what you've got." So I throw caution to the icy wind and nail the throttle, bathing my colleagues in a cascade of frozen powder.

With a bit of speed, I turn the nose in before applying maximum opposite lock while feeding in more throttle to get the back end fish-tailing. Then moderate the throttle input to keep the rear end just where I want it.

I ease off the throttle at the next cone, turn in, slam into opposite lock again as I wind in more power and incredibly, execute the perfect transition.

After dispatching the next three cones with similar precision, my instructor is giving me high fives while talking through the importance of looking where you want to go, rather than just staring ahead. "Let the eyes guide you and the body will follow,” he says, Confucius-like.

Not one of the journalists in our group manages to perfect the clover leaf course, largely because the conditions are constantly changing and ice is replacing the relative traction of snow. Frustration followed by fury is the best way to describe the feeling.

The final, Khana-cross exercise combines a little bit of everything practised thus far and I surprise myself with how effortlessly I cruise through the course – a Scandinavian flick here, a trailing throttle there...

Looking back, there's no way I could have contemplated navigating such a complex combination of slaloms, 180-degree drifts and flick turns at the beginning of the course.

Nailing the slalom and executing perfect fish-tails from left to right is one of the most rewarding sensations I'll ever get from behind the wheel of a car.

The only problem is, I'll have to wait until next year for the sequel the AMG Snow Experience, level two…