White Christmas is year-round in Ford test lab

It's not the weather outside that's frightful at Ford's climate laboratory. It's the weather inside.

Let it snow? Heck, yeah, say Ford's engineers.

They operate at a weather test center where Ford vehicles are subjected to extreme weather conditions. The center can test cars in temperatures from minus 40 degrees to a blistering 131 degrees. It can simulate high winds, high altitudes and different humidity, Ford says. And it can also simulate driving through a blizzard.

"Snow is a big concern," says John Toth, a Ford project engineer. It can clog a car's air filter and cause havoc in other components.

On the plus side, snow is great for sledding, building snowmen and making snow balls. But Ford's lab leaves the testing of those activities to others. Its engineers just stick to cars.