Yeah seen quite a few of those Rufford Ford YouTube posts. Amazing how dumb some people are. Hydrolocking an engine means bending conrods valves etc. Its buy new engine or scrap yer car time. Occasionally you'll see an EV go through with Zero problems. Yet some people still think EVs don't work in the rain or electrocute it's passengers on a damp road....there's a YouTube video of someone driving an EV actually underwater. Some people will believe any old wives tale they hear.

I have a MK2 Polo many years ago that was great in floods as the air intake was right on top of the engine.

We had a mk2 Polo and air intake was indeed high up (pipe out of air filter) - but it also had a pipe taken from the top of the exhaust manifold that opened in coldish weather to avoid carb icing. I know because it fell off on ours and it wasn't obvious - well except in winter it kept gradually loosing power until it eventually stopped on a steady A road(my commute) , then when stopped restarted after a couple of mins, carb icing up! Took me a while to figure out what was going on! Generally a great car though.

Always had to be careful with my old 1990 1.6td Passat back in the day where the air intake was just behind the VW badge at the front - not great with a bow wave. It was a big potential problem one year (2000 I think?) as it was a bad weather year and flooding was common place on various routes around my commute to York. I usually held back to see if others went through and how deep it was - fortunately my car remained OK.

Edited by Big John on 06/09/2022 at 21:29

I'm curious (though not planning to put it to the test!) -- in situations like this, would insurance pay up for what ought to be foreseeable by a reasonably-competent driver? I mean that, for example, driving through somewhere like Rufford Ford when the water is obviously right deep ought to strike anyone as a generally bad idea even if they are not familiar with the issue of hydro-locking.

Bit surprised by the Volvo at 4:07. The driver seemed sensible. The air intake must be very low on that model unless the alternator got soaked.

The current Volvo saloons and estates usually have the airbox intake snorkel positioned right behind the grille on the passenger's side, so it's fairly low down and on the deeper side of the ford with the car's direction of travel. It wouldn't take much of a bow-wave to suck water.