The new car: Series 1: Episode 3

In the ten days since my last report (reference 1), our hired Cupra Formentor has behaved pretty well. 

Snapped above at Ryde Tesco's, on which occasion my parking was pretty good. Much better than usual, I might say.

Digressing, it so happens that the white vehicle behind and to the right is a rare example of a Romahome. I just missed having a chat with the owner. Perhaps the same one as was noticed - but not snapped - at reference 2. 

I might say in passing that this Tesco's manages to seem a lot smarter, both inside and out, than our similarly large Sainsbury's at Epsom. Maybe Tesco's made a better choice of livery colours?

Back with the Formentor, I have been quite pleased with it. Easy enough to drive, even if the parking visibility, in common it seems with most modern cars, is poor. Not yet used to relying on the radar. My left hand only strays occasionally over the absent gear shift and my left foot does not twitch at all, content to rest on the foot rest provided. And I like the automatic parking feature, whereby you don't have to keep your right foot on the brake when stopped on a hill at lights or a junction. Handbrake starts are a thing of the past.

However, the menagerie of controls, mostly implemented by cunning movements of obscure buttons and levers, is still a bit of a pain. I have yet to learn how to turn off the rear wipers in a reliable way - which can be irritating as they are easy enough to turn on by accident. I have yet to learn how to adjust the wing mirrors, although I think I have found out from the manual where the relevant obscure button is. And on one occasion the dashboard broke into speech which was particularly irritating.

Maybe, given that there is a screen to the left of the steering wheel, the makers will gradually move from mechanical control to screen control, which would be more like fiddling with the settings on your laptop or computer. I think that this would work better for me. I believe that the people who design the cockpits of the rather more complicated fighter jets have thought long and hard about the best balance between lots of levers & dials and the screen. I also remember reading that people who work with the great banks of levers and dials you get in the control rooms of power stations gradually learn to absorb what is going on without having to consciously think about it. The brain has learned about the bad patterns of dials and will alert you when necessary. But then, cars are not quite the same: lots of levers but not so many dials.

The gadget which reads some of the passing road signs is quite slow and it not terribly reliable, but it is good at reminding you about speed limits. I guess the result is that one breaks them much less often, which is good.

After a shaky start, we are getting used to the locking and unlocking of the car doors. To the point of trusting the locking without feeling the need to check every time. If the wing mirrors fold, they are locked.

The car is a hybrid but we have not knowingly made any use of that. As far as I can tell, the battery is not getting charged up and we have certainly not got the charging leads out of their bag.

BH is getting on quite well and has taken on most of our outbound driving, including parking on arrival at wherever it might be. She does not, however, like the sporty trim and the lack of visibility, so she would not want to buy this particular car.

Well enough, that we have yet to use either bus or train to get us out of Brading. Services which we have made quite a bit of use of in the past.

In sum, hiring is expensive, but we are now much better placed to start the search for a new, or maybe new-to-us, car. Maybe, even, an electric car. We know what the car of today is going to be like.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-new-car-series-1-episode-2.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/botanics.html.