Who Thinks This Stuff Up?

We have a new car. It is only three months old and has already done two return journeys to England.

It is a Skoda. Who would have thought it? I can remember the time when Skoda jokes did the rounds with the Essex Girl jokes. (How do you double the value of a Skoda? Fill it up with petrol – the Essex girl jokes are not fit material for Grumpy’s blog).

But all those days are past and now it is a byword for reliability and German engineering. As well as all this great engineering, the designers have been at work.

You and I thought that only the Americans have coffee cup holders in their cars. Apocryphal stories suggest that Swiss car salesmen have been known to get very agitated when asked about coffee cups. And now the Skoda has two coffee cup holders, although not of the five litre variety that we had when in the U.S. in 2010.

It has cute useful little spaces for my numerous sets of glasses, so I can look cool, as I get my driving glasses down from the ceiling of the car.

The doors open better than my old BMW, which used to swing back and hit you in the kneecaps.

It has a fancy on-board display, from which you can change the headlights for driving in England, without having to go outside and stick those little pieces of black tape to the lights.

I can attach my (hundred year old version) iPod to the car radio, which I will admit is an obvious feature to have.

There are less obvious features. The car locks itself again, if, having unlocked it, you don’t open a door within 30 seconds. What is even less obvious is why anyone would want this feature. It can be very annoying.

The back tailgate shuts so quietly (fantastic) that everyone has to do it twice to make sure that it is closed properly (not so fantastic).

The piece-de-resistance has to be the Manual. This is now over 200 pages long, proving that this stuff is all too complicated. Our original copy was in German which was too hard to understand. We now have an English version, which is also too hard to understand, proving that it is not the language that is the problem - just the fact that it is 200 pages.

Here is an interesting and annoying little feature. Car radio switches itself to very quiet when the car is in reverse and has to be turned up again. Apparently, this feature is to do with the “Park Assistant”, proving that “Health and Safety” has infected even the German Skoda radio designers. I am reminded of a friend of ours who has a coffee machine which shuts down when it decides it needs to be cleaned. If you have no cleaner, you have to trick it into believing that it has been cleaned. Fancy having to lie to a coffee machine.

On the other, I am told that we even have Bluebooth, encouraging me to use my mobile phone while driving. Hmmmmm.

On the personal entertainment and nervous habit side, you can get the car-key in and out of its holder like a flick knife, which is great. You can fiddle with this all day long, while walking along. I don’t think that this key holder will last too long with me.

Who thinks this all stuff up anyway?

By the way, does anyone know where our spare car key is?