Weekend Drive

The car

From the outside, it’s beautifully low and prowly. Inside, the infotainment screen offers hours of exploration and vehicle adjustments, but the most wonderful for nearly- 2- year- olds and nearly- 4- year- olds, is the changing colour of strip lighting along the interior doors. It’s so enticing that it’s almost impossible to get the car out of the driveway as argument rages over which of the children actually chose purple. It’s an unresolvable argument, because a) they both did and b) the nearly- 2- year- old doesn’t yet know what purple is.

The drive

Hahei might be three hours away, but in the cocoon of the seven- seat Skoda Kodiaq, time is a fluid concept, related more to comfort and happiness. The space to separate children helps nullify arguments, the voice projection facility, which picks up voices from the front and amplifies them through the speakers in the rear allows you to not have to shout at your rear- most child, and the ability to use a bird’s- eye- view visualisation of the car to choose a point ( way, way in the back) to centre the sound of Peppa Pig audiobooks means you can have adult conversation unsullied by that awful, relentless theme music. The weather outside is cold but the seat beneath your bottom is perfectly warmed to the second of three heat settings, and the umbrellas in the front doors allow you to stay mostly dry on a short waterfront walk at Tairua.

The specs

Once on the motorway, and even more effectively on the open road, you set cruise control for 100 and forget about the accelerator as it detects cars and slows down and speeds back up accordingly. The lane assist function detects if you’re drifting toward the side of the road or the centre line, and gently turns the wheel to help you back on track. You’re still in charge, but you’re in charge of a car that appears to care as much about your family as you do.