Hard to handle

When young whippersnappers like Jethro Bovingdon start complaining about ride quality, we really are in trouble.

The fault lies squarely in the court of our Teutonic friends I’m afraid. Now, I don’t know about the quality of German B-roads, but ours are truly shocking, and have highlighted the appalling ride quality of a number of cars I’ve owned, sadly all German.

Even winter gritting makes my wife’s Golf GTD feel like it’s being driven on a poorly maintained Roman cobbled track, with winceinducing results. I don’t know what the cost of chiropractors or dentists is in Germany, but they’re clearly in cahoots with their car makers.

The Germans make fabulous cars, don’t get me wrong, but Jethro’s piece took me back to my first experience of an Audi A6 Avant, which I’d specced as an S-line to get the tastiest alloys and ‘sporty’ options. Style over substance, the perennial battle.

My children got to the point where the daily fight to get in the front seat of the Audi wasn’t to prove superiority, it was more a refusal to be subjected to the boneshattering ride in the back. What the dog in the very back thought I shudder to think.

A subsequent 5-series in M-sport spec (see, I never learn) was only marginally better, but no magic carpet either.

But our lot are not without blame. Jaguar was for decades one of the few manufacturers that appeared to have found the magic formula of good handling without compromising ride quality, but if reports of the F-type are to be believed, even it has replaced pliant suspension components with solid items in the quest for the ultimate lap time.

How many people take an A6, Golf GTD, etc on track, where the nth degree of handling is exposed? With most cars having a myriad of set-up options nowadays, can it really be that hard to make the Comfort setting truly that?

Anyway, I’m off for a lie down with a Horlicks and a Werther’s Original – my bad back is playing up. Euan Gibson, St Abbs