Your views
That’s the game of the name
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Battery swap pit-stop
Nigel Brecknell’s idea of using ‘brickstyle’ batteries to quickly replenish an electric vehicle’s power supply is not a new one (Your views, 8 August). During World War 2, and for a year or two after, the household electricity supply was intermittent. One of my jobs as a six-year-old-plus boy was to collect my grandparents’ discharged ‘accumulator’, which powered their radio, and take it to the ironmongers on the corner and swap it for a charged one.
Alan Coring
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Can’t afford not to
You suggested a used BMW M135i for £16-17,000 (Spied in the Classifieds, 8 August). I was ahead of the curve.
My local dealer had one so we tested it. Fun, sensible and refined, there was nothing not to like. The deal was almost done until he said: “We have a couple of M140i Shadow Editions at £29,000, pre-registered, with 13 miles run.”
On the road, with gap insurance and allowing trade-in on my 11-yearold Mercedes, the four-year PCP was just £30 a month more than the used M135i because it qualified for ‘new car finance’. Deal done. The M135i and M140i are the best hot hatches I’ve ever driven – almost as much fun as my 2014 Morgan Aero Plus 8!
Peter Jenks
Salisbury, Wiltshire
Don’t ignore the fundamentals
The Volkswagen Polo is yet another new car with a severely restricted fuel tank capacity of just 40 litres and a subsequent limited practical range between refills (Road test, 1 August).
Is cost the reason for this parsimony, or is it that fuel consumption testing is done with a fixed percentage of capacity, therefore the smaller the tank, the less the fuel load, thereby increasing consumption by yet another fraction?
This fault can be added to the crime of not fitting a useable spare wheel to every car. Having a car with run-flats and no spare I set out on every long journey in fear and trepidation of a puncture. On the three occasions attention has been needed, not one local supplier has had my tyre size in stock, necessitating a wait of hours and once days for a replacement. Any new car I buy will not have run-flats and preferably a proper, full-size spare if possible.
Manufacturers are seemingly set to fit more and more complicated gadgetry and electronics while forgetting or ignoring some fundamental basics.
Roger Tagg
Farnsfield, Nottinghamshire The outgoing NEDC economy test stipulated a full tank, Roger. We’re not sure about the new WLTP rules but we can’t imagine that particular requirement would change – MB
Enough of this nannying
Matt Prior’s comments on the Volkswagen Touareg (Road test, 8 August) sum up the futility of most of the new technology in today’s cars. He says: “Lane-keep assist defaults to on and it’s four buttons on the steering wheel to turn it off. Which, if you don’t want it, is more irritating than it should be.”
I have similar problems with my new BMW 5 Series in having to turn off unwanted ‘nannying’ technology before the start of each journey.
I dread to think what lies in wait when I change this car: we won’t be able to turn most of this stuff off on the next models, but I just do not want all of this technology. It’s distracting and far from fail-safe and it strikes me that the manufacturers only include it because they can (and I am sure helps the NCAP rating), not because they think it actually contributes to safer driving.
I do not believe that this stuff is fully tested in the real world of real drivers and real conditions, when we should actually be concentrating on driving a safely as possible rather than being interrupted by various bongs, flashing lights and vibrations through the wheel, pedals and seats.
Dave Taylor
Via email Euro NCAP’S safety assist protocols do indeed cover lane-keep assist – or ‘lane support systems’ – hence the Touareg’s ‘default to on’. And like you say, Dave, expect more of this sort of thing as an increasing number of driver-assist safety features inevitably fall under the NCAP umbrella – MB
Real life with a Leaf
I have recently returned my Nissan Leaf after owning it for 11 months. I did a few long runs with it but unfortunately charging became a nightmare, and for several reasons.
First, a lack of public rapid chargers in east Kent. Second, logging on to the charge points was touch and go and you had to carry several different account cards in order to get them to work – if they
weren’t out of order, that is. In order for electric vehicles to really take off, rapid chargers should be far more plentiful and debit/credit cards should be readily accepted.
At present EVS are brilliant for only local journeys. Perhaps in a few years time a genuine range of 350 miles in all weathers will be obtainable. Meanwhile, I’ll just have to be content with my Nissan Pulsar.
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A couple of characters
I read the feature on cars with character, which was interesting and somewhat surprising (‘Get to the heart of the motor’, 8 August). In the 1960s and 1970s I had a job which fortunately allowed me to drive almost every type of car available.
There were two stand-outs. The first was the Mini Cooper 1275s, just ahead of the 1071-engined version. The Mini just helped you to drive neatly and tidily suitably quickly.
The second car was the Jaguar Mk2 3.8L, particularly when fitted with the Laycock limited-slip diff. You could feel exactly what the car was doing and you very quickly learnt the best way to get from A to B.
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Badge engineering
I’m interested why you say the Mercedes-benz X-class you’re running is so admired (Our cars, 25 July) . I understand the appeal of an upmarket pick-up, similar to what many Americans love so dearly, but can the public really be fooled that easily into buying a rebadged Nissan?
If so, then I feel as if Mercedes is laughing at its customers as an expensive Navara with a star badge on the front is sold without them even bothering to change the key. I wasn’t aware of just how many people could be attracted to the automotive equivalent of an instant coffee in a Starbucks cup.
This is not a criticism of Autocar, but of the very materialistic views of the British public.
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