Battle of the bulge
Losing it.
Inadvertently kicking wide the door of the Old Jokes Home, the missus has made an admission: ‘I love it,’ she says of the Audi. ‘I just can’t park it.’
Truth is – as evinced by the constant tussle we both have with threading it into, and out of, our diminutive driveway without demolishing the petite porch en route – the Q5 is far larger than it feels from behind the wheel.
That’s probably a compliment to the painstaking engineering lavished on making it pleasingly agile for such a large chunk of tin. However, even though the high driving position gives a good view ahead, it doesn’t equate to a clear grasp of where the corners are.
Especially after dark. Already fugged by the grime associated with any lens not blessed with a badge that lends itself to pop-up concealment, the rear camera is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Moreover, reinforcing my belief that all car designers live under urban floodlighting, the reversing light would not exactly constitute my first port of call when seeking to illuminate an emergency appendectomy.
In this coruscatingly bright LED age, why the hell can’t we have what is effectively a wide-beam rear headlamp?
Mercifully, forward visibility is considerably better. Or, at least, it was until the screenwash ran out on me halfway down a sodden M5. That’s the trouble with a system that blasts great gouts of the reservoir at the headlamps every time you instigate a quick squirt just to clear the windscreen.
Should not the former be switchable rather than compulsory? And shouldn’t said switch also activate a gnat’s-pee jet to simultaneously clean the camera lens?
Lob in the fact that, long after the driver’s side is clear, the passenger-side wiper is always still a drop or two short of enough water to properly cut through the grime, and the only way the Q5 might be equipped with a reservoir large enough to slake its relentless thirst is through towing a bowser…