DIARY OF A TEST DRIVER

Crack tester Timo Knees reports from the Arctic Circle, as he puts one of 2019’s big launches through its final paces

This week, I have been busy fine-tuning the Cheery Bong II’s on-the-limit handling. The aim? To make the Cheery Bong II nothing less than the best-handling North Korean supermini of its generation. As a test driver, you must dare to dream big.

First up, the industry standard ‘elk test’: a rapid swerve between lanes, conventionally simulated on a runway using a dozen or so cones. However, with my paymasters at Rong Un Motors insisting cones are ‘a tool of capitalist subjugation’ and also ‘surprisingly expensive’, I was told to perform the elk test using a live elk, Onni.

Now, if you have only seen a picture of an elk, you might think it cute and fluffy and harmless. It is not. The elk, I am sorry to report, is a large, pointy, angry bastard. Especially if it is an elk you’ve asked to stand nicely in the middle of a runway while you drive a budget North Korean supermini towards it at pace. Suffice it to say, simply coaxing Onni to his starting position in Lane 2 of Kokapu’s highspeed test track allowed me to sample two new sensations that

I did not, at the time, know the English words for, but have since discovered translate as ‘trampled’ and ‘heavily gored’.

But having strapped myself in, before I could accelerate at Onni, Onni – in a development that, with the benefit of hindsight, should not have come as a complete shock – took it upon himself to accelerate at me. Therefore I am not able to report how the Cheery Bong II handles the elk test. I am, however, able to report that its innovative fibreglass construction does a surprisingly good job of protecting its driver from attack by an enraged, territorial male elk. At least until that elk discovers the test car has not yet been fitted with a passenger door. I have been fined a week’s wages for this insubordination. Onni has been promoted to chief safety engineer.