What Could Possibly Go Wrong. . . Read Online Free PDF Page A

ahead and I really didn’t have the time to spend eight hours a day looking for somewhere to charge it up and then another eight hours drinking coffee while the batteries replenished themselves with juicy electricity. Made from burning Russian gas.
    Happily, as I turned the key, I was greeted with the welcome sound of internal combustion. So why, I wondered, have they made it look so mad? Perhaps, I thought, it’s a four-wheel-drive crossover vehicle. Well, for sure, there is an all-wheel-drive version but the model I had was based on a front-drive Micra.
    So maybe, then, it has the silly body because it’s somehow capable of doubling up as a bus. Nope. It has seating for just five and a boot that is surprisingly small.
    Then I noticed something odd. In the middle of the dash is quite the most baffling onboard computer I’ve ever seen. It tells you every single thing you don’t need to know, including, wait for it, how much g you are experiencing at any given moment. Sothis idiotic high-riding car with its small wheels, street lighting and arches from a Massey Ferguson thinks it’s a jet fighter.
    It really isn’t. Yes, the engine’s a turbocharged 1.6 that produces 187 horsepower, but it doesn’t ever feel fast. Or exciting in any way. I’m not suggesting that it is nasty to drive or that it kept crashing into trees, but it’s not good, either. It is just some car.
    And that means I’m stuck. Normally I can tell what sort of person might be interested in a particular car and I try to tailor my conclusion to meet their specific requirements. But I’ve trawled my memory banks and I can’t remember ever meeting anyone who might be interested in buying a car that looks absolutely stupid.
    The best I can come up with, therefore, is this: if you just want a normal five-seat hatchback, buy a Golf or a Ford Focus. If, on the other hand, you want a normal five-seat hatchback but you enjoy people pointing at you and laughing, then the Juke is ideal.
    6 February 2011

Those yurt dwellers have got it right
Land Rover Freelander 2 eD4 HSE 2WD
    The phone rings. It’s a friend who’s just crashed his Jag and is thinking of spending the insurance cash on a new Range Rover. I explain that, all things considered, it’s probably the best car in the world, but advise against buying one brand new. First, I say, the initial depreciation can be alarming and second, I am aware the battery on new models goes flat rather too easily.
    I therefore advise him to buy the last of the old diesels from the second-hand market and am rather surprised by what he says in reply.
    He explains that he lives in a part of the world where middle-aged women pour paint on friends if they are caught buying eggs from a battery farm. Come election time, you could be forgiven for thinking, as you see the posts in people’s gardens, that there is only one party, and it’s not blue, red or yellow. This is north Oxford. This is where the ultimate status symbol is a wicker trolley on the back of your bicycle and where everyone secretly wants to live in a yurt. As a result, my friend doesn’t want to buy the old model. He wants the new one because it’s more eco-friendly.
    Hmmm. Although he doesn’t realize it, he has a point. It is far more eco-friendly to buy a car built just 50 miles away, even if it is a massive off-roader with a turbocharged V8, than it is to buy a Toyota Prius, the components of which have covered half a million miles before they are nailed into the vague shape of a car and shipped to your front door.
    However, as eco people are not very bright, I fear my friend’s neighbours may not see it this way. And I’m absolutely certainthat his argument about the new car being more eco-friendly than the old one won’t wash even a tiny bit. In north Oxford a Range Rover of any sort is the devil.
    I’m regularly told by people there that cars caused the hole in the ozone layer, usually when they are getting something from their trendy old