Faults:

Nothing - car was an Avis hire drive and brand new.

General Comments:

This was a one week hire drive from Avis, during which I drove about 640 miles on everything from motorways to narrow country lanes.

The car looks very nice indeed – stylish externally, and a well finished attractive interior. In a showroom, in competition with rival models, it will compare very favourably.

In practice, I found that while the styling was good, the car was not as good to drive as it looked. The main faults I found were.

· The swept back windscreen means that when the driver’s door is open, the “A” pillar is an obstruction to getting in and out of the car – you have to duck.

· Once in the car, the same swept back door pillar means that the hand grab on the driver’s side is too near your head – I am only of average height, but if I leaned my head slightly to the right I kept hitting the hand grab. A 6 foot male will be uncomfortable.

· The instrument layout is good, but the speedometer is graded from 0 – 130mph, but only fills two thirds of the space available in the binnacle. This means that all the critical speeds you need to watch – 30, 40, 50, 60 are all bunched up close together. By contrast, the rev counter, has much better gradation of numbers and is much more prominent.

· The central radio and information display has a silver surround that reflects badly in the windscreen.

· Part of information display includes a digital miles-per-gallon indicator. This fluctuated wildly between 40 – 70 mpg even when driving steadily, and when cornering or changing gear flickered between 19 – 140 mpg. In effect the information displayed was useless. The car came with a full tank of fuel, and was returned with a full tank, and I estimate true fuel consumption was around 35 mpg.

· The gears ratios are far too high. Trying to accelerate on motorways at 50 mph took a very long time – 5th is more of an overdrive than a realistic 5th gear. I spent a lot of the time driving only in 4th, which may explain the relatively poor fuel consumption for a 1.2 litre modern car.

I am sorry to be so negative. The car has a great “WOW” factor and looks smart. But the much less glamorous Ford Fiesta beats it as a practical form of transport.