Motoring

I am liable to post the occasional rant, this is in keeping with the character I like to portray on this blog. It’s mostly an act really for my own amusement. But sometimes life does throw up things that are genuinely very annoying and a problem with our car is one of them.

Of course running a car is not a cheap business as one expects the occasional repair bill due to wear and tear. When such matters arise and there’s a danger one’s car will be off the road one does not expect to be told that the required part will not be available until the end of summer.

This is the situation currently with Citroen here in the UK and parts for its pneumatic suspension on higher-end Picasso models. We have such a car and we are waiting for the parts with the hope that our suspension doesn’t completely fail at speed with our family in the car.

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I’ve not yet reached the age of forty but it’s pretty clear I am entering middle age. However none of the usual signs are there – I’ve not lost my sense of humour, I still listen to new music, I don’t read the Telegraph and neither am I afraid of immigrants.

Yet it’s clear I am a flabby old man. Why? Because I’ve just discovered the joys of an automatic transmission and can’t imagine owning a car with anything else.

Let me step back a minute and explain. We recently traded in our trusty much-loved Ford C-Max. We replaced it with a shiny Citroen C4 Grand Picasso. The Citroen is loaded to the gunwales with technology – there are rear parking sensors, traction control, dual-zone climate control, central computer display, automatic wipers, speed limiter, cruise control, automatic lights etc. But the major clever piece of technology is the transmission.

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