It wasn't the car I planned to hire which was a Toyota Yaris, a smaller version of the Corolla. My first choice of hire company was all booked out because they have the best deals by far, Thrifty had the next best deals so having a good experience with the Adelaide branch I booked with the one nearest to Mentone, but this branch turned out to be a franchised operation with different rules, critically - no fair wear and tear policy - so the slightest chip or scratch and they would extract $4k, or I could take out the extra insurance which would more than double the hire price and only reduce the excess to $500. For that price I could just buy a car, deal breaker, the service was weird and to expect hire cars to remain in perfect show room condition is unreasonable and impossible. I think the hiring of cars for some companies is just a front for the acquisition of insurance money and extortion for tiny cheaply repairable dints, who regulates this industry and don't they have their own public liability insurance anyway?
So I went elsewhere but it was a Friday afternoon and I could really only get to places in the immediate area, a few others were out of cars but Europcar in a nearby street had just had a delivery of transfer vehicles from their airport branch arrive, and yes they had a fair wear and tear policy, they even had the details on a pamphlet, their insurance which I didn't take out wasn't ridiculous either and the excess if you did take out the insurance was lower. I asked for a small car, they gave me a Hyundai i30, I was about to leave and noticed the indicator was way too fast so some lights were out, the headlights so it was swapped for the larger Accent above as there were no smaller cars left. This was ok, it was much bigger than I needed but it was a car and I needed to get out of Melbourne before rush hour, this turned out to be a folly, it's always rush hour in Melbourne so it didn't matter what time I left.
On with the review
The boot is very big, I'm not used to it. I could put my massive bag in there and still have lots of other things surrounding it. This did come in handy when giving Lucas and Raquel a lift to Wilsons Promontory and they had a lot of stuff, plus my 100L bag was in the back too, for this the car gets a star.
It likes to lock itself after a few seconds when inside, I never left the keys inside and let the door shut because I'm pretty sure it would lock itself. It also does not release the key from the ignition unless its in Park, I did not know this, and to put it in Park the engine must be on and the foot on the break otherwise it appears to stick in Neutral. I had to phone Europcar in a flap because it had locked me in the car and I couldn't get the key out of the ignition after arriving at Geelong so I thought it was faulty, but apparently all new cars do this now because we're all to stupid apparently put on the hand break. It can't be all new cars because the new Corolla didn't do that, but the Corolla had the spirit of Cuthbert.
Testing the acceleration, not much happened, there seemed a long lag between pressing the accelerator and anything happening, the result was I drove slowly and didn't overtake anything because I couldn't, alas the spirit of Cuthbert was not with this car. It was probably the least responsive car I've ever driven, you could push the peddle up and down and very little would happen at cruising speed. I think it's probably best suited as a taxi because of the big boot and nice bland interior. It was better however accelerating from much lower speeds or from being still, although you had to really put your foot down.
There were a decent array of cup holders and a USB outlet so I could charge the phone whilst using the GPS on it which gobbles the battery.
The mirrors were good and the doors locked and unlocked this was good, this considerably better than Cuthbert in this respect as I heard that Cuthbert's driver side door lock is not working very well so Tj is having to crawl in through the boot. I'm hoping a new key cut asap will help this problem. Still he was in high spirits about it, I suggested singing to Cuthbert too as one cannot discount the powers of alternative remedies. I must say I missed the spirit of Cuthbert whilst driving around Victoria and there were times I wished he was here.
Trends in current cars that need to go
Car adverts go on about safety, but they're not designed for safety they're designed for fashion. Here are some trends that need to end.
- Indicators that can't been see well from the side, for example pedestrians wanting to cross the road might want to know if the car is going to turn and run them over only you can't see the indicator lights because they are positioned only for the benefit of the car behind or oncoming traffic and to look cool, not on the side like they used to be where everyone could see them.
- If cars do have them on the side they are not as visible because the glass is clear with complicated shapes and not as easy to see.
- The body work rising up towards the back so back passengers feeling imprisoned and second class and the rear ends have less window space and more pillar bits making it harder to see when reversing, I guess we are meant to do away with using on our own senses for safety and just rely on the reversing cameras.
- The fronts have low level scoopy 'bumpers' which aren't really bumpers as they are all one piece body panels that incorporate the front lights, it makes it harder to go over rougher ground or even just get into the average fuel station in Victoria without danger of grounding.
- Monochrome colour selections
- 'Sport' buttons. 'i' anything.
- Not being able to see the bonnet because of the slope of the front end making me feel like I'm driving a phantom car.
- Dribbly light arrays that look like melting icecream blown upwards by the wind with lots of complicated bits for no reason, lets have some minimalism.
- 'Aggressive' styling. Why do we need this? as if peoples driving wasn't aggressive enough, the juggernaut of an SUV tailgating also looks aggressive and is driven by an angry middle aged man. Stop it, lets have happy friendly looking vehicles, no wonder VW camper and the beetle were such an icons, they looked cute.
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| Wonderful Cuthbert |
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