Pug Nosed And Overweight

I’ve spent a bit of time around cars and am fairly hard to trick or impress with cabin gadgetry, but I learnt something recently about a feature that I found truly new and remarkable.

Currently in my clutches is a Peugeot 206. Emergency Contact is out of town with the owner of the car, and the keys were left with me to ‘look after’.

I used to be a big fan of the old 306’s and have driven a few of them. This 206 is not old. Just between you and me and the escargot, I’m not in love.

It’s pretty tall, so the body roll is alarming. The understeer is cataclysmic and the pedals are put so close together, I am forced to drive barefoot using only my big toes, leaving my feet flat on the floor.

It is very French: Why? Because things are on the wrong side, it smells pungent and the cigarette lighter is placed on the console as though it still plays an important part in the drivers life. If it was any more French, it would be smoking a Gauloise wrapped in a Gitane.

That’s not always a bad thing, it’s just a thing.

One of my objections to the way we often receive an import from Europe in this country, is that the manufacturers often choose the cheapest possible method for putting the steering wheel on the other side of the car.

They get the pedals and the wheel swapped over, sure, but nothing else is really dealt with. The stems on the steering column remain in the Euro configuration. We become used to having the indicator on the gear-shift hand, but that is not ideal. The left hand is too busy at times. When you are changing lanes or coming in and out of a corner (signalling) is also when you should be changing gears. It’s not insurmountable, but it’s not the best.

It also uses lots of indecipherable little symbols instead of words, all over the place – sign of a car company that did not want to pay for translation and different button manufacture for the EU. I can understand that, and eventually I'll understand the buttons. I can tell that the owner has not bothered to learn the function of some of them, they look unused.

One feature I am rather charmed with though, is the ability to change the pitch of the headlights from a dial in the cabin. You wind it up, and the headlights are stargazing. You wind it down, and it bats its eyes coquettishly. I surmised it might be for reducing light-bounce when it snows. Smurf agreed, but added another reason to the mix.

When you are carrying around a big load in the back of a little car, it makes the nose point up. If that happens you can wind your lights down to where they should be.

I asked how he knew this because it sounds so odd and he doesn't drive. I mean, we don’t have it here, and I would have expected the nanny-state to have made that mandatory by now if it was a genuine safety feature.

He actually said that he’d been pulled over with mates in the back of the Ford Festiva, in Europe.

The copper had told them to turn their lights down.

“But this car doesn’t have that feature.”

“Well, your mates in the back there need to lose weight.”