Pick Me!

Recently the time spent with my old Saab 900 is decreasing, the requirement for a cavernous load space to fetch parts for broken VW’s, take musical equipment to gigs or fledgling rock bands to press launches is far greater than my ambling around and so my large marshmallow suspensioned Swede is an absent friend.

Therefore this past couple of weeks I have been forced to find an alternative, with the prospect of having to make an epic school holiday schlep fulfilling my role as the ‘young, eccentric aunt’ to my pre-pubescent niece and the paraphernalia associated with said hormone timebomb, I needed something a tad more practical than my Spider (much to the 11 year old’s dismay) and the MGB frankly would never make the 200 miles to my sisters’ house and the subsequent 70 miles to the Northern Welsh coast where we had chosen to spend a week on vacation.

I turned to the automotive pimp. The hire car centre.

The life of a hire car is a thankless existence. The public convenience of the automotive world, merely present to fulfil a need, a requirement; so long as they’re clean, smell ok and a look half decent – it’ll do.

It is an unwritten law in this country that ‘those who shall grace the driving seat of a hired vehicle must henceforth thrash the engine within an inch of it’s rev limiter and not give care or attention to kerbing hub cabs nor the interior and especially not spare the rubber of the tyres'.

Hire cars are used and abused by all who grace the driver’s seat. They’re the beasts of burden, carrying loads, relatives, separated partners and their pet fish to new abodes; taking belongings up and down the land. I think they’re great. I fought the compelling masochistic urge within me to sample the wares of the appropriately named ‘Hire a Banger’ after seeing one of their banger fleet hazard lights a-flashing on an M40 slip road recently and so managed to cram an immense amount of female unnecessary baggage into the teeniest almost new hire fleet shopping car I could find.

The Ford KA...stuff it!

A 1.1 engined, so basic opening windows are probably an optional extra, Ford Ka. It was devoid of CD player, it housed a cassette player, had wind up windows, fairly useless cubby holes and odd set within the carpet not particularly deep cup holders, my Tom Tom Satnav I installed for the week was probably worth more than the Ka.

It felt like something you could make with easy instruction from a Blue Peter presenter using washing up liquid bottles and sticky backed plastic with an adult to supervise battery connection and petrol usage. But for £99 unlimited mileage for a week’s hire and an engine that runs on the smell of an oily rag (with petrol at 92p per litre), I sure as hell wasn’t complaining.

Well I was actually. I didn’t get on with the dashboard, the centre console was too intrusive for a long legged thing like me and the arcing plastic of the dash itself was styling trying a bit too hard, all of which condescended the simplest of instrument panels. The glove box ‘pod’ which reminded me of the little orange plastic wrappers you get lunchbox size jaffa cakes in, refused to close despite gentle coercion and a heavy clout from my Mother, I was scared to press any harder for fear of breakage. The cloth trim and plastic backing to the seats was easy to clean – essential for any hire car, but the finish I found to be fairly shoddy with bits of unfinished cloth left hanging. Either this car had already been seriously abused by its casual driving inhabitants; or this particular hire Ka happened to be a Friday afternoon car.

It had a frugal little engine with a decent gear change and a fairly balanced ride given all my crap in the back. I’m sure that would change given a gust of wind or two, the long winding A roads were gobbled up quite pleasantly albeit with a hint of understeer but the hills and valleys of Snowdonia became Everest to the little Ka, sheep were progressing up roads quicker than I was at some points, the engine wailing in pain at the punishment of the merest hint of gradient. 0 – 60 seemed to take longer than a decent French manicure.

If you fancy a change from your everyday car and don’t have the money to buy a new one, why not take out a hire car for the day, you get to try something new and the car gets to go on a good old fashioned road trip. Overly affectionate toward inanimate objects? Who me? I decided to take the Ka to some interesting places as it doesn’t get out of the city much, so included a trip for the car with the shortest name, to a place with a rather long name.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch and er..a Ka

In hindsight a Ka is best suited for town and city driving with the occasional motorway hop. It’s ideal for this and designed just so. I really didn’t think I’d like it and my Mother, upon calling her to tell her what I’d be collecting her in vehemently refused to travel in it. The little Ka won us over though, it’s a very functional little thing, great as a cheap hire car and just the sort of vehicle my Mother would need for popping to work and the shops, if I could persuade her back behind the wheel. But for me, I’ll probably be hunting down something a big larger, with 4 wheel drive and a dvd player to keep my niece amused should I make the same trip again.