I took a pool car from work to visit another site the other day.  Being a pool car it was quite new and of a decent spec, and being a Renault it was full of gadgets

The French seem to love gadgets on their cars, and none more so than Renault.  Some of them were impressive and some more useful than others, but I’m not sure its such a good idea having pool cars or hire cars with them on.

If you buy a car you will take some time to either familiarise yourself with every button and switch by trial and error or read the manual.  More likely you would work out as much as you could and then  look up the things you couldn’t work out yourself.   When you are borrowing one you tend to just get in and go.

I used to drive a lot of hire cars in a previous job, nearly every time was a different make or model.   The real nightmare was setting off on a nice day and hitting a sudden unexpected shower and then realising that you are not sure how to turn the wipers on.  I now check that out no matter how unlikely it is to rain.

Anyway, these Renaults are interesting even before you start because they do not have keys – just a card.   You put the card in a slot on the dashboard and press a big red ‘start’ button.   I was impressed by the wipers though – as the rain got heavier they moved faster.  What a brilliant idea.

I was also impressed when it suddenly got more overcast and we went under a bridge and the headlights came on of their own accord.  I was a bit less impressed when I got to the destination and could not turn the buggers off.  Because they had come on automatically the headlight switch was already in the off position.  We tried turning that switch on and then off again with no joy.  The stalk had an ‘auto’ button on the end of it so we tried pushing that several times.

After several minutes of pressing every button, turning the car off and on again and pressing more buttons the lights went off but I still have no idea how we did it.

Maybe its just me who has this trouble.  I have never owned a car built after 2000 so have not had a chance to become familiar with such  gadgets.