smart (arse) parking

Spotted some nifty sideways parking in Belfast yesterday.

And then spotted the two stickers on the back of the car.

Brought back memories of a fun six months with a SMART car a few years ago.

Friday’s antics

It was a morning of frantic, yet choreographed activity. The car changeover day. Leaving one back to Mallusk, picking the other up on the Boucher Road, and collecting kit for next week’s Tech Camp, and a supply of coloured card from Play Resource Warehouse over off Duncairn Gardens.

It started well, getting the diminutive Smart Roadster back to the Fleet workshop. It took a while to get the paperwork completed – they give the car a good inspection for wear and tear before accepting it back – and discovering that the bottle of magic run-flat tyre fluid hadn’t been returned by the last driver when I got the vehicle in January.

We stocked up with paper in the Aladdin’s cave, and headed south to Charles Hurst’s Toyota dealership. That was where the wheel’s (metaphorically) came off the plans. The salesman was off on leave, and while he had registered the car and sorted out the invoice, the car hadn’t been scheduled for its last minute clean and finish.

So after a few minutes of faffing and signing paperwork, we took the hint and left the garage to it for an hour and went into town to pick up the camera kit and laptops to support next week’s animation workshops. It was about then I wished that I’d got some breakfast before beginning this Dora the Explorer-esque escapade. Getting the “if you could be here for 11:45” text message, we hared back across to Boucher Road and arrived just as the Aygo was driven up to the showroom’s door. Good sign: right colour, right registration.

The showroom manager wandered across and spontaneously apologised for the morning’s delay, and explained that in these kind of situations he likes to offer customers a meal on him (up to a certain value!) to make up for inconvenience. So we’ll be taking ourselves out some night and giving him the bill. An unexpected (and appreciated) act of customer service. But then ...

Looking out the window while yet more paperwork was being sifted through, I noticed the smooth back bumper. Umm. Looked wrong. Parking sensors are normally pretty visible, as they are mounted flush on the outside of the bumper. Yup. The XtraProtected extra hadn’t been fitted.

So it’ll be back to the dealer to leave the car in some day next week for them to drill holes in the bumper and finish building it. Glad that Tech Camp’s running over on that side of town!

The only other snag was that paying the balance by Maestro (ye olde Switch) didn’t run smoothly, with the transaction referred to the call centre, who took an age to answer, and then took an age to get through to the bank, and an age to ask me questions and relay the answers over to the bank. Arghh.

Boy was I ever so glad to get to work, grab a tray in the canteen, and get to my desk only a minute late for the 2 o’clock teleconference.

But the good news is that the wee car arrived with a full tank of petrol and is running well. Zooms along quite happily. Turns on a sixpence (quite a large one) and has already had the back seats down and a pile of gear stashed in it. There’s a jack plug input on the front of the radio, so no need for cassette adapters or iPod FM transmitters. And the voice-activated Bluetooth (most major European languages and Cantonese catered for!) has still to be played with. Though I miss the way the Smart kept the brake on for a few seconds after you took your foot off the pedal (or until you hit the accelerator to move away). The handbrake will get a lot more use now!

Aygo to collect a new car in the morning ... and Hughes Insurance seemed to be telling porkies

So first thing tomorrow morning (Friday) it's bye bye time to another car. I'll be dropping the squished-up Smart Roadster off at the fleet workshop - where a careful eye will inspect its every panel and cavity to ensure its in no worse condition that when I collected it in January. Should I pour water over the seats to recreate the wet-bum sensation I lived with for the first month or so? Probably best not to.

Then it's off to Charles Hurst (which still feels like it breaks some fundamental law of the universe) to pick up the new car that should be waiting for me. Oh, and there's some kind of financial transaction to complete - thank goodness pay day was this week!

So the new car doesn't have heated seats, automatic lights and wipers, electric mirrors, automatic transmission or cruise control! But it's cheap, fuel efficient, has a boot that you can fit more than a sandwich in, doesn't sound (inside) like you're driving a tractor ... and I'm hoping that it won't have the same tendency to ice up the inside of the front windscreen!

Feels like there's always a snag. And this time I'm hoping that it's not a second key kind of snag. Perhaps the insurance woes will have covered it.

I arranged the insurance pretty speedily last Friday on the phone to Hughes in Newtownards. Got a good quote, paid the money by credit card and they promised to send out the paperwork asap since I need a cover note in my hand to pick up the car from the dealer in the morning.

(What's that about? Normally you need insurance to get a car taxed. So do they have to promise to check the insurance on behalf of DVLNI when a new car - that they tax - is collected? Didn't think the dealer really cared about the insurance once you drove it off their premises?)

Anyway. Monday. Tuesday. No envelope in the post. Was in London yesterday. So it was this morning when I rang Hughes to ask if they'd actually processed the insurance and where they'd posted the cover note to.

"It was posted out on Monday ... usually go first class ... so it should be there by now. Maybe it'll arrive today. Could you call and collect a duplicate today [from Newtownards]?"

Since I need something looking like a cover note in my hand in the morning, I asked for them to fax it across to work. I felt let down. Until now, Hughes have been incredibly straightforward, and I've used them regularly since I bought the Polo ten or so years ago.

Got home. Chunky envelope from Hughes sitting in the kitchen. The date at the top of the cover letter.

29 July

Tuesday. So it wasn't posted out on Monday. That was a lie. And that was when I got cross. When something goes wrong, customer service is all about honesty and openness. Not telling porkies - whether deliberately or not - that are later found out to have no basis in fact.

Begs the question what Hughes were doing between last Friday morning when I got off the phone at 9.15am and when their laser printer spewed out the cover note on Tuesday and someone popped it into the post.

Anyway, the first part of tomorrow morning will be spend zooming around greater Belfast in the great car swap.

And don't forget, in the spirit of driving smaller and smaller cars, this one will be a smidgen shorter than the last one, since when you breath in, the Aygo is 3.410m compared to the Roadster's 3.427m.

Cars are shrinking ... at least, mine are!

I’ve noticed that my taste in cars is shrinking.

About eleven years ago I purchased my first car. A red VW Polo. As a 1.4CL model, it was perhaps slightly overpowered - at least for me at the time. But eleven years ago, a bit of oomph under the bonnet, electric windows and a decent radio (albeit with cassette) was attractive. We only let go of the Polo a few months ago, and until this year, it was very reliable.

Then there was a Mini. A company car. Yellow - to be easily spotted in the airport car park - and a joy to drive. The radio still had cassette and no CD - too expensive to get it added at the time. But on its fourth birthday, it came of age and was reclaimed to go to the great fleet sales auction.

The Smart Roadster was a bit of an accident. Never quite getting around to ordering another company car in time to meet the twelve week lead time, I ended up giving the Mini back without having anything else to drive. Translink and the bus service didn’t overly appeal. But there was a Smart on the reallocation list - cars given back by people leaving the company that aren’t yet four years old - and it seemed like a fun idea for six months.

Fun = wet seats, automatic transmission (which I at first hated and now love) and ice on the insides of the windows when it gets cold.

But it had the virtue of being small. Though its shortness in length was better than the incredibly low driving position which you get used to after the first time you nearly drive under a lorry in the queue at traffic lights.

The Smart is being MOTed this week, which means it’ll be coming of age in August. I’m going to miss the electronic speedometer - I like knowing that I’m driving at 31mph, rather than just a shade over the thirty mark. I’m not going to miss the car radio that I still can figure out how to programme the stations into the buttons, and the front boot that holds shopping as long as you don’t buy a baguette!

With six weeks to go, I needed a plan. I hadn’t realised that Charles Hurst ran the vehicular equivalent of Disneyland down at 62 Boucher Road. You could nearly test drive a car without leaving their premises. Showroom after showroom after showroom.

Having dispensed with the fanciful notion that I should order a Mini Clubman, I ended up wanting a small, repeat small, five door car, the choice became a simple one between three identical cars: Peugeot 107, Citroën C1 and Toyota Aygo. Identical, in that the mechanics are the same. Built in the same shared factory in Czechoslovakia the Czech Republic, the cars only differ in the bundles of accessories and pricing. And they share the same £35/year road tax.

Having test-driven all three within 18 hours ...

• The Toyota Aygo felt the more comfortable drive - probably down to some tweaking of the gears/pedals and slightly more carpet which baffles the engine and road noise.
  
• The Citroën C1’s drive felt really basic, and the salesman didn’t really have the people skills on Saturday morning to sell me a car. Their accessory bundles weren’t appealing either. Despite the three cars having identical dashboards, Citroën managed to replace some of the black plastic trim with shiny chrome that really looks out of place in a bottom-of-the-range car!
  
• The Peugeot 107 was nice, and drove quite well.

But the Toyota Aygo ended up a better overall match, with a package that included indoor goodies and minimised the external flash-ness. (After all, I can’t see alloy wheels when I’m inside the car, so why would I want to pay for them!)

It’ll be blue, and it should be waiting for me to pick up when I give back the Smart in August.

Did I mention the £35 a year road tax?

And the pattern is that my cars continue to get progressively shorter.

Hopefully in seven-ten year’s time, I’ll be looking for suggestions for another car. I’m guessing that by then the market will be concentrating on chasing the small car market, rather than the tanks and 4x4s that are the current fashion.

But is there a point where cars can’t get any smaller and still stay practical?

Icy, foggy ... not good on the roads or the airports

It’s really bad when it’s so cold outside that you need to scrape the inside of your windscreen because it has iced up ... hence the white dandruff scattered across the dashboard. A good thick coating ... after five minutes the car’s air blower hadn’t made much of a dent in it.

After last week’s fogginess that badly affected flights in and out of Belfast City Airport, I asked the airport if they’d any plans for CAT III instrument landing facilities ... no reply yet.

But this morning, the heavy fog over Belfast has once again caused major disruption over at St Georges.

The early morning arrival from Heathrow diverted to Belfast International (Aldergrove). Ryanair’s flight from East Midlands diverted to their base in City of Derry ... quite a bus journey if you want to get your car out of the car park!

Departures aren’t looking good ... though the Flybe to Gatwick is about to leave a mere two hours late.

Up at Belfast International, the fog is having much less impact with only the bmibaby arrival from East Midlands badly delayed.

Things I'd like to be able to tell you ...

I'd like to be able to tell you all about the launch of David Park's new novel The Truth Commissioner at Belfast's Linen Hall Library tonight. But I can't.

Despite taking off on time this morning, bmi's flights in and out of Belfast have been badly affected by the pea-souper that settled over Belfast as most of you had your breakfast. (And it wasn't confined to bmi - other carriers were troubled too, as well as flights in and out of other northern-UK airports.)

Some flights due to take off during the day were cancelled, and others coming in from Heathrow diverted to Aldergrove Belfast International as Belfast City Airport has neither a long enough runway nor the required Cat III instrument landing system to get down in very poor visibility.

So tonight, the expected touchdown of BD90 at 19:00 (which would have got me to the event just fashionably late) ended up landing at 20:50, just 15 minutes shy of the last flight BD92 (the inbetween BD96 having been cancelled). And a good half hour after my wife had left the launch and headed home.

So I can't tell you what nice things Glenn Patterson said about David Park. Nor can John Self over at The Asylum tell you what I look like ... for once again, we didn't get to meet. But when I got home, we do seem to have the David Park back collection to show for the evening's entertainment - a most convenient way of me continuing not to buy any books during lent!

I'd also like to be able to tell you that I've managed to get a second key for my car. But I can't. Having arranged (twice) for the car's tax book to be faxed through to Agnews so that Mercedes would issue them with the proper key and barrel, I popped in on Monday morning, determined to sit it out while they programmed the new key.

It started well and I kept getting progress reports as I sat typing away drinking pots of tea and munching the exceedingly good pastries. The second key had been paired to the car. They'd requested the security codes from Mercedes. In the queue, waiting them to be returned.

There was even the dangle of a key ... but not for my car. Instead for a courtesy car, since after nearly four hours, the second key wasn't yet working. The first three of the six codes that are required had been accepted by the ZX80-powered computer system that seems to inhabit the inner bowels of the Smart. But the last three codes had crashed it, locking the workshop out.

So rather than continue to wait, it was recommended I take their car - a proper, red Smart fortwo - and go over to work and await a call. Sounded reasonably since I'd now drained both laptop batteries ... though I did wonder at the time why they didn't just drive me across or pop me in a taxi like they do with other people.

Burning up the Boucher Road in first gear, I worked out that the automatic gear switching wasn't on this model, and slowly retrained my left hand to change gear, even in the absence of a clutch pedal to stab.

And then the call came at half four. "The traffic around here isn't good ... You said you're away in England tomorrow? ... We're still working on the codes ... Might not be finished tonight ... Better bring our car back on Wednesday morning."

So I woke up this morning, with my overcoat, de-icer and windscreen scraper all safely locked in my car over at Boucher Road, and a heavy layer of ice covering needing to be removed at quarter to six so I could get around for the only bmi flight to leave Belfast City on time today.

Cutting spare keys with a chisel?

It should have been straightforward. Nip down to the Mercedes showroom (which doubles up as Smart) on the Boucher Road, give them my car key and the vehicle code, drink a cup of their finest tea, and be handed back two keys.

The original owner of my car had handed it back with only one key – not terribly useful for everyday use or emergencies. But Agnews had ordered in a spare key, and just needed to programme it.

So this morning after being sent from desk to desk, I settled down at a glass table in the waiting area to boot my laptop, enjoy a cup of their finest tea and type up some notes while I waited ... and waited ... as if they were programming the key with a chisel!

By the magic of technology it takes a mere 35 minutes to generate the code for a new key. I imagine the long time is somehow linked to a security trick to prevent too many programming attempts in a day.

But in the end they realised that they’d only ordered a key fob, and not the actual key barrel (the shiny bit that sticks into the ignition). So after two hours, no key. And surprisingly for a showroom that prides itself on being modern – no free wifi for customers to use while they wait.

But in order to order the right key, they need the tax book faxed to them as evidence of owning the car ... despite the fact that it was faxed through so they could order the ill-fated key-fob. But no record seems to have been kept.

So they need it faxed again before they can order the proper key, before it will arrive, before I can go back down and before they spend 35 minutes generating another code before they programme the spare key. In the meantime, I’ll have to enjoy more of their finest tea.

The good news was that they did manage to release the grimy CD holders from the middle of the dashboard console, freeing up valuable real estate for storing things in an otherwise tight-for-space car whose passenger foot well was rapidly filling up with clutter!

Doing the SMART thing?

Company car schemes are good and bad. At their best, they’re convenient and admin-light with car tax, MOT, servicing all someone else’s problem. The flip side is that they’re basically a big hole into which you drop money and have nothing to show for at the end of four years. Oh, and they give you the loan of a car to sweeten the four year payment plan! And standard commercial leases – often for much shorter period – are no better.

The little yellow Mini that has been a joy to drive – and pretty easy to find in airport car parks – celebrated its fourth birthday in early January and on Wednesday I left it back to the workshop so it can be auctioned off.

Now I’m no petrol head, and have no real interest in cars other than I like them to be reliable, hassle free, reasonably comfortable and get me from A to B with as little fuss drama as possible.

So maybe that’s why last Autumn I didn’t quite generate enough enthusiasm to get around to placing an order for a new car to be delivered in January, allowing for the 12-16 week lead time. That, and a moment of wondering whether being a one car family would be possible.

But in the end, I wimped out of the eco-friendly sacrificial ideal and looked at the reallocation list ... cars not yet four years old but left back by people leaving the company that are available for shorter periods until their auction date.

Two choices: a Honda estate or a SMART Roadster. Umm ... a practical family car that’s nearly as long as a bendi-bus – though is still expensive even with the reallocation discount – or a two-seater that’s even more impractical than the Mini Cooper which used to be advertised as the car that can accommodate a strategically folded cow in its boot!

Slight snag that the Roadster is a soft top and had been sitting outside unloved and exposed to the November/December elements for about six weeks, resulting in mouldy seats and a general dampness. Dried out and cleaned, it didn’t look too bad when I swapped keys on Wednesday afternoon, though I have had to cook the owner’s manual on the bedroom radiator to dry out the soggy pages.

My first reaction on getting down (very much down) into the Roadster was that someone must have stolen the clutch pedal! It’s advertised as a semi-manual/semi-automatic – which translates to it being an automatic with a handbrake. Not being schooled in driving an automatic, I’ve now retained by left foot to sit still and enjoy the ride, instead of jabbing on the brake pedal. And I’ve learnt to be patient at roundabouts – as you inevitably brake coming up to the give way, the car will start to change down gear, just at the moment you put your foot down to power away ... except the car’s still in-between gears!

Ten minutes into my ownership, there was an awful moment going up the M2 sliproad at Mallusk where the car refused to go any faster than 20mph despite my foot being right down to the floor. Arghh ... I’d knocked on the speed limiter (how was I to know there was one) when I’d turned on the wipers.

And having driven up from Belfast on Friday morning, I arrived at Magee College in Derry to discover my bum was wet. If you sit long enough, the damp still inside the drivers seat rises up and meets your trousers ... might need to keep the seat heaters on for a week or two.

But after the 150 mile round trip to the north west, we’re now on friendly terms. The car stereo is fine in a car park or at low speeds, but the small speakers are drowned out byt he roar of the engine which is just behind the front seats. It has all the attractiveness and styling of a De Lorian – and probably much of the same build quality. (Leaking soft top is a feature, part of its charm rather than a problem that gets fixed.

Our child seat miraculously fits the passenger seat – and meets the safety constraints of being snug, secure and far enough away from the airbags – and I’m growing used to its “smart” automatic headlights and “smart” wipers that come on when the car decides they’re needed. And most of all, I’ve learnt to keep the seat heater on! Though I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to putting my laptop bag in under the bonnet ... where most cars have their engine!

Better start thinking about what I do in August when this car goes back ...