Because I think I may have to give into temptation and I don’t think that is wise.
The temptation in question is whether or not to drive my car through the seriously big puddles on the lanes.
You know the ones
They stretch for about 20 or 30 yards and fill the lane side to side.
The boys spy them and then get wildly overexcited
“Go on Mum! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!” they chant.
And the temptation is so great
Foot down, second gear and drive straight without stopping, remembering where the lane dips driving on the upside first then the down keeping to the shallowest waters.
Now this was OK when I had Dora Disco the Land Rover and indeed OK when the field drains weren’t working as well as they do now. But with torrents of water spewing from all sides into the lane and flooded as far as the eye can see and suddenly I am not so sure.
Not quite so sure it is a very good idea.
I mean I love the Silver Dream Machine, my Bluemotion Golf Estate but I don’t think it was built for boating.
“It’s too dangerous,” I say. “We will have to wait until the water subsides.”
So I reverse all the way back to the main road and drive the long way to school. The Boys are clearly disappointed. This way is not very exciting. Not thrilling at all.
It’s much more fun to get into school late because you’ve got stranded in the middle of a flood and have to wade your way out.
I feel for them and suddenly understand why my father used to drive across the frozen St John River in Canada when we were stationed there in the early 1970s. He relished terrifying and thrilling the women in his family. Seriously he used to take our Volkswagen car drive off the road and down the banks of the frozen river then drive across it stopping half way to take photographs. I remember waiting for what seemed like hours while he did this scaring myself silly with thoughts of the ice breaking beneath us. He never put us in danger he always knew it was safe, he just didn’t tell us as such. We had to trust him. I was five years old. And now 40 years later I understand why he did it as I thrill and terrify my own five year old.
I will make sure I can drive through but I won’t be telling my boys I have checked it out first – I mean where’s the fun in that!
Now I’ve driven this beast and I loved it. But before I drove it, before I got behind the wheel, I was a sceptic based purely on its parentage. Talk about prejudice! But I’m not the only one.
Only the other day I was happily chatting to a mate who said following my almost evangelical zeal in selling the Yeti to him before Christmas, he’d gone for a test drive himself. I asked how he’d liked it and he looked at me ruefully: “The problem is,” he said, “it’s a Skoda.”
Now this is just silly. There is nothing wrong with the Yeti – it’s built well, there’s great attention to detail, it’s fun to drive and it’s good value for money. I mean what is there not to like – bar the badge.
It got me thinking about snobbery in particular, brand snobbery and it’s led me to do a bit of navel gazing. And I reluctantly admit I am a brand snob - possibly even a proper snob but that’s another post.
I mean look at me! When I had to finally let go of the Land Rover Discovery, I was wet. No, I wouldn’t have a cheap car – hellloooooo! What did I mean by cheap? Ford, Peugeot, Nissan – I am sure they all have cars I could never afford in a million years. So based on nothing other than my own narrow minded perceptions I restricted my potential car pool to a few select brands I considered acceptable.
Acceptable to whom? Acceptable to the motor mechanic in me? It’s not as if I know anything about cars bar changing spark plugs, oil and making sure the water is kept topped up. I know very little about the mechanics of a car. Therefore, the acceptability has to be aesthetic – that’s like saying you’ll only be friends with people because of their looks and basically that’s pretty shallow.
But it’s more than that isn’t it? Buying a car says something about you and how you want people to think of you. You can make as many excuses as you like about car safety, because basically that is the only thing that seems to separate one car from another these days that’s of any importance. And, if you would only admit it, with such tight rules and regulation that’s a pretty weak argument.
So there we have it, buying a new car is down to what it looks like and what it says about you. DEEP huh!
I know people will stick to certain brands Ford, Land Rover, Volkswagen, BMW, Peugeot etc and, like banks will NEVER change. In fact it can get generational. There’s a bit of loyalty going on there – but heck these guys ain’t going to be loyal to you, they’ll sell their cars to anyone – honest!
It’s not as if you get a discount because you already drive a Ford and you are buying a new one – though manufacturers out there this is an INTERESTING POINT TO NOTE and you heard it here first!
If we were all thinking logically then we would opt of the cheapest car around all things being equal, but the marketers (yep you guys again) like to be divisive and have been brainwashing us the gormless public for years.
In years gone by it was because the new car really was better than at least one other model on the road but lately it’s more about a perception rather than a reality. I mean look at VW’s latest advert on the TV regarding the iconic Golf. I am not saying the Golf is not a good car it is I know I’ve got one and I love it, but is it better than say a Skoda? Is it better value for money? In this day and age that has to come tops and why I’ll probably be seriously considering a Skoda next time. (Don’t forget VW own Skoda…)
How can I say this? On first impressions it’s ..erm…it’s...Oh heaven! This is a low down right? You want my honest opinion? Well it doesn’t look as good as it does in the pictures. But that’s my opinion. Don’t they always say beauty is in the eye of the beholder?
Like meeting famous people for the first time - aren’t they smaller in real life. The same goes for the Skoda Yeti. In those wonderful adverts it looks a heck of a lot taller, sort of Land Rover size but it’s not. In fact at 5’3” I felt pretty tall next door to it, which is great when it comes to being able to reach the tail gate, though they have one of those strap things for that which you can get really clever with and swing it shut all in one move. Definitely cool but I reckon you could get caught out if you slam the door down on your Dog's tail –sorry it’s the sort of thing I would do! I’ll amend that, not so clever if you caught the hem of your dress then tried to walk away ripping it and then exposing yourself to innocent passers by in the supermarket car park.
However, you’ve got to get my frame of reference with regard to the Yeti. I am currently having a high old time with the Silver Dream Machine a VW Golf Estate Bluemotion and still grieving for my beloved Dora, my Land Rover Discovery; she was quite simply perfect. The sort of perfect that even though she cost me more than I could ever really afford, I would regularly brush that annoying fact under the carpet along with all the other bills I didn’t wish to see.
Dora was stately, she was a Grand Duchess, she had presence – the Yeti is just very nice, and sort of friendly and cuddly and all the things that go with it. A sort of eager personality whose name you keep forgetting.
However once inside you pretty much revise your opinion. It still isn’t pretty but it’s big and dare I say it, it is more comfortable than my old lady ever was. I can say that now as Dora no longer exists so won’t have any hurt feelings, though I feel a tad guilty one really shouldn’t speak ill of the dead or even scrapped.
The Yeti seems vast thanks to the incredible amount of headroom. Clever design details make it seem as if there is oceans of space when in fact it’s not much bigger than a VW Golf.
You sit incredibly upright in the front seat and that coupled with the fact that the pillars are offset on the windscreen compared to the Golf and Land Rover Discovery (Series I) means you feel a bit vulnerable and disconcerted sitting there even though the visibility is fantastic.
The back seats seemed a bit small and it was really tricky to put the Graco child seats in without having to haul them to one side to find the seat belt plug.
Could you put three of them (children not car seats) in the back - that would be cosy. I mean Dora the Disco was 1496mm wide and it was close encounters on the back seat in her, so with the Yeti being 1437mm across the rear it would definitely be squash and a squeeze!
Couldn’t say much about the drive as I could only go at 18mph tops and it would not have been appreciated if I took it off road. Not that the lovely people at Skoda would have minded but I daresay the park keepers at Woburn Safari Park would have been less than amused and for that matter so would the animals.
I didn’t get to play with it as much as I wanted though I was shown some great things to do with the rear seats when I get my hands on a Yeti of my own to toy with for a week in December.
I am now planning a whole host of things to do and the goodly people at Skoda are even going to add a tow bar so I can really see if I have found a worthy successor to Dora.
Pic shows: Getting familiar with a Yeti in a yeti!
I am now hooked on getting the most miles per gallon out of my car. I’d like to think this will make me a better driver, safer, more considerate and a better bet for my insurer. But I don’t think so.
Nope. There is a tiny, iddy biddy bit of a glitch about all this, although it will help me save money on fuel and of course make me feel all warm and green woolly as I can do my bit for the environment - even if I am driving a turbo charged diesel around the country lanes – what they have done is kinda distracting.
It’s all VW’s fault, honest! They’ve got this computer thingy in my new Volkswagen Bluemotion Golf Estate that tells me how efficiently I am driving. Of course, the better I do that, the better my miles per gallon is and it tells me in real time too - there on the screen, in front of me; all in bright, angry glowing red so I can see it even in the dark.
It also has a clever arrow icon that comes on telling you when to change gear but I think it’s a bit slow on the uptake and I am already a little ahead of it. I tried to follow it on the drive home from the showroom earlier today, moving through the gears as, and when, it suggested. It got a bit exciting on the very steep left hand corner at the top of the hill where there is a reverse camber in the road and it told me to change up to fourth. I sloshed round the bend mightily fast with the big back end doing a cracking imitation of J-Lo shaking her derriere.
Good thing was I also got to test the ABS braking system at the same time, as I narrowly avoided ploughing into a tractor carting corn off the field next to the road. The farmer was pretty impressed too as he stopped to wave at me as I darted past – a flash of silver, a swirl of dust and all at 54mpg.
I don’t think that the short four-mile run from Barnards to home has helped me to get accustomed to the sheer size of the new car and I think I was a tad previous when I overtook the Tesco courtesy bus - but there again things are supposed to look larger in your rear view mirror are they not?
I was sad to say goodbye to the VW Polo but to be honest it was a bit of a mistake to buy it in the first place. The BIG idea last year was to exchange my beautiful but defunct Land Rover Discovery for a car for everyday rather than every eventuality. However, we went too far on the scaling down side and it became a bit of a problem deciding whether to bring home the weekly shop and the children at the same time. Eventuality I solved the problem by getting a lovely aerodynamic Thule Roof box and the shopping, rather than the children, came home in that – but it was usually a close run thing. Space was a premium in the Polo and with two booster chairs in the back there wasn’t much between, which usually led to much ArgyBargy, screams and whining and me blowing my top and vowing to attach the boys to the Thule just for the sake of some peace! Needless to say this was one threat my boys practically begged me to carry out. But, as I have said to them in the past, the purpose of a parent is to continually disappoint its offspring.
Another problem that came with the Polo was that I could not for the sake of love nor money get Bog Boy my youngest’s Mclaren buggy in the back without twisting the chassis and/or scratching the rear window – suffice to say Bog Boy learned to walk distances a tad earlier than his brother.
But these were minor day-to-day problems and easily outweighed by the fact that the savings on running costs compared to the Land Rover were in the region of £150 per month on fuel alone. Then there was the fact that being a much smaller, closer to the ground sort of vehicle, the school run was done considerably faster and dare I say it more safely, with less queasiness than previously.
The decision to get a slightly more spacious vehicle came about after the annual camping trip to Wales. This was when my husband, Dear Charlie, became personally aware the problems of trying to accommodate four dogs, two children, one Kyham six berth tent, four sleeping bags, four wet suits, two boogie boards, two double lilos, four pillows, buckets, spades, teddies and food for a small army - as he hates to shop when we are down there - all into a vehicle with a somewhat limited cubic capacity.
We still managed to get down there and back, not once but twice just to make sure. But the second time down we took the sports car too tossing a coin for who would drive the Mazda MX5 and have the relative luxury of only having to cope with one vomiting whippet plus sundry goods.
So, as with all decisions in our nuclear family, once made plans have to be put into action as swiftly as possible. It is with many thanks to the long-suffering folks at Barnards in Stowmarket, in particular David Webster, that within the space of three weeks the exchange was made.
