My Life In Cars

This week I've done something very sensible....I've just bought a new car. It's a diesel...............and I think I hate it.
The car in question is a Peugeot 307 1.4 HDI. It's the motoring equivalent of a vasectomy. It's an appliance, a dull, cheap plastic, poverty spec, lifeless transport module designed to be frightfully frugal whilst delivering you and your children from point A to point B. Apparently it's turbocharged, but I'm yet to feel any evidence to back that up in its performance and I'm so disinterested in it that I can't be bothered to look under the bonnet to see if there's a turbo in there. It has wind up windows, manually adjusting mirrors and a whole lot of buttons on the dashboard that are blanked off and do nothing...and it kind of smells funky.
Here it is. I do quite like the colour.

Your probably wondering why I'm complaining so comprehensively about a car I've just bought. Well actually, I didn't buy it, I swapped it, with my old car because I needed something sensible and cheap for a while. My old car, despite also being a Peugeot, and being a bit rubbish, was at least interesting. It was a 206 Gti, which is the 2 litre, 180bhp version of the popular little French hatchback.
Here it is. I quite liked it:

It had many, many things wrong with it and in my 6 short months of ownership it cost me quite a lot of money. It had questionable wheel arch extensions, it was lowered and had appalling ride quality, but it had some very sexy Team Dynamics alloys, beautiful Recaro style Alcantara bucket seats, a close ratio gearbox and when it hit 5000rpm it went like shit off a stick and sounded incredible. Every time you got into it, it was an occasion, and that's what I like in a car. It doesn't have to be fast, expensive or flashy, it just has to be interesting. It has to have character. The 206 had it, the 307 doesn't.

What the 307 does do is take tiny, tiny, mouse-sized sips of diesel. I've only owned it for  48 hours and done about 100 miles in it but the fuel gauge genuinely hasn't moved a millimeter. Other redeeming features are relatively thin on the ground....it does have interesting wipers, they go from the middle of the screen outwards. It has nice soft suspension and and I can now drive over speed bumps like a normal person, instead of having to crab across them at an angle. The biggest positive point is that it doesn't actually have anything wrong with it, it feels quite strange, I've nothing to tinker with. I guess i'll tackle that funky smell!

edit.. 06/03/2015

left the keys to my new machine on the desk in the office today and this happens:

I like the V9 badge, i'm gonna keep that one.