Vauxhall Insignia

Yesterday the hire car firm dropped one of these off for me.

It's Vauxhall's replacement for the Vectra, the new Vauxhall Insignia. Well it's certainly more stylish and good looking than the Vectra, which was a bit of a box, though I'm not sure I'd want to be a back seat passenger - the shape of the door looks like an invitation to crack your head open...

I did have a couple of niggles with it to be honest.

Why do designers not think about the practical side of things? Sure, the gear lever is great looking and the power socket when not in use is better hidden underneath a smart flush pop-up plastic cover. But when it is in use and you change into 5th gear you trap your fingers against the plug of your Tom Tom... Quite hard...

Given that many of us use a Satnav these days, you'd have thought by now that car designers would install a couple of power sockets and one of them would be up there on top of the dashboard where it's needed, rather than right at the bottom where there isn't enough space to plug anything in. Even the old house of power sockets, somewhere near the handbrake was better, even though then the cable from the socket to the windscreen tended to foul up gear changing altogether...

And talking of handbrakes, why is it so close to the driving seat? They used to be nicely in the middle of the between-seats console and easily reached without embarrassment. Now they are either right over on the passenger side, giving a nice opportunity to grope your passenger's leg - not as exciting as it used to be, but maybe that's the nature of my passengers these days. I don't include my missus in this disgraceful slur, but I can grope her leg in more comfortable surroundings if I so wish (though it may still invite a slap). Or - oops not a word to use at the start of a sentence, but I started the previous one with "either" and didn't get round to the alternative before the end of the sentence - or the handbrake, as in this case, is so close to the driver's seat that your hand automatically overshoots it and if you are wearing a jacket or coat it will have disappeared inside the folds of the jacket anyway.

Same with the seat belt socket - look at it! It's impossible to get hold of, you can only touch the very top which makes it almost impossible to find quickly and without looking. Put the bloody thing on a stalk!

All this is because in a modern car, designers think we should have somewhere to put a mug of coffee or tea and invite accidents due to hot spillage down the groin at 70mph. In the meantime the incidence of fines handed out to people for eating and drinking whilst driving are rising.

The dashboard layout is ok but I wanted to move the wheel up a bit more than it would go. Perhaps because the seat was too high but again the number of levers and buttons to adjust seating is getting ridiculous. Pressing one made the lumbar support move in and out and then up and down as I realised the button was a joystick! For Heaven's sake!!! The only thing a lumbar support has ever done for me is give me backache. I crank them in as soon as I get in a car that has one sticking in my back.

And why can there not be a big user-friendly standardised way of opening the petrol cap? Ford has the lever on the floor. Some cars have them under the dash as though you were opening the bonnet. VW hide it away in the door. The number of times people have come up to me in a motorway petrol station and said "Do you know how to open the petrol cap on this please? It's a hire car and I don't know..."

On this, despite the cover being flush to the body and with no indentation for fingers, you press the cover in and it then springs out. The person in the queue behind me was not delighted to wait whilst I searched the car interior first.

So did I like driving it? Well it was alright, but to be honest I'd rather be in a Mondeo.

Large versions of the photos: exterior, gear lever, handbrake, dashboard