The noise of the engine tends to sound like someone is undertaking a heavy DIY session a couple of houses away and it is especially noticeable because everything else is so quiet. The curious petrolhead within me is intrigued by the way the car shifts between the gears that its series-parallel hybrid set-up allows it to create, but if I was less interested in such things, it would drive me to distraction.
I find the adaptive cruise control irritating too – though this is something that annoys me in almost everything I drive. When approaching slower-moving traffic, you have to move out what feels like far too early to avoid the car automatically applying the brakes. I’ve also had a few experiences where the radar appears to have become confused by the clouds of spray that lorries throw up in inclement weather, trying to stop me hitting what the system seems to misidentify as a solid object. Not good.
But in fairness, they’re pretty much the only things that irk me about this car in day-to-day use. The driving position is comfortable enough, the seats are superb and little details like the thin steering wheel and relatively small screen make long journeys fly by – all while achieving close to 50mpg.
Impressing passengers
I will admit that it’s actually proving quite hard to think of things to write about my HR-V. Not because it’s a poor car, by any means. In fact, it’s the opposite. It takes everything I throw at it happily in its stride.
I’ve racked up fewer miles than usual this month, but with just as much gear on board as it would normally have. In fact, on account of me needing to shed some more light on my photographic subjects now that the days are becoming ever shorter, it has been happily carting around a 4ft-long light stick, which is too wide for the boot but happy to cover the rear footwell from end to end-not something every car can handle.
A trip to Aberystwyth to support a friend’s ultimate Frisbee team (yes, it’s a real sport, I promise) proved its prowess once again. Although its boot is unable to take the aforementioned light stick (I’ve encountered very few boots that can, the Skoda Superb Estate we ran last summer being the last), it is more than capable of stowing five people’s massive sports bags for a weekend of chasing a flying plastic disc around a leisure centre.
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