OT: "Mixed up the brake and accelerator"?!?

That's because you are mechanically illiterate/incompetent.

It was very obvious on the Getz.

That's life.

Specially when parking in tight places.

Mine never has and plenty of non power steering systems do anyway,

Because it's a steaming turd with wheels.

They do that with you mechanically illiterates/incompetents.

That is not conventional in the UK. We always always have R on the left. It makes sense to have reverse be close to 1, because you don't change from 4 to R!

Only ever seen that s*it in a Citroen 2CV. A proper car has the stick on the floor. Operating a stick in front of you is very difficult.

Rotation, oh my god, WTF were they thinking? Let's make this car as difficult to drive as possible.

I can understand you not remembering all the mechanics of the gears. So, were they hot?

RWD are s*it at everything. Except they have smaller turning circles. I hate the way I try a U-turn in my FWD and it doesn't quite make it. Just ONE f****ng inch out and I scrape the sidewall of the tyre on the kerb. And since we have radials now instead of crossply, they just BURST!

FOUR spelling errors in one sentence? Are you drunk?

What woman wears size 12? Or is that a kid's 12?

Even sillier than you usually manage and that's saying something.

Wrong, as always.

Mine does.

None of min ever has when doing that.

The most recent car I've ever driven with three on the tree was a '65 Dodge. My father didn't care for automatics but by '65 standard shift in a family sedan were hard to find. Most of the manuals were in the sportier offerings where floor shift were the thing.

I will have to say that with the shift on the column your girlfriend could snuggle up much better than with a floor shift, center console, and bucket seats.

The downside with bench seats and no seat belts is you could launch her back to the passenger side during spirited driving.

Many parking pawl problems come from parking someone in when he gets pissed enough to ram you car a few feet forward to get out of the parking space.

When I bouight a car just before Xmas from a private seller, I had pre arranged a quote with my insurance company. As the seller waited, I

The whole process took under an hour.

That doesn't matter: If you have paid and the transaction has taken place you are insured even if the database says you are not. Ypou may need to subsequently prove that to El fuzz, but you are insured.

....

then you are a total plonquer

Surely that is an upside?

And this is why the Bond Bug was never a success in the UK. Cheap 3 wheel car, low road tax, good fuel economy, any colour you liked as long as it was orange.

Should have impressed the girls. Except that the engine housing made a large 'hump' between the front seats. Hard to even reach the girl, let alone snuggle.

Was it an engine hump? Didn't they use the Hillman Imp rear engine and box?

My first car, a Renault 5 (first generation) had the side/headlights and dip/beam/flash on a *separate* stalk to the indicators on the same side. You moved the stalk up and down (not towards/away from you) to alternate between dipped and high beam or to flash the lights.

Getting used to a dip/beam control on the *same* stalk as the indicator in my next car took a little while; you use that aspect of a lights stalk far more than turning the side/headlights on and off which tends usually to be only at the beginning and end of a journey.

It also had the ignition switch on the left hand side of the steering column, whereas every other car I've driven has had it on the right.

I know that stalks are the same way round (and not a mirror-image) in a LHD car of the same model, but what about ignition switch? Is that the same or mirrored?

The other thing that can take some getting used to is the position of the horn - on some cars it's on the end of the indicator stalk, whereas on others it's on the steering wheel.

I saw a nice feature on a Fiat Uno that I hired while my car was having crash damage repaired (someone ran into the back of me at a roundabout - the old "I thought you were going to set off" collision). The hazard lights switch was a push button on the end of the wipers stalk, so within easy reach of the driver without taking his hands off the wheel. Most cars have it on the dashboard, a loooong way from the steering wheel. I suppose it's within reach of the passenger as well, but it means taking a hand (and your eyes) off the road to find it. On my old Peugeot 306, I could find it easily because it was low down: if the car was in fifth, I find the gear lever knob and then move two fingers up and right to the hazard switch - easy to do without looking. But on my new Pug and on my wife's Honda it's much higher and without any easy way of find it *easily* and *quickly* by touch without looking.

I'm surprised that VW (and other makes like Skoda and Seat which are owned by VW) still have the light switch (*) as a rotary control on the dashboard (between the steering column and the driver's door). Similarly for a Merdedes Sprinter van that I hired to do some furniture removal last year. Maybe it's a German thing, because AFAIK Mercedes are separate from VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat. I wonder what BMW do?

(*) Turn for side/headlight, pull out for rear foglights, maybe pull further for front foglight as well.

It was a conventionally mounted engine, driving the rear wheels via a prop shaft.

A hump that makes humping difficult ;-)

I remember there was a cut-out in the rear body panel below the bumper so you could see the differential as a prominent feature.

Of course. Now what on earth was I confusing it with?

I was trying to remember, because I'm sure you are right in that there

Ah...

It took me a while to find the high beams on my Geo. I was used to a button on the floor.

I guess it's logical.

I've driven equal amounts of both, so I suppose I'm just keeping the control method similar.

I thought you only had two states?