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Danacblack

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Haha, no one wants to shell out for it yet...
 

MaskedRacerX

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Nice.

I'd sign up for a free trial, but it still requires a payment source, I always hate trying to cancel and then confirm no subsequent billing (though with PayPal, it's not that difficult to disable a recurring payment).
 

Danacblack

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I found this on Reddit, I'm assuming it is the same article, not much of an actual review:

For the family holiday this year, I rented a house in the Dordogne and we all decided to drive. That wasn't so bad for my son, who has a Fiat 124 Spider, or my elder daughter, who has a Ford Fiesta ST. But my younger daughter has a nine-horsepower, base-model Volkswagen Polo.

Her passenger called in a state of some distress when they were half an hour south of Calais. "This 130mph speed limit is ridiculous," she wailed. "We've been trying ever since we got on the motorway and we just can't go that fast."

Once I'd explained that France uses the Roman Catholic method of measuring speed, and that the local gammon have absolutely no sense of humour any more about rosbifs who choose to break their limits, we all settled down at a legal lick for the 530-mile slog.

Now, the people who write for all those car magazines you see in the dentist's waiting room often refer to a powerful car's "continent-crushing ability". They have it in their heads that people buy a Bentley Continental GT or a Ferrari GTC4Lusso because they need something to get them from London to Milan as quickly and as comfortably as possible.

I've been guilty of this myself. On television, I've often staged races between planes and cars to show cars are faster. But the truth is that when people with Bentleys and Ferraris want to go to Tuscany, Cannes or Gstaad, they fly. Often on a private jet. And if they want to go to Paris, they take the train.

The people who actually drive across a continent to their holiday destination all have dismal Hyundais with roof boxes and unnecessary GB stickers. One man had even painted his headlights yellow, as though it were still 1968.

None of them has the first idea about lane discipline. Yes, I know the inside lane of a summertime French autoroute is a conveyor belt for Dutch caravanners, but only the British see this as an excuse to drive at the UK speed limit in the outside lane. For ever.

Everyone else gets out of the way when they see you barrelling towards their back bottom, but not Ron and Irene. Maybe this is because they can't see you coming for all the National Trust stickers in the rear window of their miserable South Korean box. Or maybe it's because they're waging a class war.

They're certainly stupid enough. This becomes obvious when you pull up behind them at a toll plaza. It's very simple: you either take a ticket or you rub your debit card over the reader thing. But this seems to baffle them. So then they push the intercom button to speak to an uninterested Frenchy who, when he gets back from lunch at 4.30pm, refuses even to try to speak English.

Oh, and then there are the service stations, which are always crammed with French school kids on days out. Interestingly, the children can cope easily with the job of buying a sandwich, but somehow Ron and Irene can't. They stand at the till, not understanding a word the cashier says, then spend 10 minutes moaning about the exchange rate. Yes, well, it was you who voted for Brexit, so how about a nice game of shut up? You go first.

There isn't much romance to driving across France any more.

I dare say there never was. I look back with fondness at those long trips with my parents, but I bet that my dad, from behind the wheel of his Austin 1100, in the gazetteer and wonky-thermostat days, never thought, "Oooh, I feel like David Niven".

However, you can take croquet sets and inflatable beach toys in a car, which is harder to do on a plane. And no one touches your penis at the border. And you can stop when you want. We stayed overnight in Orléans, which is one of those cities that cause you to stop and think,"Why the bloody hell have I not been here before?" It is spec-bleeding-tacular.

It's good to have your car on holiday too. Because that way, you don't need to give half your spending money to the fleecing taxi bastards, or waste half your time at a car-rental desk watching that woman from Planes, Trains & Automobiles write War and Peace on her computer. "You've got the car and I've got the money, so hand over the keys, vache."

The only trouble is you know that when you get back to Britain, you'll have to crawl up the M20 at 50mph because they're installing a system that will make the 50mph limit permanent. Do you know how many coned-off sections of motorway I saw on my 1,100-mile round trip in France? None.

I'd do it again. No question.

But would I do it again in the car I used this time? The latest incarnation of Ford's 5-litre V8 Mustang convertible? God, it's childish. It has an unnecessary 10-speed gearbox and a seven-speed fan and a system that lets you choose whether you want the exhaust to wake the neighbours when you start the engine. You can even lock the front wheels while spinning those at the back. And that's brilliant if you are 10, or if you have too much tread on your Bridgestones.

But there's no getting around the fact this big, good-looking, honest-to-God V8 convertible muscle car with all the bells and whistles you've ever dreamt of — and a hundred more you haven't — costs as little as £46,545 for the six-speed version. That is extraordinary value for money.

Yes, you can tell where the money hasn't been spent. There's a fair deal of flex when the roof is down, but as this isn't sold as a taut sports car, it doesn't matter. Also, some kind of fluid often dripped onto my feet, but in the heat of a French summer, I was grateful for it. Oh, and it has a turning circle of about 17 miles, so in an ancient city such as Bergerac, I was a bit of a nuisance. But you don't live in an ancient city, so relax.

You're probably getting the impression I'd forgive the Mustang anything. And, to an extent, I would, because, crikey, it has a big heart. This is a car you treat like a dog. You want to tickle it behind its door mirrors and let it sit by the fire on cold evenings. And when it develops a wobble at tickover, you don't get cross with it; you worry.

And yet it really does work as a car too. After an 11-hour drive back to London, I stepped out without any aches at all. I'd listened to Rich Hall on the brilliant stereo, spent much less than expected on fuel, had the wind in my hair when it was sunny and icebox air-conditioning when it wasn't.

I don't want a US muscle car — I'd feel like a traitor to the cause of good engineering — and I don't need a Mustang. But I miss the car that took me across France so much, it actually hurts a little bit
 

Johnnybee

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Yeah, not much of a review, but I can here Jeremy reciting this in my head as he blasts down the French motorway.
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