1.5 VTi-TECH Exclusive 5dr

Basic but functional

NOTE: I didn't buy this car, but I did hire it, and then drove to Germany and back. So I've put around 1500 miles on the clock, over the last 7 days!

On the good side, it looks decent enough on the outside, the interior trim is nice and neat, the handling is good, the drive is smooth and there's a decent amount of room in the boot.

On the bad side, the seats are ok, but not great. We did the same drive last year in an older Honda Accord, and the aches and strains were definitely more pronounced this time around.

Equally, there's a few oddities and concerns with the controls and their layout. The handbrake is on the left side of the central console, right next to the passenger seat. So there's a good chance that you'll accidentally caress your passenger's thigh whenever engaging it!

Cruise control is via a stalk under the indicator stalk. Which puts it close to your knee if you're a tall driver, and is a bit clumsy to access; I occasionally flicked the indicator stalk by accident. And I'm not a fan of having to take your hand off the wheel to use it; I'd definitely prefer some buttons on the steering wheel!

The touchscreen is alright, though it does somewhat look as if someone's just glued a cheap Android console to the dashboard, especially since the UI looks like it's the same software which drives most of the low-budget OEM music and video players. And whatever CPU is powering it is woefully underpowered and sluggish.

On the ugly side, the 1.5 engine definitely feels underpowered. Not too bad with just one person in, but with 4 people + luggage, it definitely struggled to reach and maintain motorway speeds.

More worryingly, while Android Auto worked straight out of the box, the connection repeatedly died and couldn't be restarted. A combination of deleting the bluetooth connection, rebooting the head unit, unplugging the cable and then starting again from scratch generally did the job, but it's a lot of faff, especially since it happened multiple times a day.

Overall, it's not a bad car, and it worked well enough for a long road trip. But I don't think I'll be looking to buy one!

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