Car UK May 2019

Imagine the

Panamera, but

a bit smaller,

and imagine Phil

Murphy driving it

with a big grin

56 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | MAY 2019

i3. As my first exposure to an electric/

hybrid vehicle, I had a ball – every day

to the mall or to do errands had me

grinning like that Cheshire cat of old.

The left-hand-drive M3 never came to

South Africa but its latterday relative is

doing just great.

Keep on being the flea in the kennel.

G Cooper

Waze to go

Unusually it was the Our Cars section

that I found really involving in the

February issue. 

The Bentley Bentayga, loaded with

nearly 78k worth of extras: obscene. 

Tim Pollard’s description of why

people (like me) buy a Lexus: spot on. 

The references in both the Bentayga

and Suzuki Swift pieces to Apple

CarPlay now fitted to many cars: sadly

Lexus don’t fit it, but my wife’s Suzuki

Ignis has it. I drove it recently and found

the excellent Waze app on my phone is

available on CarPlay.

Because it’s updated constantly by so

many users I find it far more accurate

than the sat-navs fitted as standard

by Lexus or Suzuki, better even than

Google or Apple Maps.  

On a journey through France in

December it outperformed the Lexus by

only warning about live incidents, not

ones that were cleared the day before

yesterday.

Reg Holmes

Rage on

In his March column Mark Walton

wrote about driving around Hong

Kong. I lived and worked in Hong

Kong for 23 years and feel qualified to

comment on his findings regarding

sat-nav use and road rage.

The use of sat-nav hasn’t caught on

for certain reasons. The number of

private car owners is less than 10 per

cent of the adult population and the

large majority of this 10 per cent do not

drive during the week, merely using

their cars at weekends or holidays.

The sheer volume of traffic, and

shortage of parking spaces, means most

drivers favour using public transport,

which is cheaper, quicker and more

convenient. Most drivers only ever drive

to places they’re familiar with, hence

not much need for sat-nav.

Although Mark didn’t notice any road

rage, I can assure him that it does exist

though not on the scale I have encoun-

tered here now that I have retired back

to Britain. He was likely spared it since

he is European and Caucasian, making

him less likely to be abused (he wouldn’t

understand the abuse anyway). It is

quite common to see undertaking,

no signalling and last-minute lane

changes.

As most vehicles on the roads are

container trucks, lorries, buses and

taxis which far outnumber private cars,

the main mantra is ‘Time is money’ and

any hold-up for road rage will likely cost

the drivers and their companies. 

Steven Wong

Too big, too heavy

There’s no faulting your logic in the

April issue comparison test between the

AMG GT 4 Door, Alpine B5 and Porsche

Panamera. It sounds like the Porsche

does a better job than either of the

others of squaring the circle by being

good for drivers, good for passengers

and extremely quick.

But (speaking as an ex-owner)

there’s something a little off about the

Panamera. It’s just a bit too big in town,

a bit ungainly to look at, and lacking the

magic of ‘proper’ Porsches, by which I

mean the Cayman/Boxster and 911.

I’d really like to see Porsche try again

with the 924-944-968 idea – or, to look