If you can't drive it, don't buy it
Anyone noticed how drivers of these 4x4 Tonka trucks whose only excursion off road is the car park at Sainsbury's seem to be incapable of actually driving them.
Maybe they are sitting too high up or the ridiculous vehicles are just too big to allow anyone to see white lines but the people perched behind the wheel really do struggle to park them. Some clown in a monster affair with personalised number plates parked next to me while I was in the gym today (first one to laugh will find there is a contract out on them) leaving a gap of less than an inch between the passenger side of their posh bread van and my wing mirror.
There was not even enough room to open my door and slam it satisfyingly into expensive, gleaming paintwork to squeeze in so I was left scrambling in from the passenger side and climbing over to the driver's seat.
My mood had not helped by being almost forced off the road on my way to the gym by a BMW 4x4 driver, who either had a sore ear or was on his mobile, who seemed to think the white line in the midde of the road was a guide track, something like Scalextric. Perhaps the time has come when these giants are taxed not as cars but as something more substantial, like, say an artic - £1,850 a year would seem fair.
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Roger Clarke - Birmingham’s very own Grumpy Old Man on what gets right up his nose.
I assume you are generalising and that you do know that some of us probably drive better than you.I drive a Hyundai Tucson 2 litre. I have had it for 2 years and it has never been in 4 wheel drive yet.My entire working life from age 18 was spent driving. Small vans bigger vans, then HGV all types. I have arthritis so when the aches got too bad I went onto PSV all types after going through the Midland Red driving school. I later left there and passed the Birmingham Hackney Carriage test and became an owner driver for the last 12 years of my working life. I do not know anything about you but I will say this. I would think I have driven more miles than you and I can not remember ever having a blameworthy accident. Incidently my Tonka Truck is easy for me to get in and out of and it is more economical than my previous 2 litre car. I felt compelled to reply because you give the impression that because I drive this vehicle I am a moron.
As you admit you do not know anything about me it is always dangerous to assume you have driven more miles then I have or that you are a better driver but we will let that pass.
If you want to champion the 4x4 then perhaps you should have a word with some of your fellow travellers such as the 4x4 that ploughed across the grass verges at Whitehouse Common Road to turn left down Tamworth Road because he could not be asked to wait in a queue of traffic like the rest of the peasants, or the 4x4 driver who could not bother to reverse and manoeuvre his way around a Four Oaks pub car park so just bounced over the low kerb and into the road. Then there was the X5 driver who never even attempted to park in a space in the centre Sutton but just parked plum centre of the white lines taking up two spaces in a rapidly filling car park by T K Maxx. The vehicles do seems to attract more than its share of arrogance.
You may well have a good reason for a high driving position - the Tucson is more of a Tonka truckette than full blown truck in any case - but I still contend that 4x4s in a place such as Birmingham are impractical and uneconomical. They never go off road, the tow bars, if indeed fitted, are never used and why anyone should think they are an ideal vehicle for a school run defies belief.
They are bought and driven to make a statement. Whether that statement is look at how big and successful and important I am or something less flattering depends upon your point of view.