Test drive

Not something I do too often, but today I had a chance to take a PT Cruiser out for a test drive.

Very nice car to drive, they nailed the gearbox on this one. Was able to do a bit of city driving just using first and second (less gear changing ment less effort and stress driving in city traffic), and long legs for driving on the highway. Was comfortably doing 100km/h in fourth, with fifth gear still in reserve. I'm a tall person, so I appreciated the headroom.

What I didn't like was the placement of the window controls (all four in the middle of the centre console) and the dim setting on the dash / radio were too dark. Not sure if this is a setting that can be changed by the user, but it was dark enough that I essentially just had a blank, black screen that couldn't be read.

Admittedly, when I turned the headlights off and they went back on normal settings, they were bright and easy to see. But for safety, I drive with the headlights on and in sunny conditions, couldn't make out the screens.

Also, I definitely didn't like the layout of the engine bay. I had to replace the battery (hence the reason for taking it out for a drive), and it was very awkward and required other parts to be removed in order to remove the battery.

One of the main reasons I dislike cars designed by computers...