As many of you will have realised I spend some time and about 4-6 trips each year abroad and rent a variety of cars. I usually travel with my family (so five of us with three growing children) and over the years we have rented something as large as a Kia Sedona to something as small as a Mazda 2 and we have all fitted in with greater or lesser amounts of luggage. My last trip was solo (to our holiday apartment) so I had a Peugeot 107.

We are back again and this time its a brand new Astra. As with most of the cars we rent, we are given 1.4 - 1.6 engined automatics unless the car is much smaller or larger (e.g the 107 or Sedona). The reason is that the local car tax rules favour such engine/gearbox combination.

The Astra is typical. A perfectly pleasant car let down by a low power engine in a heavy body and a witless gearbox. Hence with only 800km on the clock it has been revved up to the red line to keep up with the traffic on the main roads. It gets by but with poor economy (at the moment 10 litres per 100km - whats that? - less than 30 mpg?).

It is funny how most European cars but not others have odd foibles. The Korean and Japanese cars simply get about their business with little fuss, easy to operate controls without referring to the handbook. All the European cars I have rented have needed studying. In the Astra there are so many buttons on the central console the Space Shuttle was probably easier to control.

The real bugbear is the fuel gauge. I filled up at an attended service station tonight. On restarting the car, the gauge took 20 minutes to rise from almost empty to full. How odd. Is this normal??

Edited by Honestjohn on 29/03/2013 at 18:41