Most car cabins have a profusion of buttons, knobs, switches, dials, stalks, toggles, levers and controls, proffering a choice in adjusting everything from car temperature to car temperament. Do we know what they’re all for? Do we care? Do they make any difference even if we do push/pull/turn/press or otherwise engage? In many cases, they are mere fripperies to convince the gullible that there is extra value in extra choice. In practice, they are little more than decorations that may make the owner swell with pride but, equally, make him balk with confusion.
Car ventilation systems and radios are particular culprits. But probably the most useless is the manual suspension controls that manufacturers increasingly fit. They pretend to offer a choice of sports, comfort or normal settings: sometimes the tags change, though the results rarely do.
The pretence is that the car can be made to handle like a Lamborghini one moment and ride like a limo the next, all at the push of a button. It is nonsense of course, and mostly amounts to a manufacturer evading his true responsibility to deliver an acceptable handling/ride balance.
Shock horror! An adaptive suspension system that works
So what an epiphany was my first drive in the new Volkswagen Scirocco! I generally like small coupés. My second-ever car was an ageing high mileage Coke-bottle-shaped Mustang-mimicking first generation Toyota Celica (a breed of car which got progressively worse as it passed through its seven generations). Soon after, I owned a Lancia Beta Coupé, a fine car and a very pretty one, at least until its Byronic beauty was scarred by rust, and it was transfigured into a Latin leper. An Alfa Romeo 1750 GTV served up much entertainment, including on the racetrack, until the bodywork, once as smooth as a chunk of cheesewire-sliced cheddar, better resembled mouse-munched Emmenthal.
Rust sent far too many great Italian coupés to early graves…
Rust is not a problem with modern coupés. But poor ride quality is. Most sports coupés bounce over Britain’s pot-holed roads like bucking broncos, and few offer much of an accelerative kick when the road opens and bumps shrink. You can push those suspension buttons all you want. It makes little difference.
The new VW Scirocco: Gavin Green’s verdict
There is much to celebrate with the new Scirocco: unusual yet pleasing style, good quality cabin (though a little dark – why can’t the Germans lighten up?) and a smooth and eager turbocharged direct injection petrol engine, one of the best four-cylinder motors I have driven behind. (It comes from the fine Golf GTI, probably still the most cultured of all ‘hot’ hatches.)
But quite the most commendable aspect of this fine car is the ride quality. It steers and handles well: agile and fluent. Yet it rides with suppleness and security. How pleasing, and unusual, to drive a sporting car that can shove me in the back and not simultaneously kick me in the buttocks.
Further surprises were in store. Not least that the sports/comfort suspension switch, hiding unobtrusively at the fore of the centre console, actually worked! In the ‘sport’ setting the car hunkered down tighter to the tarmac, firm and athletic. In ‘comfort’, those road irregularities magically disappeared; even some particularly brutal speed bumps on my road in Richmond felt no worse than a gentle swell.
Yet it still worked best of all in the ‘normal’ setting. It was a happy and easy compromise, supple yet sporting. I would be quite happy if they offered only that one setting. No buttons to press. No choice.
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