It’s been car buying day for Freddie. Now, that’s usually right up my street, except Freddie is over from Australia and only has £1500 to get a set of student wheels. Considering my first car was  a £200 Morris Minor, I accepted the challenge, naturally thinking there would be plenty of options.

Almost 100 miles later and seriously hacked off, we still hadn’t seen anything worth his hard-earned drinking money. There was an MG Rover that looked as if the interior had been eaten by a dog, a Peugeot 306 that smelt like a dog and a Ford Focus estate that featured an engine that ran like a dog.

None of this was helped by the RX 450h which, we soon discovered, has a terribly complicated multi-media system. The sat nav is not intuitive at all. I lock horns with a different navigation system each week and Freddie is in his 20s – so together we are the perfect pair for understanding a digital map.

The system does not accept seven digit UK postcodes and the process of actually getting the map up and running is over-complicated. The route is also highlighted blue, which is the same colour as dual carriageways on the screen.

So while the screen is large and easy to read, Freddie ended up using his phone to navigate us to the next bad car of the bunch. Surprising? I think so. I’m sure that after a couple of weeks owning a Lexus the system would be simple. However, after a couple of minutes of driving a BMW, Audi or even a Peugeot, I can map a route anywhere…