Television

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Monday – Camera Capers

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Jeremy – It’s Monday and it’s Yorkshire. A wet 190 miles up the M1 to Knaresborough, a pretty town with a wonderful railway viaduct that towers ominously above our guest house. The Discovery is parked underneath the bridge. Any more rain and I will be looking for the button on the dashboard that operates a propeller.

It wouldn’t surprise me if there is one – the HSE has just about everything else. Included in this is  the ‘4×4 info page’ on the sat nav screen. No idea what purpose it really serves, apart from impressing friends who don’t own a Discovery every once in a while.

And have I mentioned the cameras? The Land Rover is a moving CCTV station, with six of them dotted around the car in strategic places. Again, just what they do is baffling. One screen allows all the camera images to be displayed on screen at once. It’s like a scene from a drug induced nightmare. You can see this screen while the car is on the move, yet you cannot operate the TV (for good reason – but why then the six camera images!?).

Jessica is still struggling with the rather harsh blower on the air con. Is there a secret setting we don’t know about? 

 

 

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Sunday – Comfortable Cruiser

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Jeremy With the safety car out at Silverstone, the British Grand Prix has been running at ‘road car’ speeds. Not sure I’d want to be out there in the V40 though – mainly because even in R-Design trim, the Volvo lacks a little precision going hard into a corner.

Unfortunately, as much as I like the look of the Volvo, the BMW 1 Series and Audi A3 are both much better drivers cars. That’s a situation confirmed by the V40’s rather soggy clutch that doesn’t really encourage you to push the V40 along on a twisty A-road.

The ride itself is on the soft side – which makes the V40 a more comfortable long distance cruiser than a spirited drive. If you are buying a V40 to sit on the motorway all day, that is definitely the right call because it has a big car feel and a very quiet cabin.