Imagine you are two days away from starting your holiday. A holiday that will see you travel a total distance of over 2,000km in a week. Now imagine returning to your automobile to find that, since leaving it parked up for just a few hours, someone has reversed into it, smashing a headlight, pushing out the wing and marking the corner of the bumper. Yes, that's how I returned to find the Clio. I probably did use up my vocabulary of expletives at that moment.

With it being a weekend and my departure being a 4am start I had…

So did you have a guess at what tiny automobile the new addition could be?

Well allow me to reveal the metallic silver year 2000 registered Fiat Seicento 1.1 SX. Now many of you will have pre-conceived ideas on these automobiles, and perhaps Fiats in general. Indeed, back in 2009 I owned a Fiat 500 1.4 Lounge with nearly all the extras. I bought it brand new and while I loved the styling and the attention it got, I felt it was a real disappointment to drive.  I sold it on after just two years and never thought I would…

Bluetooth, the ubiquitous technology that allows users to share data without the need for cables, was introduced to the world way back in 1999. A little over a year later the first mobile phone to feature the ground-breaking technology, the Ericsson T36, was introduced. Since then everything from laptops to sunglasses have been fitted with Bluetooth and as of today there are in excess of 16,000 companies worldwide signed up to use Bluetooth in their products.

Why is it then that so few automobiles have it fitted as standard?

Since 2006 it has been against the law in Ireland to…

With a first service due in less than 2,000km I called into the garage on Monday to get booked in. Booking in my last automobile would take five minutes, but I could have to wait for a month so I was expecting the same. I need not have worried. A booking was made for two days' time and I was offered a courtesy automobile if I needed it. The whole process took less than five minutes and I was back on the road. My booking was made for Thursday afternoon and should take around an hour and a half.

When you drive as many automobiles as the changagoidem.ie team you begin to appreciate some of the small touches that manufacturers include to make life easier for the buyer: the umbrella hidden in the door of the Skoda Superb, the LED lights built into the back of the door handles on the Audi A4 and the soft-close doors on some Mercedes-Benz models for example.

Conversely, we also pick up on aspects of automobiles we would rather not see. Things like manual windows in the back, where kids can easily open them and launch their siblings favourite toys out of the…

So after all that expense with the Clio and hitting the crater masquerading as a pothole in the Lexus it was an expensive month. But let us remember the Clio expenditure was pre-emptive maintenance to avoid costly problems later on in my ownership, as this is a automobile I intend to keep, although anyone that knows me will scoff at that. There was, after all, a time when I seemed to have a new automobile every week!

The little quirks like the occasional high idle, absent electric operation of the nearside mirror and ignorance of the remote locking from the…