EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

I have a new love. She is a stylish blonde who garners admiring glances whenever we’re out together. She moves with elegance and grace. She is warm and soft to the touch. She sings a little two-note song when I slip into her in the mornings…

Look, she’s a car, alright? To be precise, a 2024 Honda HR-V in sand khaki. Our first new ride in twelve years. The end result of 18 months of planning, and wishing and thinking and saving.

Why now? Well, after we paid off The Big Debt, we figured we owed each other a treat. And I drive getting on for two hundred miles a week for work. An upgrade to a more comfortable, economical and modern primary mode of transport seemed like a nice way forward.

After over a decade in our old whip, the change was a steep learning curve. Modern cars are—different. Science-fictional. The first weekend spent with Harvette was nervous, as we got to grips with all the strange noises and lights, the toots and whistles as she gently showed us how she liked to be handled. Also, she’s bigger and wider than the Nissan Note we’d pulled over 100,000 miles in. All of a sudden the road through Sonning seems very narrow indeed.

Running in a new car is a lot like learning to drive all over again. Where’s the fuel tank lid? Where’s the fuel tank lid release? How do I put on the rear window wipers? All the muscle memory accrued through twelve years of Note ownership went out the window in moments. Reversing onto the drive suddenly becomes a nervy exercise in angle management which, to be honest, the fancy reversing camera isn’t really helping with. I’ll be grateful for it soon, I’m sure, but for now I’ll stick to mirror, signal, manoeuvre.

A lot of research went into our decision. Like, a lot. I became very familiar with the work of Mat Watson of Carwow on YouTube, who is the most approachable and entertaining of motoring journalists. It’s a tough gig, though. Because one thing I immediately noticed once I started digging into our shortlist was that there are very few genuinely bad cars on the market anymore. Sure, there are lemons to be had, but in general if you’re buying new or nearly new, you will struggle to find a car that isn’t comfortable, easy to drive and stuffed with safety features.

Which means that, when reviewing a car, it’s tough to find things to complain about. If you want a perfect definition of first-world problems, look at motoring vids and wait for phrases like ‘scratchy plastics’ (in other words, slightly cheaper finishes on the interior surfaces), gripes about the number and size of cup holders, or rage at the amount of USB-C plugs available. If the worst complaint you can find about a new car is how long it takes the powered boot to open or that it’s a bit noisy when coming up to line speed on the motorway (both grumbles pointed at the HR-V as major reasons not to buy) then frankly, you’re barrel-scraping.

Let’s talk a little more about the safety measures. Most new cars now have more radar sensors and cameras than nuclear submarines. You drive in a bubble of radio, an envelope of security which gives fair warning if anything intrudes.

And I’m all for it. My view after six years of driving into work is that everything else on the road is out to get you. You will be aggressively tailgated if you dare to travel at national speed limit in anything other than the inner lane. People will decide to pull in front of you with half a car-length’s distance then slam on their brakes. In urban situations, pedestrians with their heads in their phone and earbuds in will wander out into the road in front of you without looking up. All of these have happened to me this week, and I thank the full Honda Sensing suite of safety refinements for keeping me out of shunts and crashes. It’s crazy out there. You need all the help you can get.

I’ll be frank. I want a car which makes my commute and everyday travelling needs simpler, easier and less of a chore. In this, Harvette is a star. On the motorway, firing up adaptive cruise control and lane-assist means she very nearly drives herself. I long for the day when I can roll into the back of my motor, say ‘take me home, sweetie’ and be chauffeured back to bed. Autopilot on Teslas or California’s self-driving taxis don’t do the job but, based on the technology available to us here and now, the dream is not that far away. Take the driver out of the equation and road traffic accidents drop to nil. The vehicles aren’t the problem, it’s the numpties behind the wheel.

So why Harvette? That’s a question with two answers. To be honest, we made the choice when we first started looking at cars last year. I drew up a shortlist which TLC quietly decimated. The cars I’d picked were too big for her. But, after she had summarily dismissed the Honda CR-V (which is, to be fair, a big lump) she spotted its smaller classmate. Within three minutes of settling into the seats, enjoying the high, wide views and cooing over the soft-touch steering wheel, we were smitten. And to be honest, every car we looked at after that didn’t have the warm fuzzies we got from the HR-V. A test drive this February settled the deal after a nervous wiggle around the twisty B-roads around Swallowfield, and we signed off on finance before Easter.

It’s all in the gut, I guess. If you drive, you know what sort of car suits you. Neither of us are petrolheads or speed demons. It’s nice to have a car with the legs to get you out of trouble when a three-lane trap of caravans and Amazon lorries is closing in front of you, but we don’t believe in monstering it. Reviews of the HR-V highlighted how it was built for people who didn’t care if their car was a bit—you know, boring.

That’s us, Readership. Target market. We want a decent boot. We want fold-flat back seats which also, cleverly, flip up like theatre seats when you have a big plant to bring back from the garden centre. We want a smooth and elegant ride. Who needs to blast when you can cruise?

And yet. Honda are riding high in F1. The Honda Civic regularly breaks lap records on the Nürburgring. And Harvette will pull 0-60 in under nine seconds—quicker than the 80’s hot hatches so many car journalists revere. We were looking for a boring, practical car. We ended up with a speedy looker. And that colour! It’s sort of champagney with a hint of green. According to the DVLA, it’s ‘beige’. Heathens.

So why Harvette, part two? Well, the name was always going to be Harvey (HR-V, come on, keep up) until Darren at Marshall Honda referred to the test car in feminine terms. After that, well, we didn’t want to misgender. And Harvette sounds like a cool 50s motoring marque that only the real nerds know about. She has her own personality, we feel. A classy lady with a practical bent but a quietly wicked sense of humour. And she really does toot out a little tune when I start her up in the mornings. ‘Hi, Rob’ she says. ‘Morning, sweetie’ I reply.

God it’s pathetic.

In summary, then. We bought a new car. I like it a lot. I’ve been boring everyone I know about it, so now it’s your turn.

And this is why we will never charge for content on Excuses And Half Truths.

See you next Saturday.