It’s all very well making the same old New Year’s resolutions every January to try to drink, smoke, and eat a bit less, to get some exercise, to buy flowers for your partner and have conversations with your children that don’t involve exploding like an over-fuelled boiler house a bit more. But what if the car industry made a list of resolutions? That would be far more fun. Perhaps it would look something like this:
1. We agree to make small, simple cars again, so those pesky people who aren’t made of money can afford to buy one.
2. On that note, we also agree to make cars repairable, and ensure that the people repairing them are capable of making an informed diagnosis rather than just plugging in a laptop and following orders (which invariably involves ordering heavily marked-up replacement parts).
3. And also on that note, we’ll end hidden charges. Not just the commission paid on finance, but the mark-up on alloy wheel and puncture protection policies, lifelong paint coatings that barely last a week, car parts (that weren’t really needed in the first place), and extortionate labour rates.
4. All car designers will have to sign up to a charter that decrees that a driver must be able to see out of a car without having to rely on a camera or seven with lenses covered in filth.
5. The two-month wait for a service with a courtesy car will be banned; our new target is a turnaround of one week, as we know everyone drives with the service alert flashing away for weeks on end before finally booking a service.
6. Instead of a load of useless apps nobody ever uses, the giant screens in all new cars will show drivers something useful, like model-specific videos of how to top-up the screen wash, where to find the dipstick, or how to fill up Ad Blue.
7. Our engineers will* create lane-keep assistance and blind-spot alert systems that work on all roads and in all weathers.
8. Ditto automatic main-beam for headlights.
9. Given how every single customer under the sun has told us how much they hate not having buttons on the dashboard, we will – under duress – reinstate them. And we, cough, promise not to charge more for having them.
10. Talking of things you touch, in 2025 we promise to bring back handles – for the doors, boot, glovebox – you name it, we’ll put a proper handle on it that you can actually see and everything!
11. We’ll admit using keyless entry and ignition is as flawed as leaving a home’s front door wide open. Let’s go back to a key and ignition barrel, and while we’re at it, dig out some of those immobiliser keypads that Citroën and Peugeot used to use in the ’90s, so we can set a secure, four-digit engine-start code – something like 0000, 1234, or 6969 – that can’t be fooled by a kid with a signal booster.
12. We agree that paying more for a set of tyres than a you would a half-decent secondhand car is a little ridiculous. We’ll have a word with the tyre makers.
13. Given we know when a car is being driven recklessly by a total bell-end, we will automatically put it into limp mode for a whole month and make them drive like a model citizen for once.
14. The focus for electric cars will henceforth be about efficiency, and not accelerating from standstill to 100mph in the blink of an eye.
15. As our cars are so overweight and only getting heavier with electric motors, we agree to pay for the repair of all roads herewith.
16. Audi has agreed that it could do a better job of demonstrating to customers how to use the indicators in its vehicles.
17. When there’s a quiet moment, we’ll have a word with Ford and tell it to stop being silly and making cars called Mustang and Capri that aren’t a Mustang or Capri.
18. While we’re at it, we’ll politely suggest the likes of Porsche and Ferrari stop treating clients like unworthy toerags who have just wandered in off the street, and let them buy the cars they’d like to buy on a first-come, first-served basis.
19. Oh, and those gazillions of emails we send anyone and everyone about ‘VIP’ sales events with never-to-be repeated offers? We’ll give that a rest.
20. We admit we invented a chocolate stain–proof seat decades ago and never told anyone about it. This will now be fitted to all cars.
*might
