Putting the boot in
A FEW evenings ago, I got involved in a highly nerdy and equally heated discussion on a social media platform after a friend of mine proclaimed that his Volkswagen Arteon had the most ridiculous boot space of any large saloon car ever made.
I took his Volkswagen Arteon and I raised it, because anyone who has ever had the pleasure of owning an X300 or X308 generation of XJ saloon will tell you that the tradesman’s entrance of the big Jag has roughly the same luggage capacity as a shoebox, and that a modern VW luggage bay is like a studio flat by comparison.
But don’t take my word for it. Back when I was a scrap of a lad doing my journalism training on the Stockport Messenger, our editor asked a local shady underworld figure why he’d started swanning around in a Mercedes-Benz S-Class instead of a succession of dark grey Daimlers that had long been his hallmark.
“You can’t get a body in the boot of the new ones!”
That was in 1994 and I’m not entirely convinced he was joking, especially not as the individual concerned was shot dead on his front doorstep two decades later. This car journalism lark is pretty gentle by comparison.
My wife will agree with him, too – probably the most ‘gangster’ thing she’s ever done – but after a 1200-mile jaunt across Europe during the October 2022 half-term, five-up with luggage, she succumbed to the allure of an antique rug at the Sunday market in Maastricht in the Netherlands, only to then traverse Belgium with it rolled up poking out from between her legs. Apparently, this was my fault, as I’d filled what little luggage space we’d had left with German beer.
But I digress. The whole thing got me thinking about what’s really important in a car. Our family wagon is a Citroën C8 people carrier. You can get a sofa in the back with the seats out, it has sliding doors to make it easier to use in tight spaces, it has four glove compartments, eight cup holders and it’s a brilliantly conceived masterpiece of packaging.
THE WHOLE THING GOT ME THINKING ABOUT WHAT’S REALLY IMPORTANT IN A CAR
But not once have I ever stopped and gazed longingly at it as I’ve walked away from it in a car park. I noticed a scrape on the back door the other day where someone has obviously clobbered it whilst parked, but the most I could feel was mild annoyance. If that happened to my XJ8 I’d be de
