[asagaai]

So I am sitting tonight watching Grand Designs, and daughter with new Mazda 2 (little muppet) goes out to buy takeaway.

Get a call 45 minutes later- "Dad the car is making a really loud noise, something is wrong, can you come outside."

So I go outside, car is off, little muppet is standing beside it on road, and the engine fan is going 1000 mph. I walk up and hover my hand over bonnet and feel waves of heat flowing up. And then the smell, brake pads, rubber and that smell of a hot new engine burning off external fluids and giving new rubber and plastics a first time heat up (of an engine that had never been so driven).

A wash of nostalgia, I was 18 again and the smell after flogging my Mk 11 Cortina GT through the Dandenongs.

"You have just driven the crap out of your car haven't you, you have driven it really hard?" "Uh, just a bit", little muppet stammers, "I discovered the sports mode switch."

So I then took the car for a 10 minute cooldown putter, shocked to discover the Mazda 2 has no temperature gauge (WTF) and when parked no cooldown fan needed.

Then gave little muppet a lecture on need to warm up engine before driving spirited, and need for cooldown after driving a car hard, to cool down engine, gearbox, brakes. And then I said- "be kind to the car, be gentle and nice to it."

Got me thinking, you can drive a car real hard but still be kind to it with warm up and cool down.

About Mazda 6, sat in a new one in the showroom, and I found there was not the headroom I am used to in the ST and Falcon, felt claustrophobic, I could not be happy in one.

PS I do not think little muppets Mazda 2 will suffer carbon build up through a common cause of granny driving...