My mum's recent Fiestas have been OK — entirely sensible cars. But I still remember with horror the utter crock in which she tried to teach me to drive. 950cc, four-speed gearbox and, more to the point, utterly fucked. It had received 80,000 miles of abuse before my mother bought it, with only a five-digit mileometer; it had wrapped before I got near its controls. Learning hill starts was an unnatural ordeal and there were perfectly normal side streets in London too steep for it to climb. Plus, it had a manual choke and was the very devil to start.