What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Pointless but fun – what a good wheeze ^{Renault Wind Roadster GT Line 1.6 VVT}

I’ve been cycling. It was a charity bike ride and I completed the five-mile course in a little over two hours. Everyone overtook me. Partly this was because the uphill stretches were extremely difficult and partly because on the downhill stretches I daren’t build up speed because I was absolutely convinced the front wheel was about to come off.

This would have caused the forks to dig, suddenly, into the road and as a result I’d have been catapulted over the handlebars, landing at high speed, on the tarmac, on my face. I don’t like my face very much, but I do need it for talking and seeing where I’m going and so on.

And no, I wasn’t wearing a helmet. I don’t wear a helmet for skiing, either. Or on building sites. Helmets make the wearer look foolish. So I decided, after a long discussion with my lungs and my quads, that it’d be better if I simply went slowly. This, then, is what I did and actually it was fine.

What, however, was not fine was getting my bicycle and my wife’s to the start line. Needless to say, someone else fixed the bike rack – which we seem to own for no obvious reason – to the back of our Volvo and loaded the bikes onto it.

This worried me for two reasons. First, I’d have to drive halfway across England in a Volvo with two bicycles stuck to the back, which is like a scene from a Ski yogurt commercial, and second, after the ride was over, I’d have to fit the bikes into the rack myself for the journey home. And I am to this sort of thing what the Duchess of Kent is to spot-welding.

Still, I figured that since it was a charity bike ride, the finish line would be awash with eager, Lycra-buttocked weird beards who’d take pity on the petrosexual and help out.

But there was a problem. After dropping my wife and her bike off at the start point for fit people, I was setting the satnav for the slobs’ start point when, KERPOW!, a man who was 700 years old reversed into the bike rack, knocking it clean off the car.

Have you ever tried to assemble such a thing? It is impossible. It makes no sense. You clip some straps behind the tailgate and then it just sort of rests on the bumper. To my eye that looked all wrong.

But since time was pressing, I moved on and examined the procedure for attaching my bike. This made even less sense, since all that prevented it from falling off and bouncing through the windscreen of the car behind, decapitating everyone inside, were two of those twisty things you use for doing up freezer bags.

I pushed and heaved and got chain oil on my face until eventually I decided I had to set off. That’s when I discovered two very sturdy-looking straps with big military-style clasps on the end. These didn’t seem to be important, though, so I left them dangling.

By driving very gingerly, I made it to the start line for fatties without beheading anyone. But now, in my mind, a big question mark hangs over the safety of things you attach to a car. Not just bike racks but roof boxes as well.

Ever fitted one of those? Of course not. Because lifting them into position will break your back, and dropping it, which you will, will remove all the paint from your car. Better, and cheaper, to buy whatever it is you were thinking of putting in your roof box when you get to wherever it is you’re going.

And another thing. A roof box is shaped just like a cruise missile, and if it becomes detached it will do as much damage. But have you seen the nuts and bolts they provide for affixing the box to your car? You’d be better off sticking it in place with chewing gum.

Let me give you a word of warning. If you come up behind a car with a box on the roof and some bikes attached to the back, keep your distance. Because they will have been fastened to the vehicle by someone who likes roof boxes and bicycling. Not Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Then you have snow chains. They are supposed to keep you moving when conditions are atrocious. But what they actually do is sever all your fingers and, if your wife is in the car, make you divorced.

Best, then, to buy a car that suits your lifestyle rather than a car to which various things must be attached in order for it to fit the bill.

Not the Renault Wind, then – the first car to be named after the effects of indigestion. Designed by a Frenchman, based on the humble Clio hatchback and built in Slovenia, it sounds perhaps the most stupid car in all of modern history.

It gets worse, because although it is a two-seater convertible, it was plainly not built to be light and sporty in the mould of an MG or a Lotus Elan or a Mazda MX-5. No. With its electric flip’n’over roof and its tiny little engine, it’s more of a city-centre pose-mobile, a Christian Louboutin shoe with a tax disc. I’m surprised, frankly, that its undersides aren’t red.

Of course, it’s normal at this point for the petrolhead to scoff, to suggest that the Wind’s body is writing cheques its engine can’t cash. That it’d be burnt off at the lights by a pedestrian. But I’m not going to do that because, many years ago, I used to own a Honda CR-X. And what you have here is the modern-day equivalent. I like it.

Yes, the 1.2-litre turbo engine’s a bit too small, but the non-turbo 1.6 isn’t bad at all. Go for this option and you get 131 bhp, which is enough to let you exploit the Botty Burp’s really rather excellent chassis. All quick(ish) Renaults feel lively in a Lucozade, good-for-you sort of way and this is no different. On country lanes it was – despite a ridiculously large steering wheel that makes the bigger driver feel cramped – fun, and, better still, it’s not so fast that your passenger complains after five seconds about having the roof down.

In terms of practicality – well, you’re not going to get a bike in the boot, but because the roof folds in such a clever way, not as much space is robbed as you might imagine.

And to top it all off, prices start at £15,205. The range-topping 1.6 GT Line is only £17,010, which means it’s considerably less than the 1.6-litre Ford Focus I drove last week. Given the amount of equipment you get as standard, that looks good value.

However, there is just one chink in the armour. It feels as cheap as it is. This is not a car designed, I suspect, to be passed on to the next generation. The dash, the switchgear, the levers – everything you see and touch feels brittle. As though everything will last about as long as – well, without wishing to be too lavatorial – a fart.